Agriculture Committee on Feb. 14th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. Lambert.

Thank you, Ms. Taylor Roy.

The floor now goes to Mr. Perron for six minutes.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today.

Let me start with you, Mr. Laurin.

We have talked a lot about increasing the ratio of foreign workers in processing plants from 20% to 30%. I would like to know whether an increase of that kind could fill your urgent needs for labour.

Would it not make more sense, as other witnesses have mentioned previously, to remove that cap completely for the processing sector in order to align it with the agricultural sector, which has no cap? After all, processing and agriculture are intimately linked.

I'd like to know your opinion about that.

[Jean-Michel Laurin]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Perron.

Let me remind you that the ratio you are talking about recently went to 20% in Quebec. However, for most of our members everywhere else in the country, it is still 10%.

As for what the appropriate threshold might be, we have asked for it to be increased to 30%, because we feel that that would be a real help to companies with urgent labour problems they are trying to solve. We are asking that it be done on a temporary basis, for the next 18 months, to give us the time to find medium-term and long-term solutions.

Should the threshold be increased to 100%? We would certainly not be complaining if that were the case. But we are aware that the government has certain concerns and that it wants to proceed in stages. We will soon be seeing the effect of the increase in the threshold from 10% to 20% in Quebec. We know that a lot of companies want to take advantage of this new possibility now available to them. On the other hand, as one of your colleagues mentioned earlier, it can take up to eight months to process applications. So it is important to tackle the problem of processing time simultaneously.

One of our fears is that the announcement of this new threshold will create false hopes with employers. If they apply but have to wait eight months to get those workers in their plants, they will be no further ahead. It is still a solution, but it is not the urgent solution we need at the moment.

I will stop there.

The issue of equity with the agricultural sector is a valid one. It is important for agriculture to be able to maintain their access to foreign workers, as they can do at the moment. The idea is for processors also to be able to have more foreign workers, if only on a temporary basis.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

You mention a processing time of eight months. Specifically, which technical changes would easily improve that situation? What would you recommend to the government to improve the time needed to process applications? I'm thinking, for example, about the present crisis caused by the shortage of chicken catchers. It's very difficult.

[Jean-Michel Laurin]

That is an excellent example. As we have seen, labour shortages can have a direct effect on the availability of food.

We have asked ourselves about the simplest solution that we could recommend to the government. In our opinion, it could quite easily make a few changes to two pilot projects that were launched in recent years. That would help us considerably.

Speeding up processing times is definitely a good idea. I know that the government has announced additional investments to increase the number of employees processing those applications. As your colleague mentioned earlier, all applications submitted by the food processing sector should really be handled by the same group of people, so that they acquire some expertise in the area.

We have also asked for the labour market impact assessments to apply to the entire food processing sector. In addition, those studies are currently valid for nine months or one year, if I recall correctly. We are asking for the studies to be valid for two years. If they were valid for two years, it could be expected that the government would have half as many applications to process.

Those are some of the things we are asking for. In our opinion, they would help the government to process the applications submitted by employers more quickly and effectively.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Laurin.

Mr. Pelissero, I am happy to welcome you to the committee.

In a real sense, we began this study because of the letter you sent to the committee in which you highlighted the need to study the supply chain.

In it, you also mentioned that supply managed products are in a stronger situation than others. Can you develop that thought for us?

[Roger Pelissero]

Regarding other suggestions for stimulating the production, I think when you take a look at the programs that were put in place to help farmers with the best schemes to meet the marketplace, some of those programs aren't built to keep in mind our ability in the supply management sector to access some money. Supply management typically cannot access business risk management programs.

It's hard for us to be able to move forward on initiatives for the promotion of our products or to find innovative ways to offset greenhouse gases. As Tim mentioned before, we've done a great job of reducing what we've done over the last 50 years, but in order for us to get to net zero, it would be good if we could have a round table discussion on achieving those goals.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bilkes, I'd like to give you the opportunity to provide your opinion on the matter.

[Brian Bilkes]

I would agree fully with what my colleague Roger has said. Access to the business risk management programs and other carbon-pricing program funds would all be very helpful for our sectors to also continue to make further investments in our industries. The mitigation programs that have been promised would also be of high interest to us. That would be mainly it.

