Sure. As you well know, we've met with about 55 officials so far to discuss the labour shortage and the need for an emergency response. We have a meeting coming up next week with senior officials at the departments of Agriculture and Agri-Food, ESDC and IRCC. It would very much be our hope that at that meeting they will provide us with a response to our proposal.
In short, every day that goes by without some sort of response is a day wasted and a day where we just put more pressure on our current workers.
I know we're not the only sector facing this labour crisis. We're also not the only country that's facing this. However, if we want to have a chance of reviving our economy as we emerge from this pandemic, it is clear that the fundamentals of our workforce have somehow shifted under our feet through this pandemic.
We need to really stop the blood loss that we're experiencing right now, stabilize the workforce, and collectively we need to come up with some solutions for the food sector, and I would suggest, for the whole economy going forward, because this is going to be the biggest issue that many countries will be dealing with.