Quebec businesses sue Ottawa over temporary foreign worker rule changes

A group of Quebec businesses are suing the federal government for $300-million over Ottawa’s sharp tightening of the temporary foreign worker program last fall, arguing that the policy reversal was too abrupt and could drive some of them into insolvency.

The lawsuit, filed in late May, includes nearly two dozen companies in industries from plastics to truck components to slaughterhouses concentrated in the Montéregie region of the province, just outside Montreal, along with five temporary foreign workers whose livelihoods will be or have been affected by the policy changes.