Chris Selley: Bring on the doughnut wars—and let’s hope they set an example

Tim Horton's is on a "local employee" hiring blitz. Photo by Darren Makowichuk /DARREN MAKOWICHUK/Postmedia

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Just in time for stricter limits on temporary foreign workers, and also just in time for the return to Canada of Dunkin’ Donuts, the iconic Tims, having gone to seed — its website is currently bigging up something called “omelette bites” — has decided it doesn’t need so many temporary foreign workers, after all. That’s despite lobbying Ottawa against lowering the cap on those workers as recently as the end of 2025.

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It was really just a pandemic labour-shortage thing, Tims claimed this week in a press release. “Today in 2026, with high youth unemployment nationally, lobbying for expanded access is no longer necessary,” it explains. “In fact, our restaurant owners’ use of the program has already declined steadily since 2024.”

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Tims has launched an ad campaign promising to hire 10,000 “local employees,” which is kind of a funny thing to call “employees.” (Temporary foreign workers are “local” too, surely. They don’t commute from India.) But I suppose there’s no elegant way to say something like, “we’ve been deliberately hiring foreigners who have no path to citizenship because it’s cheaper and/or easier and now we’re opening applications to Canadian citizens and temporary residents here on different sorts of visas.”

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For the record, youth unemployment has been way up since the end of 2023 compared to pre-pandemic averages. It doesn’t make a ton of sense that Tims would suddenly, of its own volition, decide in 2026 that it was time to wind down this hiring strategy. At least, not unless you factor in the threat of the American juggernaut, Dunkin’, which exited this market in 2018 and now plans to return under a Canadian franchiser, opening hundreds of new stores.

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I know nothin’ of Dunkin’. My American sources suggest it’s OK, which is pretty much the best you can say about Tims. I do note that Dunkin’s menu seems to be less full of nonsense than Tims’: Coffee, doughnuts, breakfast sandwiches, that’s pretty much it.

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Tims’ constant off-piste culinary excursions — veggie burgers, pizza, a steak sandwich, what they amusingly call “loaded bowls” (I picture an unappetizing porcelain bowl), most of which disappear, unlamented, after a short period of time — serve mostly as a constant reminder that Tims actually used to make doughnuts in their stores. Like, they had an actual deep-fryer and actual people dropping batter into it. It’s a true story, kids! Ask your parents!

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Look, it would be ridiculous to argue that Tims is doing badly. It isn’t. Sales and profits just keep going up for parent company Restaurant Brands International. That’s despite McDonald’s very deliberately and successfully horning in on Tims’ racket with its McCafe brand: doughnuts and pastries, just as good; coffee, much better. Heck, the convenience store across the street from my local Tims has better doughnuts and muffins (though, against all odds, even worse coffee).