A former BC NDP minister has attacked Premier David Eby over his comments about the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Katrina Chen, who backed Eby’s campaign to lead the NDP and previously served as minister for children, said: “Immigrants like me aren’t your scapegoats.”
Chen was born in Taiwan but reportedly moved to BC as a 17-year-old. There is no evidence she was a temporary worker.
Nonetheless, she said in her X post that she was “furious” to see Eby – who said last week he wanted the TFWP to be abolished or replaced because the system is “a race to the bottom” – criticize the policy.
So furious to see this. It happens all the time: gov underfunds services, then points fingers at immigrants through flawed policies gov created. This fuels bias & discrimination.
— Kᴀᴛʀɪɴᴀ Cʜᴇɴ (陳葦蓁） (@KatrinaCHome) September 5, 2025
What we need is reform — immigrants like me aren’t your scapegoats. #bcpolihttps://t.co/pwKRyhZzld
“It happens all the time: gov underfunds services, then points fingers at immigrants through flawed policies gov created,” she wrote.
“This fuels bias & discrimination.”
She added that “what we need is reform.”
Eby said in his own X post on Friday that the TFWP is “not working well for anyone.”
But he added that “BC’s strength comes from its diversity” and “we need to keep that.”
“People we welcome to Canada must be supported – not exploited by unscrupulous employers or pushed to the edges of society or into poverty,” he added.
Our system right now is a race to the bottom that hurts our young people, rewards bad actors, and pits people against each other. We can do better. pic.twitter.com/xQZ0Dqqjxc
— David Eby (@Dave_Eby) September 5, 2025
Speaking on the previous day, Eby said “we can’t have an immigration system that fills up our homeless shelters and our food banks [and] outpaces our ability to build schools and housing … [and] results in high unemployment."
Those remarks came one day after Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre called for the program to be abolished and replaced with a new temporary worker program solely for agriculture.
Poilievre said the TFWP had ballooned in size and was now undermining the labour market for Canadian workers, particularly young ones.
“Prime Minister Carney has failed to meet his own already excessive immigration targets and now he’s on track to issue the highest number of TFW permits ever in a single year,” Poilievre said.
“It’s time to take decisive action to protect our youth and workers.”
Carney, for his part, has said businesses across Canada have stressed their support for the program. Obtaining foreign labour was their main issue after tariffs, he said.
The Liberals have promised to bring the non-permanent migrant population in Canada down to five per cent of the overall population by 2026.
At the beginning of this year, the non-permanent population was a little over seven per cent of the total population, or around three million people.
Eby previously told NowMedia that the Justin Trudeau government's plan for sharing asylum seekers around Canada was “daft.”
He has also previously spoken of BC’s challenges with what he called “completely overwhelming” population growth due to migration.
But BC's Opposition leader, John Rustad, said Eby was merely "trying to put on a new costume" with his comments on the TFWP. Eby was trying to "mimic our calls on immigration reform," the BC Conservatives leader added.
Separately, a poll released today by Abacus Data shows a plurality of Canadian voters support “eliminating” the TFWP.
According to the study, 44 per cent of Canadians back Poilievre and Eby, while only 30 per cent think the program should remain.
In BC, the proportion of those in favour was 43 per cent.
