Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the province plans to move ahead with issuing its own work permits to asylum seekers, citing a constitutional clause that he says gives provinces shared authority over immigration.
Speaking Thursday at the close of a three-day summit with premiers in Muskoka, Ontario, Ford said his government will begin exploring how asylum seekers could be granted the right to work without federal approval.
“We will be issuing our own work permits,” Ford told reporters.
“We have authority in that area. No one understands the sectors and their labour needs better than the premiers.”
Ford said the idea was inspired by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who pointed to Section 95 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which gives provinces the right to make immigration laws so long as they are not “repugnant” to existing federal legislation.
The Ontario government, along with other provinces, are studying how Section 95 could be used to grant work permits for asylum claimants.
Ford said the change is needed to allow people to work and support themselves while awaiting a federal decision on their claims, a process he said can take over two years.
“I have a tremendous amount of asylum seekers that are up in Etobicoke in the hotels, they’re healthy, they’re willing to work, they’re hardworking people, but they’re waiting over two years, and they’re just sucking off the system, not their fault,” Ford said.
“The fault falls under immigration, that it takes over two years to get a work permit.”
The premier said the current system leaves would-be workers idle while local employers struggle to fill labour gaps, even while the federal government has approved over 100,000 visas for temporary foreign workers in the last half of 2024.
This year, Canada admitted over 817,000 newcomers in the first four months of the year, taking the total number of temporary residents to more than 3 million, equivalent to 18.5 per cent of the private sector.
Ford defended the addition of asylum seekers in Ontario.
“They want to get out there and they want to be like every other Canadian,” he said. “They want to find a job, they want to be able to first start off renting a condo or part of a house and then buying a house,” Ford said.
The development comes amid mounting economic pressure due to the effects of mass immigration, resulting in the rising cost of living and suppression of workers’ wages.
According to a UN report, Canada is the fourth largest recipient of asylum seekers in the world, with over 174,000 claims processed in 2024 alone.