Canada’s food industry has become addicted to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program .

The numbers tell a sobering story. In just a few months of enforcement data—from July to late September 2025—the federal government listed 26 food-related employers found non-compliant with federal rules governing the program. That’s everything from oyster farms to sushi restaurants, cafes, and food processors. That’s nearly 40% of all companies fined during that period.

Collectively, those companies were fined more than $2 million and handed multiple multi-year bans. The worst offender, Bolero Shellfish Processing Inc. in New Brunswick, was hit with a $1 million penalty and a 10-year ban from hiring temporary workers, a record-setting sanction that underscores how deeply entrenched this dependency has become in Canada’s food system.

Yet most violations weren’t about mistreatment or abuse, they were bureaucratic. The vast........

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