The Yukon government is temporarily halting a program intended to help employers fill job openings by bringing in foreign workers.
During a press conference at the Yukon government media room on May 16, Premier Ranj Pillai, who is also Economic Development minister, announced the pause only applies to Whitehorse-based applications for the Yukon nominee program.
Businesses in rural communities can still apply for nominees.
“We recognize the unique challenges that businesses face when hiring in Yukon’s communities, given a smaller labour pool. Keeping applications open for rural communities is meant to help address their unique needs and challenges,” the premier said.
The decision is justified to manage the current volume of submissions and prevent additional backlog, Pillai said.
“These pressures are not unique to the Yukon. We've recently seen this result in intake pauses to provincial nominee programs in other jurisdictions like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia,” he said.
Pillai indicated that the retail and hospitality sectors are likely to be most impacted by pausing the program in the city.
Fall 2023 briefing notes prepared for the minister state that “Yukon businesses continue to express concerns over labour shortages” and “the Yukon’s unemployment rate remains among the lowest in Canada.” The program is open for foreign nationals who intend to settle in the Yukon and gain permanent resident status.
As of May 6, 590 applications have been submitted to the Yukon nominee program.
That goes well beyond the 430-nominee limit set by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for the Yukon for 2024. Every year, the Yukon receives allocations from the federal government which informs how many applications the territory can approve in a year.
In 2023, the territorial government got an additional 150 immigration slots, bringing the base allocation up to 580 nominees. Those individuals worked for 256 unique employers, Linnea Blum in Economic Development department communications noted by email after the press conference.
But Pillai said there’s no attempt at seeking extra slots this year.
He indicated the program is currently overwhelmed with applications. Processing wait times for submitted applications are up from about two months to three months.
“It takes a little bit more time,” he said.
“We're trying to be really respectful to the public service in the sense of like, let them work on the applications they have. Let's not build expectations to employers that are putting new applications in that we just don't have spots for.”
Pillai said the choice reflects balancing the availability of homes and access to the health-care system as the territory’s population continues to grow.
“The tough part about this is, yeah, we have to make sure that we don't exacerbate pressures on housing and healthcare,” he said.
In the future, Pillai suggested the territorial government could even potentially tap into the program to get foreign national health-care workers.
“This is a program, of course, the government has not used in the past, but it's something, you know, we potentially would lean on for the health-care sector,” he said.
Pillai said a new immigration strategy is in the pipe, to be released in the coming weeks. A labour market development strategy is also in the works.
The government plans to resume regular intake to the Yukon nominee program in 2025.
READ MORE: Premier ties Yukon Party to Whitehorse business banned from nominee program
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com