Official wants agriculture exempt from revisions
Leaders of Manitoba’s pork sector are concerned that potential changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program could cripple the industry.
Claude Vielfaure, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Hylife, which produces 1.4 million pigs a year and operates a pork processing plant in Neepawa, Man., said the industry relies heavily on foreign workers.
“(They are) an integral part of our company,” Vielfaure said from Hylife’s headquarters in La Broquerie, Man.
“When we look at our Neepawa plant, where we have 1,000 employees, the town of Neepawa is about 4,200 people.… It’s very, very tough for us to get enough people to be able to handle the workload at the plant.”
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The federal government imposed a moratorium on the foreign worker program for the food services sector in April.
In widely reported incidents, three McDonald’s restaurants in British Columbia allegedly gave more shifts to foreign workers, while a restaurant in Weyburn, Sask., fired long-time waitresses to hire foreign labour.
The government is conducting a review and considering revisions to the program. Vielfaure hopes agriculture is exempt from potential changes.
“If (agriculture) isn’t, it’s going to create some real hardships for a lot of companies across the country,” he said.
“There’s going to have to be downsizing, and it may put (companies) out of business because there won’t be any people to do the work.”
Vielfaure said more than half of the employees at the Neepawa plant are foreign workers. Hylife also employs foreign workers at some of its hog barns in Manitoba.
“We do aggressive recruiting plans and try to get as many local people as we can, but we are heavily reliant on the immigration program,” he said.
Many of the temporary foreign workers want to become Canadians, he added.
“We encourage all our people that do come over,” he said. “They want to transition to become permanent residents. Our goal is not to bring them (in) and send them back.”
Rory Calpine, vice-president of government relations at Maple Leaf Foods, said the company employs more than 1,192 foreign workers in its operations in Western Canada.
“Of those, 917 are now permanent residents. They came in as (temporary) foreign workers but they’re now permanent residents,” he said.
“In Brandon (at the Maple Leaf pork processing plant )… over 80 percent of the temporary foreign workers that we hired have now transitioned to permanent residency.”
Maple Leaf also employs foreign workers at its hog barns in Manitoba.
McAlpine said any change that curtails the program is concerning, but Maple Leaf is worried about the overall labour challenge in the agri-food sector.
“How do we find more recruits from our domestic labour pool and secondly, how do we get the immigration system to bring in new Canadians, more quickly, that are suitable and willing to work in our industry?”
The temporary foreign worker program provides a path to permanent resident status in Canada. McAlpine said the federal government should omit that step and allow more immigrants into Canada directly.
“How do we fix our immigration process to ensure we get a full range of skills, of people willing to work in all industries in Canada,” he said.
“Lower skilled workers (are) needed, not just in agriculture, but in food processing…. (They) would have access through immigration to be selected and become permanent residents.”
Vielfaure said Hylife could recruit more locals if the company raised hourly wages, but it has to factor regional and global labour costs into its business model.
“We could raise our wages to $100 an hour so we would hire every (person) in the local area, but there would be big holes in other businesses, where they wouldn’t be able to compete,” he said.
“We’re a global company. We need to compete against people in our region, across Canada and across other countries.”
Karl Kynoch, chair of the Manitoba Pork Council, said there’s no guarantee that higher wages will convince Canadians to work in the hog sector.
“Some jobs are more labour intensive, and a lot of people aren’t looking for that labour intensive job. They want a different style of a job,” he said.
“At the end of the day, there isn’t a large pool that actually wants to do that job.”
Kynoch said independent hog producers are also anxious about the temporary foreign worker program. Approximately half of the employees at independent hog barns in Manitoba are foreign workers.
Manitoba Pork has asked the government to improve the program so hog producers don’t have to wait eight months or longer to hire a foreign employee.
“For us, it’s really disappointing to see the government going this route,” Kynoch said.
“Especially when we’ve been working with them to try and improve the process. This would definitely be a step backwards.”
- Meat cutter-production personnel at Hylife Foods processing plant in Neepawa: $12.65-$18.95 per hour
- Production personnel at Maple Leaf pork plant in Brandon: $12 to $20 per hour
- Swine technician at Hylife hog barn: $1,100 to $1,500, bi-weekly
- Worker at Hylife feed mill: $15.10 per hour
