"Report says foreign workers in construction need more rights,"

A construction trade union group says Canada's immigration system is failing both to prevent imminent labour shortages on B.C. job sites and to protect many of the people who come to do construction work.

The B.C. Building Trades Council released a report Wednesday arguing both federal and provincial governments are not attracting enough international tradespeople to join the workforce, and those who do come are often coming through temporary programs that afford less pay and fewer rights...

The council's report calls for the federal government to, among other actions, launch an independent audit for two foreign worker programs, the International Mobility Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in order to investigate "problems, abuse and mismanagement".

It also asks the federal government to pause the use of those programs in construction during that audit...

"There's clearly companies where they use this as their business model," B.C. Building Trades Council executive director Brynn Bourke said. "They don't want to pay market wages in British Columbia to have skilled local British Columbians do the work.

"Those migrant workers … they're being denied the employment rights and protections that workers here should have."

CBC reached out to two B.C. construction industry groups to comment, but neither was available by deadline...