ROBLIN, Man. – Henrik Thomsen likes his job. He likes being a farmer and he enjoys owning Canmark farms, a company with hog barns in Roblin, Gilbert Plains and Swan River, Man.
But his life would be much simpler if it was easier to find employees.
“I love raising hogs. I’ve never had a bad day, driving out here,” said Thomsen, who lives in Roblin and has an office at Canmark’s sow barn 15 kilometres east of town.
“But if I should point to one thing that makes me tired, some days, it’s the labour (issue).”
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Thomsen, who moved to Canada from Denmark in 2006, built a new sow barn and new offices at the site east of Roblin in 2019 and 2020.
He now has 5,800 sows, up from 1,800 a few years ago.
Canmark sells the weanlings from those sows to farms in Manitoba and the United States. Thomsen also owns a feed mill and finishes 55,000 market hogs per year. Next year he plans to grow crops on 800 acres of land near the sow barn, which will slightly reduce his feed costs.
“It’s only going to be enough for three or four weeks, but it’s better than nothing,” he said, as he sipped a cup of tea at the office next to Canmark’s sow barn.
Thomsen employs about 35 people but in November he needed three or four more workers to be fully staffed. About half of Canmark’s employees are temporary foreign workers from the Philippines. The remainder are Canadians and Filipinos who have become permanent Canadian residents.
“We have a handful of Canadians that have been with me over 10 years,” he said in November. “Some of the foreign workers get their permanent residency and I don’t call them foreign workers anymore. We have three of them that bought houses in Roblin and have families.”
The foreign workers want to come to Canada and are productive employees. But getting them from the Philippines to Western Manitoba is not easy.
If Thomsen decided in early December that he needed another foreign worker, it could take seven or eight months or longer before the worker arrived in Roblin.
Thomsen must prove that he can’t find a Canadian to do the job, which includes posting ads in local newspapers and on the internet. Then he submits the necessary paperwork to the federal government, which must approve Canmark’s application to hire a TFW.
If that’s successful, the worker has to travel from the Philippines to Canada.
“If you’re going to (get) one person from the Philippines, it can take six to eight months. And how can you plan your labour force six to eight months down the road? It’s really, really hard to manage.”
Thomsen is among dozens of hog farmers in Manitoba who now rely on workers from other countries because most Canadians aren’t interested in a job where they work inside a barn. Cal Penner, who raises pigs north of Winnipeg, noticed that something changed in the mid 2000s as it became difficult to retain employees.
The young men who worked briefly for Penner left for a variety of reasons. Some didn’t like the dust inside the barns. Others didn’t care for the smell. One employee, though, had a memorable reason for quitting.
“I had one guy say he didn’t like to sweat when he worked,” Penner said.
Thomsen has also noticed a change since his arrival in Canada. When Canmark posted a job ad in the late 2000s, three or four Canadians would apply. Now, the number would be lower.
“There’s a good chance I wouldn’t get a single response (to the job ad),” he said. “We couldn’t do what we’re doing here, just based on Canadian labour. There’s no way.”
Critics would say the solution is simple: Canadian farmers wouldn’t need temporary foreign workers if they offered higher wages.
Thomsen agreed.
If the base pay at Canmark was $25-$30 per hour, more locals would apply for jobs. But that rate isn’t feasible in hog farming, an industry where the price for pigs is volatile and profits can shrink to nothing.
Typically, Thomsen starts his entry-level employees at $15 per hour. After three months, the wage is $16. He also provides housing for the foreign workers and others who work at Canmark.
A few years ago, he bought a motel in Roblin. He then built another housing unit at the same location.
“They’re not all temporary foreign workers. It could be a Canadian. If somebody doesn’t have a place to live, they can stay there,” Thomsen said. “(And) we have two vans that drive them to work…. (It) would be much easier for me to just hire locally, but I can’t find enough.”
Looking ahead, he would like to build a feeder barn and sell more pigs to slaughter plants in Manitoba. But that would require 10 more employees and the headaches associated with finding them.
“It definitely makes us think twice about expanding.”
Every month, people around the world – from the Philippines, India, Africa, Ukraine, Russia and Eastern Europe – send their resumés to Canmark, looking for work. People want to come to Canada and work on farms, but the temporary foreign worker system is painfully slow.
If the process could be shortened to a couple of months, it would be better for Canadian farmers and the foreign workers, Thomsen said.
There is also a need to train Canadians who may want a professional career in agriculture.
Thomsen’s home country, Denmark, has programs where students are specifically trained for jobs on farms.
“It’s like a trade to work on hog farms…. Over there, they have a complete and tailored program,” he said. “(Here) we’ve had young people here that… like the pigs. I wish we could send them to agricultural college somehow, to get the training.
“There is lots of livestock farming in Manitoba. They will need farm managers. The farms are only getting bigger. Why don’t we (design) a school where we aim towards that?”
