Changes to immigration policies hurting Victoria restaurant workers

When Dino Osmanovic moved to Victoria from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021, he was seeking a better life for his family and himself.

He says when you Google Canada, it comes up as one of the Top 5 best countries to start a new life. With lingering tensions from the Bosnian War in the 1990s and volatile politics in the region, he wanted his kids to grow up somewhere free of these circumstances. Canada appeared to be a land of opportunity, and he was told that if he worked hard and paid his taxes, he could bring his family to join him.

But recent changes to immigration policies have made it seemingly impossible for Osmanovic to bring his wife and four young kids here. He’s spent more than three years building a community and finding supportive employment as the head chef of Roast, a restaurant in the Victoria Public Market, and he wants to continue to invest in his new home with his family.

“I came into Canada to get a better opportunity for my family, for my kids,” he said. “We had a dream of something that is now impossible.”

Earlier this year, limits were placed on temporary residents bringing their spouses and children to the country. Osmanovic wants to get permanent residency status but says that there is no clear path for workers with his skill set.

Osmanovic served seven years with NATO and the US army in Afghanistan, feeding troops from around the world, including Canada. He honed his abilities while risking his life during the war. But excelling in kitchen management and professional cooking don’t qualify you as a “skilled employee” per se. Osmanovic says there’s an expectation that you need to have attended college or university to secure permanent residency (PR).

With these changes to immigration, he’s starting to wonder if he needs to walk away from the life he built here and move back to Bosnia and Herzegovina—something he doesn’t want, now that he’s invested more than three years of his life here.

“Already, I'm part of this people. I'm part of this town. I have a good job, really good job. I'm happy with my employer, with all the support,” said Osmanovic.

Maryanne Carmack, owner of Roast, says that Canada has broken its promise to Dino and other foreign workers. She worries about the effect this is having throughout the restaurant industry, which has always relied on non-Canadians.

“It's one thing to change rules—rules need to be changed, OK—but don't change them and have it affect people that are already in the system, that are already here,” Carmack said. “[Dino] came here with a dream. He came here looking for a better opportunity. He came here thinking he could bring his family here.”

Carmack is adamant that Osmanovic deserves to stay, saying he quickly became an essential part of the Roast team. The restaurant even has a breakfast sandwich named after him, with a cartoon of his face on the sign.

“He is my business at the moment. No matter what is going on with his day, he's constantly here with a smile on his face,” Carmack said. “People come to see him.”

Osmanovic says he doesn’t want “special treatment—just a fair pathway” to bring his family to Canada.

Immigration changes

Over the past six months, Canada has significantly reduced immigration targets to manage the country’s population growth—a shift from the nation’s usual immigrant-friendly policies. As Canada’s population reached 41.5M last year, concerns grew about the strain on housing and health care.

The country’s previous target of 500K permanent residents each year was scaled down to 395K for 2025—an 18.5% reduction from 2024—and 380K in 2026. For those looking for a provincial pathway to permanent residency, the limit of applicants accepted through the BC Provincial Nomination Program (BC PNP) was cut by 50% in January, with processing time expected to increase for the rest of the year.

Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIA)—reviews of the regional labour market determining whether there’s a need for hiring temporary foreign workers, to which businesses apply to to hire workers without permanent residency (PR) status or citizenship—have been halved to one-year contracts from two. LMIAs were also reduced from a limit of 20% of low-wage business to 10%.

People who arrived here before the rule changes were not grandfathered in with the old rules—and suddenly the goalposts for advancing towards PR status have changed.

The federal government’s website says, “Canada’s temporary population will decrease over the next few years as significantly more temporary residents will transition to being permanent residents or leave Canada compared to new ones arriving.”

But becoming a permanent resident is a point-based system depending on education, skill, and the perceived value for Canada. Not every temporary resident fits into the metrics outlined, especially those in the food sector, and the raised bar for renewing work permits and LMIAs has workers turning elsewhere.

Camack says 95% of her team at Roast are foreign workers—three are on LMIA, including Osmanovic, one is working on a student visa, and one has a work visa.

“So, 95%—what am I going to do [if they leave]?” Carmack asks. ‍

Restauranteurs say immigrants aren’t disposable ‍

Dimitri Adamopoulos, co-owner of Ithaka on Burdett, says, “every kitchen has a Dino”—someone who has joined through the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program only to become an essential part of the restaurant operation. He says it's frustrating to see people work so hard to benefit a business and community without a path to stay here long-term.

