Commentary
Tim Hortons set Canadian social media ablaze on May 25 with a press release promising to hire locals over foreign workers. Behind the drama and hot takes is an important question: If our national coffee icon can do without foreign workers, why does any restaurant or retail employer need them?
The press release heralded a major expansion of storefronts, with 80 Tim Hortons restaurants set to open across the country this year, and affirmed a “strong, ongoing commitment to hire locally, whenever possible, in every community we serve.” Specifically, the restaurant chain is pledging to “hire 10,000 new local team members.”
Going even further, Tim Hortons declared that it will no longer lobby Ottawa for greater access to foreign workers, saying that “in 2026, with high youth unemployment nationally, lobbying for expanded access is no longer necessary.” This followed a blunt admission that it had lobbied for this very thing in the past, particularly in the period after the pandemic when there were “acute labour shortages across the country.”…