Last Friday the Federal Government announced changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program.  Elliott Simms from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says the move negatively impacts rural Manitoba businesses.  He explains basically what the program did was say that if you’re in an area of high unemployment that is above six percent those sectors will not be eligible to use the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, so what that means is in Manitoba no one outside of Winnipeg who runs a hotel or restaurant or has a retail operation can even access the program even if they have a shortage of labor to find in their local area.

The CFIB reports records show that around 55 hundred temporary foreign workers have been hired in the province since 2012 with around 3 thousand in Winnipeg, 230 in Brandon and about 23 hundred in rural Manitoba.