PRESIDENT & CEO’S MESSAGE: Effective Collaboration
by Dave Kaiser, CHA

Based on feedback from our members, staff recruitment and retention continues to be the most significant challenge facing our industry. Over the past several years the AHLA has worked collaboratively with government and has developed programs and resources to help members access Canada’s Foreign Worker (FW) programs.
One of the key requirements of a successful FW application is to ensure that the occupation wage rate specified in the Labour Market Opinion (LMO) application is competitive with the prevailing wage rate for that occupation in a particular region. The AHLA has attempted to help members satisfy this requirement by conducting an annual industry wage survey that is broken down by region and by size of property. Service Canada recognizes that wage rates vary by region and property size and has agreed to use the wage information provided in our survey as the prevailing wage rate used to evaluate LMO applications for occupations in most regions.

The exceptions to this will be for applications that come from regions where insufficient wage data was collected through the survey, and for applications that are processed more than six months after the date of the wage survey. In the case of insufficient data from the AHLA survey, (or the Alberta Wage and Salary survey), Service Canada will extract data from Employment Insurance claimant files. As claimant data reflects individuals’ actual earnings and is substantiated by employers when they submit Records of Employment, this is highly reliable data. Service Canada has advised that because EI claimants do not represent the majority of workers, EI claimant data would not necessarily be used exclusively to establish wage rates.

When the AHLA survey data is sufficient but more than six months out-of-date, Service Canada will apply a cost-of-living adjustment to determine the prevailing wage rate. Service Canada has agreed to identify the occupations and regions where insufficient data was collected through the AHLA wage survey and to work with the AHLA to determine the prevailing wage rates.

As an industry, we have the ability to resolve both of these issues if we provide Service Canada with more timely and credible wage data. The AHLA is in the process of developing an on-line survey that will be used to collect wage data on a semi-annual basis. AHLA employers participating in the new enhanced surveys should indicate appropriate wage ranges as, in general, wages posted by the FW program as “prevailing” are higher than entry level. Typically, LMO confirmations are issued when the wages offered are on par with those earned by workers after three years on the job.

Ultimately, the credibility of our survey will be determined by the number of responses we receive from our members. I encourage all members to respond to future AHLA wage surveys even if you are not thinking of using the FW program. Property specific information is NEVER disclosed. The aggregate data will help you to establish competitive wage scales and complete your annual budget.
We look forward to serving you!