“I don't feel right that Canada, when it suits us, we're going to take individuals, bring them here to fill in the gaps, to fill in the cracks. But then, the ones that are really making an imprint and assisting in businesses or contributing to our society, we just chew them up and spit them out, like, ‘Oh, we're going to get the next person,’” said Adamopoulos.

He knows the value of giving immigrants a chance to thrive—his parents immigrated to Ontario from Greece “in the ’60s with $50 in their pocket, you know, the sort of typical thing of that era” and eventually opened their own successful restaurant.

Canada’s labour minister has said that employers are taking advantage of the TFW program to avoid hiring Canadian workers. But Carmack and Adamopoulos contend they haven’t had many Canadians knocking on their doors looking for jobs.

“I don't have people coming to my business and dropping off resumes, as was the case 10 years ago,” said Adamopoulos. “I don't have young people coming looking for jobs, or veteran workers coming looking for jobs, especially in the kitchen.

So if we have all these people that are looking for work, where are they?” ‍

Labour shortages hurting business ‍

The federal government acknowledged the economic improvements that came with increased immigration, saying, “robust immigration helped prevent a recession, while contributing to Canada’s workforce.”

For restaurant operators, the LMIA and TFW provided some assurance that there would be enough workers for them to operate. But the new limitations on immigration, coupled with delays in paperwork at Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), have disrupted entire workplaces like Sizzling Tandoor on Johnson.

General Manager Kirn Bawa said she lost four team members in one week right before Christmas—her right-hand manager and three chefs—because LMIAs weren’t approved in time for the employees to get their work permits renewed. This loss happened right before another employee’s approved one-month vacation, making their staff especially lean. Two of these staff members are waiting, incomeless, for their work permit issues to be resolved, while the other two have decided to relocate to other provinces.

“It's quite the disruption to their life,” Bawa said. “It's hard for us and hard for them too because we need them at work, but they can't work. So it kind of leaves everybody in this, like, helpless situation.”

Bawa wonders why people aren’t given temporary extensions while their paperwork is sorted. The loss of four experienced employees left her in a situation where she wasn’t sure if she could open the restaurant’s doors.

“Then on the days you least expect, it gets super, super busy, and then bad reviews roll in,” she said. “Customers don't really understand.”

Bawa says even when an employee’s residency isn’t immediately affected, watching co-workers lose their ability to stay in their jobs has scared them into leaving abruptly.

Adamopoulos has been trying for nearly a year to bring three line cooks into his restaurant for the busy season. The government decided to review a month of Ithaka’s operations to determine how many workers he needed. They picked January, a month when the restaurant is closed for two weeks.

“So the ratio of what would have been of help in terms of my full-time employees and the hours people were working was dramatically skewed,” Adamopoulos said. “Now, instead of three line cooks, which I was hoping to have in place for spring and summer, I'm only going to receive one.”

He says the lack of workers he’s dealing with won’t make a difference in how busy his restaurant is in the summer. With a location a stone’s throw from the Inner Harbour, tourists tend to flock to Ithaka—and they expect a good meal.

Adamopoulos has turned to training young dishwashers as line cooks to ensure he has people in the kitchen. He says these workers have improved and are great, but most of them don’t plan to be career cooks—and they’re coming close to graduating, with hopes of starting work in their fields of study.

Reducing LMIAs to one year means turnover in these kitchens will happen more frequently, making it harder to ensure consistent service.

Adamopoulos said, “restaurants really haven't had much of a break” since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Many career cooks and servers decided to leave the industry for good after the constant upheaval of the industry during the pandemic. Now the pool of experienced—and dedicated—workers has shrunk. ‍

These changes are personal for employees and employers alike ‍

The effects of reducing the number of temporary and permanent residences—and international students—are not entirely clear yet. But many businesses and institutions say they’re hurting.

For Carmack at Roast, her team is more than just labourers—they’re the backbone of the business she’s operated for 12 years. She has invested money into the LMIA program, as have Adamopoulos and Bawa. The foreign workers have invested too—some spend their life’s savings to come to Canada, Bawa says.

Osmanovic has lost something even more precious to him—time with his wife and kids, whom he’s only seen twice in the last three and a half years—to make Canada a permanent home. He hopes the government will give him and others who have invested in their communities a fair chance at a life here.