The Alberta government is opening two new “advisory offices” for temporary foreign workers in Edmonton and Calgary and creating two teams of four inspectors each to ensure foreign workers “are being treated fairly in their workplaces.”

However, the inspectors will give notice before showing up on a worksite — and critics say that defeats the purpose of an inspection. “All it does is it gives a heads-up to the employer to hide the bad stuff,” says Jason Foster, director of policy analysis for the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL). “So they do, and the inspector doesn’t find anything — and then they go away, and nothing in the workplace changes.”

The government, however, says advance notice is needed so employers will have their workers accessible to interview and payroll information ready when inspectors show up. “If our guys just show up at a location to see the payroll, there’s a good chance the payroll might not even be at that site,” says Bart Johnson, a spokesperson for Alberta Employment, Immigration and Industry. “It might be on another worksite. Or there’s a good chance that the temporary foreign workers aren’t on shift that day.”

For years, labour and human rights advocates have raised concerns about Canada’s temporary foreign worker program. A November AFL report documents a host of problems Alberta foreign workers have experienced including unfair wages, substandard working conditions and inadequate housing. Canada is “exploiting [foreign workers’] vulnerability and taking advantage of their precarious position,” says the report.

The federal Conservatives have introduced several changes that make it easier for employers to bring in foreign workers — especially in Alberta, which in 2006 had more than 22,000 temporary foreign workers, more than double the number the province had in 2003. Yet the program has no monitoring system in place to ensure workers are treated fairly. “[It] is a federal program, but we feel that there is a provincial responsibility in ensuring that temporary foreign workers… are treated the same as all other workers in Alberta,” says Johnson, adding that wages and employment standards are a provincial responsibility.