Certainly, in my comments I did talk about the enormous challenges to designing support programs and getting them out quickly, so we have appreciated the government's willingness to change and improve certain programs like CEBA and the wage subsidy.
To your point, with the temporary foreign worker issue and the ongoing labour shortages, shortly after that announcement was made with respect to the $1,500 for helping them with isolation requirements, a strong majority of our members, 73%, supported that.
I think the other part, though, is that it's interesting that 84% of our members say it's going to be difficult to find Canadians with the skills needed to work in their agricultural business. These are skilled workers, when you look at planting and harvesting quickly. If the weather is against you, you have to get your product in quickly and efficiently. We have recognized the hard work to ensure that those temporary foreign workers can come during the critical planting season and can help farmers offset the cost of quarantined workers.
The three-year agri-food pilot is really innovative and is going to fill ongoing labour needs, but what I like most about it is that it's going to provide a pathway to permanent residency, which for a number of years we have called and advocated for. I think the work done there has been very good, but let's not forget that we have thousands of jobs going vacant. We will have many in the horticulture and vegetable sectors that are going to need workers sooner rather than later, and we still don't have all that we need.
Thank you.