Restaurants Canada is urging provinces to opt-in to the federal government’s Temporary Foreign Worker cap increase for rural areas.

Jannick Cormier says the federal government has announced that it will temporarily increase the cap in rural regions where there is a labour shortage, but only if the province officially requests it.

Cormier says Ottawa cut the Temporary Foreign Worker program cap from 20 per cent of an employer’s workforce to 10 per cent, but has increased the cap to 15 per cent for those in rural regions.

She says Newfoundland and Labrador is a prime candidate, but must opt-in.

She says it would only apply to areas outside the Census Metropolitan Area which takes up St. John’s and most of the surrounding northeast Avalon.

The province says department officials are in discussions with their federal counterparts to understand the implications of the changes to make “a fully informed decision.”