Tourism is a cornerstone of Canada’s service economy, supporting over 2.2 million jobs and 265,800 businesses in more than 5,000 communities. The sector depends heavily on human capital — after all, tourism is nothing without its people delivering memorable experiences. Tourism workers are the heartbeat of communities serving Canadians and visitors daily.
Currently tourism faces persistent labour shortages, productivity constraints, and skills gaps. Businesses continue to recover from financial debt amassed during the pandemic, and despite growing demand for services, rising costs, major climate events, and reduced access to students and foreign workers, the sector is seeking workforce support that will help stabilize and grow their operations.
Budget 2025 presents opportunities for tourism to create good jobs for youth and other Canadians to transition into the workforce and launch successful careers. Tourism is also an opportunity for communities facing major workforce adjustments. Industries facing downsizing or closure can look at tourism as an attractive employment prospect.
“Canada’s path forward is to improve productivity.”
Although tourism is a service-intensive rather than capital-intensive sector, productivity investments through technology adoption, AI, and regulatory modernization can raise productivity and reduce labour inefficiencies in tourism operations. We anticipate that regional tourism infrastructure projects (lodges, attractions, transport corridors) will benefit job creation.
Skills, Reskilling, and Workforce Development
Budget 2025: $570 million Labour Market Development Agreements funding is made available through provincial and territorial training and workforce initiatives. Historically, Tourism HR Canada has worked with provincial and territorial tourism associations to help leverage this funding to deliver nationally recognized and industry-endorsed programs in 100s of communities across Canada. Tourism HR Canada will work with the large ecosystem of education and training providers to look for ways to benefit from the new funding to leverage the investments made in the national programs and services.
New Workforce Innovation Funding is designed to invest in projects tailored to local job markets to help key sectors and regions recruit and retain the workforce they need.
Budget 2025: $382.9 million Workforce Alliances funding is directly aligned with Tourism HR Canada’s mandate. As described in Budget 2025, Workforce Alliances “bring together employers, unions, and industry groups to work on ways to help businesses and workers succeed in the challenging labour market and coordinate public and private investments in skills development”. Tourism HR Canada anticipates continued funding to deliver on the foundational labour market information system for tourism and on other essential services such as DiscoverTourism.ca and Emerit.ca.
The Workforce Alliances funding provides the framework for training and matching workers to shifting demand and will contribute to a more skilled, adaptable workforce, improving service quality, productivity, and career stability for tourism workers. A great opportunity for tourism is to seek funding to support the retraining of workers displaced by market shifts or tariffs — workers who can be redeployed into hospitality, events, or culinary occupations.
The EI Work-Sharing enhancements provide mechanisms for tourism employers to retain staff through seasonal or demand downturns, such as off-peak travel periods. Tourism HR Canada will explore the possibility of a federal program pilot aimed that can benefit employers, such as:
- Seasonal income stabilization tools for tourism workers
- Cross-sector reskilling (e.g., hospitality workers trained in event logistics or sustainable tourism)
- Local workforce alliances that connect employers, post-secondary institutions, and Indigenous communities
Youth Employment and Early-Career Experience
Tourism is one of the largest youth employers in Canada. Budget 2025 invests over $1.5 billion across youth programs:
- $594.7 million for Canada Summer Jobs
- $635.2 million for the Student Work Placement Program (SWPP)
- $307.9 million for the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy
Tourism businesses are major recipients of Canada Summer Jobs funding. These programs offer seasonal employment and on-the-job learning for youth (many of whom enter tourism as their first job).
The renewed Student Work Placement Program will enable Tourism HR Canada to continue to deliver Propel — a wage subsidy that 100s tourism businesses have benefited from to ease hiring costs and help launch careers in tourism.
Tourism HR Canada will be seeking opportunities to tap into the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy to restore the Ready to Work program, which was most effective in sustaining a tourism workforce pipeline, reducing youth unemployment, and improving labour retention in entry-level roles.
Gender Equality and Inclusion
Tourism employs a high proportion of women and 2SLGBTQIA+ workers, especially in service roles. Budget 2025: $382.5 million over five years for the Department for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) aims to support workplace equality, gender-based violence prevention, and participation in economic life. This funding can further help tourism strengthen workplace safety, inclusiveness, and advancement opportunities.
Tourism HR Canada will look for ways in which the funding can support tourism businesses in meeting diversity and inclusion standards and reducing barriers for women to advance in leadership and management roles.
Harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Tourism Competitiveness
Budget 2025 commits $925.6 million to artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and introduces a Sovereign Canadian Cloud. Innovative technologies such as AI are already transforming operational models and customer expectations in the tourism sector. Tourism employers can adopt AI solutions to offset labour shortages and enable greater productivity, creativity, and growth. Realising the full potential of these technological advancements will require strategic investment in workforce development. Digital upskilling and reskilling are essential across the tourism sector to enhance digital literacy and technological proficiency.
Immigration and Workforce Supply
The 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan stabilizes immigration but increases the share of economic migrants to 64%.
Key elements affecting tourism:
- Reduced temporary resident admissions (from 673,000 to ~370,000 by 2028) could tighten supply of temporary foreign workers often employed in tourism and hospitality.
- However, the conversion of 33,000 work-permit holders to permanent residency and improved credential recognition ($97 million Action Fund) enhance workforce stability and integration.
- New International Talent Attraction Strategy (over $1.7 billion) builds Canada’s human-capital ecosystem, indirectly improving innovation spillovers that benefit service industries.
Specific to temporary workers, Budget 2025 states: “…will consider industries and sectors impacted by tariffs and the unique needs of rural and remote communities.” This suggests that the sector will be able to access the essential temporary foreign workers it needs, if strategic.
Tourism can leverage more stable, permanent labour through better credential recognition and regional immigration streams focused on hospitality and service occupations, especially in rural and remote areas. Tourism HR Canada will be working closely with the tourism advocacy network to help the sector optimize existing immigration streams.
Strengthening Tourism’s Foundation
Budget 2025 strengthens the foundational economy—skills, inclusion, and technology—that tourism depends on. Youth jobs, gender-equality funding, and reskilling measures directly sustain the sector’s labour force. While not a tourism-specific budget, its comprehensive focus on productivity, skills, immigration reform, gender equality, and technology provides the tools needed to modernize and strengthen the tourism labour force.