Last year’s controversy and resulting changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program have delayed efforts to address the major labour shortage in the agriculture industry.
Mark Chambers, chair of the labour task force policy and programs working group, said the TFWP became such a hot button issue that MPs and government officials were reluctant to address the complex ag labour problem, and might still be leery in an election year.
Chambers and other members of the Agriculture and Agri-food Labour Task Force met with federal agriculture committee chair Bev Shipley last week in an effort to get recommendations made last spring back on the table.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
“We have a lot of doors to knock on,” said Chambers.
Chambers, the production manager for Sunterra Farms, is particularly concerned about job vacancies in meat packing plants.
He estimates 800 jobs are unfilled in that sector, a situation that affects all other links in the production chain.
The type of work and the potential need to relocate are major stumbling blocks, he added, despite concentrated efforts to recruit workers.
Wages are not really the issue, said Chambers. The idea that higher wages would attract more workers to the agricultural sector doesn’t hold water when wages are $12 to $30 per hour.
The type of work is a bigger factor. Seasonality is a challenge, along with job requirements in the slaughter plants.
“It’s not pay. If it’s all about wages, why has the oil and gas sector been short of people when they pay, $30, $40 or $50 an hour?”
Chambers said the cap put on the TFWP last year is going to exacerbate the labour shortage. Fifteen to 40 percent of packing plant workers are foreign.
Many want to transition into permanent residency, but the current cap of 30 percent foreign workers came into effect last June.
The cap will be reduced to 20 percent foreign workers by June 1 this year and drops to 10 percent in 2016.
“The cap came immediately, instead of the government saying, ‘in three years time we’re going to start placing these caps so you’re going to have to start working toward that goal,’ ” he said.
“That would have given us some time to work with the provinces and the immigration system on how we can permanently bring people in, versus bringing them under the temporary thing because the temporary foreign workers stigma, it’s not been good. It’s a political hot potato.”
Nor do foreign workers constitute cheap labour, said Chambers.
The task force’s labour action plan estimates the cost of hiring a low-skilled temporary foreign worker for an agricultural job at $12,700, versus $125 to hire a similarly skilled Canadian.
The task force elected Mark Wales as its new chair last week and said it is moving forward with the recommendations it made last year.
Wales, a horticulture farmer from Elgin County in Ontario, is also chair of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council, which is leading the drive to implement the recommendations.
barb.glen@producer.com
