An employer who wants to hire a temporary foreign worker has to prove Canadians aren’t applying for the job, but the reports justifying the cross-border search aren’t publicly available.

Nearly 2,000 Kamloops and Okanagan jobs were approved in the first three months of this year, but the federal government won’t say why it did or didn’t give an employer the OK.

During the same period, 74 were denied.

The rationale for its decisions aren’t included for “privacy reasons,” a spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada said.

The temporary foreign worker program has been in place for years, but it’s facing renewed criticism amid rising unemployment.

BC Premier David Eby recently called out specific Vancouver restaurants for temporary worker hiring schemes, and he blamed the system for driving up unemployment and depressing wages.

“We need an immigration system that ensures that predatory employers are not able to use the temporary foreign worker program to depress wages or to deny opportunities to other workers, who insist on their rights, that have the opportunity to go somewhere else,” he said.

It comes as unemployment rises across the country and as the approval rate for temporary foreign workers across the province has declined by roughly 20 per cent.

There is a stark difference in unemployment across the Thompson-Okanagan region. Kamloops is above the 7% national average at around 10%. Though it also rose since the spring, Kelowna has among the lowest unemployment rate in the country a 4%.

Though temporary foreign workers in some areas have been exploited and faced conditions like overcrowded living quarters and an income below minimum wage, it has also been defended as a system that bolsters the Canadian economy. It’s particularly favoured among farmers.

Despite the drop in temporary foreign worker job approvals in BC, the number of job openings advertised out-of-country has more than doubled in the last seven years. Before 2025, the federal approval rate for employers wanting foreign workers held steady at around 86%.

The federal government releases quarterly data on Canadian businesses requesting permission to advertise their jobs to temporary workers out-of-country.

The program is “designed as an extraordinary and temporary measure” meant to fill “critical employment gaps” in the country, the Employment and Social Development Canada spokesperson said.

It’s only used when qualified Canadians or permanent residents can’t fill the vacancies.

An employer is required to submit a labour market impact assessment and prove Canadians didn’t apply for the job. The federal government then decides whether or not it will allow the employer to look for employees outside of the country, but that process isn’t clear.

There are several industries where temporary foreign workers are sought, but agriculture makes up the vast majority in Kelowna and a significant share across the country.

In the first quarter of 2025, 1,760 Kelowna job ads were approved and 1,300 came from just three orchards. Many other employers may seek a few dozen, but the majority on the list only advertised a handful of positions. Others included retail, restaurant and trades positions, and none of the jobs denied by the federal government were in agriculture.

Kelowna businesses took up the bulk of the region’s advertised temporary jobs, with 52 Kamloops jobs approved, 114 in Vernon and 44 in Penticton. Only 74 were denied across the four cities in that same quarter.

For the 10 jobs denied in Kamloops, four were at Riverland Motel, and 12 of the 16 denied in Penticton were at a local Tim Hortons.

Data shows 51,333 temporary worker jobs were approved across the province last year, compared to 22,441 in 2017. In BC and most of Canada, Mexican workers make up the largest share, followed closely by India.

Temporary foreign worker approvals in BC varied by region in that seven-year span, but it doubled in both the Lower Mainland to 34,509 and the Thompson-Okanagan with 8,715.

— With files from The Canadian Press