Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to participate in this study. My name is Peggy Brekveld, and I'm the chair of the board of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council. My comments today will focus on the value of temporary foreign worke

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to participate in this study. My name is Peggy Brekveld, and I am the chair of the board of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council. My comments today will focus on the value of temporary foreign worke

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. CAHRC, along with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and Food and Beverage Canada, is leading the national workforce strategic plan for agriculture and food and beverage manufacturing. Together, we have engaged industry stakeholders on ways to address work shortag

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I've turned it on now, but I will turn it off.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm speaking now. Has it improved?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to participate in this committee’s study. I am Peggy Brekveld, chair of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council. My comments today will focus on the value of temporary foreign workers to t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The system has to work for both the employer and the employee. If it doesn't, the program wouldn't exist the way it does or do justice to either group.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, there are inspections, as Mr. Possberg spoke about. There is continued discussion about what the program should look like, what the qualifications are and what the standards are. Those are developed in coordination with industry and government.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned, in 2022 we had a shortage over the entire sector—which includes processing—of over 100,000 people. There were 71,000 filling in with TFWs. They are valued and are needed to continue to grow this sector in the way that we are headed.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Part of the answer is understanding, acknowledging and vocally publicly stating that they are skilled workers. They're not low-skilled workers. They are skilled workers who are required. You need knowledge to understand how to prune a tree properly so that the apples continue t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  With regard to the first question, I think it's continued consultation with the industry. Work with us and we'll work with you to ensure it's the right program. Again, we are in such a shortage in our industry that we want the employees to have a good experience so that they want

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When we don't have enough employees, it means that we don't do the expansion that we can. It means that we leave produce on the field. We saw that significantly during our COVID years. We left a lot of produce out on the field because we didn't have enough people to bring it in.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It has been a continued conversation and continued effort on both accountability and enforcement. The government has the ability, and has used its ability, to monitor, assess, investigate and do inspections, etc., on farms. All of those pieces are part of what government does to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  CAHRC is currently working on the national workforce strategic plan. I'm looking forward to sharing that data and that information, which is a bigger conversation about the labour shortage and the answers to go forward.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not aware.