TORONTO - Canada's tech sector is cheering the federal government's decision to simplify the process to recruit high-skilled foreign workers, a move they see as helping to even the playing field with global competitors.

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau says Ottawa will reduce the processing time for visas and work permits to two weeks, a drop from the many months it takes now.

The initiative, which targets high-growth companies, will also create a new temporary working permit allowing foreign workers into the country for 30 days a year. The new rules are expected to be introduced early next year.

Companies will have to demonstrate that bringing in foreign talent will result in labour market benefits such as increasing investment, training and Canadian job creation for Canadian companies and global companies making large investments in Canada.

"One of the big things that this now creates is certainty," said Alexandra Clark, head of government relations at Shopify, one of Canada's biggest homegrown tech success stories. "This is a direct response of this government hearing from Canadian companies that labour and access to talent has been a major barrier for us to be competitive."

The government is increasingly turning its focus to the tech sector as a way to attract investment and jobs that could propel the economy out of a slow growth environment.

Tech companies have long said it is difficult to scale up when they can't attract the talent they need to do so in a context of a global shortage of specialized tech workers.

"This has been a conversation for 10 years and we're just so happy the government is acting," said J. Paul Haynes, CEO of Cambridge-based cybersecurity company eSentire.

The changes make Canada one of the most accommodating countries in the world for foreign tech talent, he said.

So far, jobs in tech-related roles have far outnumbered the talent available to fill them and cybersecurity has been particularly challenged due to the industry's growth in recent years, Haynes said. The firm has been working with Canadian universities and colleges, but, he added, that has not been enough.

Hassan Yussuff, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said he's worried that the fast-tracked process might allow companies to sidestep the requirement to search for a Canadian who can fulfil the job vacancy first.

"Nobody should have a carte blanche and simply show up without having to prove it and I don't think it's fair to Canadians with fairly high unemployment in the country," he said.

Canada's tech sector is in a very specific predicament and bringing in the right talent could be key to domestic job creation down the road, said Chris Plunkett, director of external affairs at Communitech, the organization that advocates for Waterloo Region's tech sector.

"You're not trying to protect the one job; you're saying, 'If you bring in one other, how does that then create 10, 20 or 50 or more jobs down the road,' " he said. "That's a big shift and it's the right shift when you're trying to create a high-skilled economy."

The changes are going to be incredibly important to companies such as Kitchener-based Clearpath Robotics, which need highly specialized people, such as those with PhDs in human-robot interaction.

"Think about the number of people in the world who have that, and even if you have a couple Canadians who have that specialization, they might be working in Silicon Valley, or another company - they're not sitting around looking for a job," Plunkett said.

For highly technical companies that can't bring the talent they need into Canada, relocation is a very real possibility, he added.

"They either have to grow slower because they can't build the product that they want or they're going to have to open an office elsewhere."

Then there are mid-size companies such as Kitchener's Vidyard - whose software hosts and analyzes video marketing - that are looking for expertise at the executive level who know how to scale a company from 100 to 500 people in a very specific industry.

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"If they don't bring in the right person, the best person in the world, the company is going to grow significantly slower, and the way CEOs think is if they can't bring in the right people, they may as well go build it elsewhere," Plunkett said.

The benefits of the new government policy will trickle through to be felt throughout the country, said Shopify's Alexandra Clark.

"This is not about Canadians missing out on opportunities. This is actually bringing opportunities for Canadians in the workforce and especially in tech companies here in Canada."