Thank you.
I'll just pick up where I left off, and again I apologize. Brevity has never been my forte in any way, shape, or form, so I'll try to do it faster.
What we would like to see and what we have been working toward is finding some revisions to the temporary foreign worker program that help access that seasonally very specific skilled labour, but that isn't the only solution. Total reform of that program won't help do it.
The other part is how we find skilled workers, how we train skilled workers, how we invest in them, and how we get them interested in the sector. That, I think, will continue to be a challenge because certainly there are so many other opportunities out there. And farming isn't always the highest paying or the easiest of those, but there certainly are people interested in doing it.
We've worked with the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council in developing an occupational standard for the sheep sector. We do that not only to define what we need as an industry for different levels of employees, but we're hoping that feeds into educating and training at a career level for those who have an interest but are not sure where to get started or how to get started.
I have to throw this out here, being from this area, that it's a little disappointing to see things like agricultural career colleges being closed, not ones that provide bachelor's and master's programs—not that there's anything wrong with those; I have a couple of those—but on-the-ground, hands-on, skilled certificate-level programs. How do we train that sector if we don't have that educational background in place?
So part of our piece, working with CAHRC, is to create some descriptions of what the jobs are in the hope that it feeds into academic institutions and training institutions, to say, “If you're interested in this sector, this is what you need to know, and not only what you need to know but what the opportunities are”.
There is not just fieldwork. There's management, supervisory, industry-related, spin-off sectors to that. We need to look at how we educate people, how we're going to be able to train people and get them interested locally. If we can't train them and provide them some skills, some understanding, and some appreciation for the work they do, we certainly aren't going to interest them in the sector. Then we have to get them trained up to our industry needs, and we also need to look at those temporary workers who we bring in.