Yes, I would agree. In our sector, we have some serious limitations in being able to access the work force, or a reliable work force, both at the producer and processing levels.
When we talk to our processors and our abattoirs, they face some serious problems accessing skilled labour and continuous skilled labour. There are large turnover rates, and it's not a great job. It's a good job, but it's not a fun job. There's often resistance to finding abattoir workers, but at the same time we see our producers having those same issues. Moreover, agriculture is so seasonal and we have programs in this country that discriminate a bit against people who work in seasonal fields, and they don't have the same opportunities. That challenges a producer when they haven't the resources to engage somebody on a full-time basis, but certainly have times of the year when they have a real demand for it.
We're working with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. We've worked in a number of different venues, including the all chairs round table and the workforce action plan that was put together there. We work with the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council on ways to address the labour shortage.
The access to temporary foreign workers remains important for our sector. I'll use a prime example, namely shearing season. When you can have shearers coming in from New Zealand and Australia, it's nice to have the same ones with the same skills and the ones you like coming back on a repeated basis. They're shearing in our country in the off season of their country. They're good at it and they process quickly. It's a great scenario for us, but we face increasing limitations on that, especially when there are only so many years in a row that you can access that same person.