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After a five-year run, the program ended in February when 2025’s application cap of 1,010 was reached. Since its launch, it has approved 5,233 agri-food workers and family members, and refused 399, with 126 withdrawn.

“The program has proven to be effective,” said Arnold Drung, president and CEO of Conestoga Meats near Kitchener, which has put in a total of 207 applications, with 72 already approved. “This has positively impacted not only our temporary foreign workers, but also local employees, our business, farmers, and the local economy.”

To make the situation worse, critics say they are seeing more new work permit and renewal applications refused since late last year after then immigration minister Marc Miller started clamping down on the number of foreign workers in Canada.

Canada’s agri-food sector relies heavily on temporary foreign workers, with over 115,000 filling labour gaps in primary agriculture and food manufacturing in 2023 alone, according to Statistics Canada. Now, the discontinuation of the Agri-Food Pilot is leaving employers with deepening labour shortages and no pathway to retain workers — threatening food production from farm to grocery aisle amid a trade war with the U.S.

In a statement, the Immigration Department said economic pilots have a shelf life of up to five years only and cannot be extended, even though the foreign caregiver pilots have expired and been replaced twice since 2014. Work permit refusal rates fluctuate due to various factors, it added, but measures are put in place to accommodate workers when changing jobs or employers so they do not run out of status.

“The department continues to monitor and assess the pilot, and to explore permanent economic immigration pathways for workers across all skill levels,” it told the Star in an email.

During the pandemic, work permits for agriculture and agri-food workers were prioritized to secure the food supply chain. However, Janet Krayden, workforce specialist at the Canadian Mushroom Growers’ Association, said that has now fallen by the wayside.

“Although our job vacancies and labour shortage are recognized overall, we are caught in a dragnet of these restrictions reducing immigration numbers, which should not apply to farms and food processing,” she said, “especially if we want food grown in Canada” during the current trade war with the U.S.

 said just over 70,000 temporary foreign workers worked in primary agriculture industries in the country in 2023, with another 45,000 employed in food and beverage manufacturing industries.

A , a Crown corporation, in December said a quarter of the labour force in the food and beverage manufacturing is between 55 and 64, and will be retiring in 10 years.

Lauren Martin of the Canadian Meat Council said jobs in meat processing aren’t considered “highly desirable” by Canadians because they are physically demanding and located mostly outside of major urban centres. The pathway for permanent residence helps companies hold on to experienced staff and ensure foreign workers receive same protections as Canadians.

“Our plants are unionized,” Martin said. “Our employers aren’t looking for cyclical individuals that are going to come and go. They’re looking for permanent employees because we have permanent jobs that we need to fill on a year-round permanent basis.”

Derek Johnstone, spokesperson for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, echoed those concerns, citing ongoing labour shortages in the agri-food sector and the increasing reliance on migrant workers to fill those roles.

“We’re very concerned as the United Food and Commercial Workers about this pilot essentially ending and then nothing, as far as we can gather, being discussed or planned to replace it,” said Johnstone, whose union has more than 2,000 members in Canada’s primary agricultural sector.

There are major industries within the food production system that are now reliant on migrant workers, who are vulnerable to abuse because they don’t have permanent status, he said, and immigration pathways are a start to addressing many of these issues.

Both Johnstone and Martin would like to see the Agri-Food Pilot become a permanent program.

The mushroom industry hires 2,500 foreign workers and contributes close to $1 billion a year to Canada’s economy. Krayden, whose association represents the sector, said she used to get about two cases a month from members having work permit issues, but since last fall she’s been fielding three or more calls a week.

“We’ve been hit with (workers from) Vietnam, some from the Philippines for these mass refusals where they have some kind of new interpretation, where they’re doing a revolving list of reasons that they’re choosing” to refuse, she said. “The farmers are losing crop.”

In addition, immigration consultant Adam Jones said the federal government raised the cap on foreign workers for individual employers in the food production industry during COVID to 30 per cent of their workforce, but that has since been reduced to 20 per cent. 

“If you are an organization and you have individuals coming up for renewals, if you are over your 20 per cent cap, you are unable to renew those workers and therefore you have to send them home,” said Jones, who helps employers with the immigration process for workers.

“This is why the Agri-Food Pilot was extremely important, because the turnaround period for the workers to be able to get their permanent residence alleviated the worry.”

Although immigration officials said there are other general permanent residence programs available for workers, critics said these other options all have more stringent language and education requirements that the most needed agri-food workers can’t meet.

“These workers are not unskilled,” said Jones. “They are skilled in what they do.

“Who is going to be doing the production jobs to put food on the table to feed your family? If Canada wants to get back to manufacturing production, who’s going to be filling those vacancies?”