Tim Hortons said it will hire 10,000 local people in Canada after facing backlash over the years over its reliance on foreign workers.
After years of relying largely on a temporary foreign worker program that gave Tim Hortons the nickname “Sing Hortons,” the restaurant chain announced Monday that it has decided to scale back its foreign hiring and commit to hiring 10,000 local workers as the chain now expands across the country.
“We have not lobbied the government since last year and will not pressure them on foreign workers any time soon given our commitment to hiring locally everywhere we can,” said Duncan Fulton, CEO of Restaurant Brands, the parent company of Tim Hortons.Fulton noted that there was never any question about cheap labor because wages were the same for everyone, but “at the end of the day, our owners prefer to hire local labor almost 100 percent of the time.”“Our restaurateurs have always been committed to hiring locally. We believe one of the biggest misconceptions about Tim Hortons is how they use the TFW program. Less than 4% of team members are hired through the TFW program,” a spokesperson told the National Post.“Our local hiring campaign is targeting anyone who wants to work at Tim Hortons who lives in Canada and is allowed to work in Canada — our restaurateurs do not discriminate in their hiring, so it can be Canadian students, international students, any member of the community,” the spokesperson said.
The restaurant said that reliance on foreign workers began during the pandemic when there was a labor shortage. “TFW use among owners is down 50 percent since 2024. It’s not like in 2021, during the pandemic, where there was a real need for foreign labor,” Fulton said. He added that there is a common misconception among Canadians that Tim Hortons employs a surplus of foreign workers because many of its employees are ethnically diverse.
“Canadian communities are becoming more diverse and so are our restaurants.”