Sask. businesses calling for more certainty around immigrant program

Businesses in Saskatchewan are worried about finding workers and keeping the ones they have after an abrupt pause to the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program (SINP).

It’s the only immigration stream controlled by the provincial government, and last month intake for the job approval forms was paused. This put a stop to new job approvals for the program, but not the ability to get a federal work permit or nominations for already approved jobs.

No date has been given for when the program will begin again and employers don’t know what the program will look like when that happens.

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Employers like Nick Mastromatteo are concerned about planning for the future of their business and their employees planning for their own future.

“They’re already here, they’re paying taxes and they’ve already brought families — most of them with children going to preschools, elementary schools in the province as well,” he explained.

Mastromatteo is a director at Insul Fibre, an insulation company in Saskatoon. He said insulation is set to be one of the fastest growing trades in the next 10 years, and his own crew has had to grow from 18 workers to 45 in the past year.

Forty per cent of Mastromatteo’s new hires are newcomers and he said his company has booked work through to 2028 and is constantly in need of more workers. He said they’re often getting complaints from other contractors on projects who have to wait for them to be finished.

He said, at this point, needing SINP is about retention of workers.

“Insul Fibre has trained these employees, they’ve worked for us for the last six, eight, 12 months … anyone that is trained in the insulation industry as skilled labour and then has the risk of having to go home and then we have to re-train them — that puts a significant issue on building projects, delay costs.”

Mastromatteo spoke at the invitation of the Sask. NDP.

Noor Burki, the Sask. NDP’s critic for immigration and career training, and Aleana Young, jobs and economy critic, were on hand and called for the program to be reinstated immediately.

Sask. NDP immigration critic Noor Burki said on March 7, 2025 that the province should remove the pause as soon as possible. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

Young said the government made the change overnight with no consultation and no notice.

“It should be easy to walk it back and provide that certainty to skilled labourers, to small businesses who’re here during a time of economic challenge,” said Young.

Burki said he’s been getting calls from across the province from workers and business owners who are worried about their future.

Immigration Minister Jim Reiter hoped for the pause to be relatively short. He said Friday he wanted to have a meeting with the ministry about what the program will look like in the future, and then have intake open again shortly after.

“We recognize that this is causing stress for some people, we’re going to make this as short-term as we possibly can, and then let folks know what areas of the economy we’re going to be targeting with this,” said Reiter.

With the allocation cuts and requirements from the federal government, Reiter said only about 900 spots are left this year to target specific sectors in the economy to meet challenges. He didn’t want to predict which markets would be targeted for workers and which would have applications slowed down, but said he thought health care is a sector in particular need.

“Of the areas they’re looking at, I would think it’s safe to assume health care will be one of them. We need specialists, for example, in the past there’s been recruitment efforts made in the Philippines for nurses — those would all have to come out of that very small target of 900,” said Reiter.

Reiter said the government thought it would be unfair to keep accepting applications and letting them pile up while they figured out the changes. He said almost 200 applications come in every week, and that would fill up the new allocation within a month.

Reiter said the situation is problematic and he’s asked the government to revisit it, including having conversations with and sending a letter to his federal counterpart.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the parameters of the SINP as it relates to newcomers and work permits