Quebec Employers Hiring Temporary Foreign Workers Get Updated Salary Guide

A new salary guide has been published for Quebec employers hiring temporary foreign workers, with higher salaries for many of the job categories listed.

Called the Édition 2020 du Guide des salaires par professions présentés par intervalle, selon les quartiles au Québec , it provides salary ranges for entry-level, mid-level, and senior positions for many jobs categories, with effect from December 1.

The new guide replaces the edition published in 2018.

A lower-level IT manager’s salary, for example, has been bumped up to $2 per hour, to $38 from $36 per hour. Medical lab technicians are also seeing a salary increase – this one of $4 per hour – from $22 to $26 per hour. Social workers too are being bumped up from $22 to $24 per hour under the new guide.

But it’s certainly not all the jobs that are now paying more. Many of the positions at the mid-level and higher are staying the same in the new guide. Other positions are showing no difference at all.

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There are even a few positions where the latest guide indicates employers can now pay less. The starting wage for entry-level office workers, for example, has gone down by $2 per hour, from $16 to $14 per hour.

Quebec’s Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI), uses the 2016 National Occupational Classification (NOC) to determine the category for any job offer made under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The NOC codes are then used to check the appropriate salary range under the new guide unless the compensation is covered by a decree by the government or a collective agreement. 

Any temporary job offers received by the province’s immigration can be refused if the salary offered for the job is based on the 2018 salary guide or otherwise fails to comply with the latest salary guide.

The province uses the salary guide to ensure temporary foreign workers are paid a fair salary comparable to what a Canadian worker would earn for the same job and level of experience. The guide only takes into account the guaranteed wage, excluding any expected overtime, tips, profit sharing, bonuses, commissions and their forms of remuneration.

Immigration officials decide in which category a temporary foreign worker should be placed within any given job category based on his or her experience. 

The entry or lower level is for those workers with two years or less of experience. A mid-level employee is considered to be one with between two and nine years of experience. And a senior-level employee is one with more than nine years of experience.

Last month, Quebec announced it was going to make it easier for employers to find highly-skilled immigrants to fill jobs with the launch of a new employer portal.

Nadine Girault, Quebec’s immigration minister, unveiled the province’s latest tool to streamline its Quebec Skilled Worker program, Arrima, in early November.

“Faced as we are with the challenges posed by labour shortages in several sectors of our economy, immigration is incontrovertibly the right approach,” Girault said in French. “It needs to be easily and quickly accessible to meet the needs of Quebec businesses who are struggling to fill jobs with local candidates.”

The new employer portal is available to businesses and organizations in Quebec’s corporate registry and makes it easier for them to:

• Learn about immigration programs and services;
• Recruit immigrants and people from minority groups in Quebec, Canadian and international university graduates, and temporary or permanent foreign workers, and;
• Help immigrants integrate into Quebecois society through the use of programs to learn French.

“With the introduction of the employer portal’s business interface, as well as the resumption of international recruitment activities, the government is acting proactively,” said Girault. “We are supporting businesses more effectively and acting with more precision. Stepping up efforts to recruit international talent is a priority for our government and an integral part of a strong economic recovery.”