Federal budget underwhelming on affordability, alarming on immigration: Restaurants Canada

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Toronto, Nov. 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Restaurants Canada is underwhelmed by the lack of measures addressing cost of living in Budget 2025 and alarmed about further cuts to immigration that will make it even more challenging for foodservice businesses to hire for hard-to-fill roles and in rural, remote and tourism areas.

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Affordability
We are disappointed that the budget doesn’t include sufficient measures to improve everyday affordability for Canadians, including Restaurants Canada’s ask to exempt all food from GST. At a time when people struggle to afford essentials and food inflation in particular has been outpacing the rate of general inflation, we need more immediate action on this issue from our government.

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Our analysis of the GST/HST holiday earlier this year suggests that a permanent exemption for prepared food could create up to 80,000 jobs in foodservice and related industries, including many youth jobs, save $5.4 billion in taxes for consumers and lead to $1.5 billion in additional tax revenue and EI savings for government. Restaurants Canada will continue our advocacy on this recommendation.

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Immigration
Restaurants Canada is incredibly concerned with the extreme reduction in temporary resident admissions from 673,650 in 2025 to 370,000 in 2027. The budget not only further cuts immigration levels but also does not recognize the importance of the foodservice industry in its updated immigration plan or provide a path forward for our sector to fill vacant roles.

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Temporary residents make up a small part of our total workforce, but they fill essential positions like chefs and cooks, hard-to-staff overnight shifts and roles in rural, remote and tourism regions where there are not enough local workers available. These workers allow our industry to be the fourth largest private sector employer, with over 1.2 million workers in every community. If a restaurant can’t hire a trained sushi chef, for example, it may have to cut staff hours or opening hours, or close entirely, putting Canadian jobs in jeopardy.

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We are, however, encouraged that the plan will consider the unique needs of rural and remote communities. We urge the government to allow the foodservice industry to access this labour pool.

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Youth
While we appreciate that the budget includes measures to help youth upskill, we are disappointed that it does not include any concrete measures to stimulate youth jobs. The foodservice industry has been the number one source of first-time jobs for youth for decades. In fact, 42% of the restaurant industry’s workforce is currently youth–we employ over 500,000 youth, representing one in five youth jobs in the country. We encourage the federal government to ensure that restaurants are eligible to participate in programs like the Canada Summer Jobs, the horizontal Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, and the Student Work Placement Program.

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Public Safety
We welcome the government’s commitment to improve public safety by expanding the capacity of the RCMP to hire 1,000 personnel to increase federal policing capacity across Canada. Restaurants are often at the forefront of public safety issues as they are public facing. While operators care deeply about their communities, they are ill-equipped to handle substance abuse and mental health concerns which threaten the safety of their staff and customers and cost them thousands in damages and increased security costs.