Drew, do you have anything further?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you for your answer, Mr. Bilkes.

Thank you, Mr. Perron.

The floor now goes to Mr. MacGregor for six minutes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for helping guide our committee through this study.

I'm going to open this question up to a comment from each of you. Could you each take a minute to comment?

This study that we're doing has some obvious parallels to the processing study this committee did in the previous Parliament. I was going through some of the witness testimony during that study, particularly on the issue of labour.

We had the United Food and Commercial Workers union appear before our committee during that study. When it came to labour, they were talking about the fact that maybe there were not quite enough efforts being made to link enough Canadians to the openings that existed in the sector. I know that temporary foreign workers for sure are necessary. We can see that, but I think the UFCW wanted to see a more established forum into which we could bring labour, industry, educational institutions and government. I think there used to be something called a sectoral program, which was discontinued about a decade ago.

I'm just wondering if each of you could comment on whether we need to bring back some kind of a forum that includes those four groups so that there are regular conversations.

[Brian Bilkes]

The labour issues at our processing and hatchery friends' businesses are really their area of expertise. We do work closely with them, so we can confirm that they definitely have those issues.

I also think that the thing to remember is that they're spread across the entire country and are not just in all the major cities. We have hatcheries in smaller, more remote communities. The availability of workers is definitely a struggle. It's not necessarily the same struggle we have on our farms, because there are a lot of family farms and families provide a lot of labour, so the processing sectors are in the best position to comment further.

[Jean-Michel Laurin]

Maybe, if I can, Mr. Chair—

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Yes, please go ahead, Mr. Laurin.

[Jean-Michel Laurin]

I think what's changed since the last time the committee examined this—and I'm assuming our colleagues in the labour sector would probably agree—is that we've seen a seismic shift in the way labour markets operate, not just in Canada but globally. You can look at the U.S. and other places. Employers find themselves short of labourers in a lot of places.

The other thing we're also seeing is that in our industry, people work at plants. They can't work from home, for the most part. Many of them have exited our industry. We're having trouble attracting people to our industry, because jobs where you can work from home are at a premium. Some people are making life decisions. We're probably going to see less participation in the labour market than we did before because of the COVID situation and life decisions people are making.

That's why we as an industry realize that we need to do a strategic plan for our own industry when it comes to labour, to look at medium- to long-term solutions. We know that temporary foreign workers can be a stopgap solution immediately, but we know we need to look at other solutions.

The program you're referring to, I think, is the sector councils. We used to have sector councils for pretty much every sector of the Canadian economy. Maybe that's something we need to look at. I know they were disbanded about 10 years ago, but that might be the type of approach we need to bring labour unions and employers together. We're all in this together. We need to come up with innovative solutions.

We're dealing with a pretty unique problem. We know we're not the only ones; every sector of the economy is facing it. Employers in your ridings are probably telling you that everybody's short of labour. Some of the elements about our own situation are somewhat unique, for the reasons I outlined earlier.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Yes, I've never seen so many help-wanted signs in my riding.

Mr. Pelissero and Mr. Lambert, do you have anything to add?

[Roger Pelissero]

Sure. Our colleague at CPEP has done a good job outlining everything very well.

I think one thing you need to recognize about why we depend on so much foreign labour for our help is that, at least on the farming side and the processing side, these typically, unfortunately, aren't jobs that young Canadians are looking to do. It's hard for us to entice them to come to work on the farm. When you take a look at the opportunities they have, working from home or other aspects, we'd be in a really tough situation without the ability to bring in foreign workers to help fill these jobs.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you.

For the final minute, Mr. Laurin, one recommendation we made in the processing capacity study was to have the Government of Canada encourage Canada's banks and institutional investors to establish funds to provide capital to the fastest-growing sectors. We have a federal government institution like Farm Credit Canada. Is there anything you can add about that within the context of trying to fix our supply chain issues?

[Jean-Michel Laurin]

With regard to financing, it's an important one.

I can say that I've heard, particularly from members, that having access to regular financing is an issue. I know Farm Credit Canada has been more active in this space. I think it used to focus exclusively on farmers, but I know it's increasingly funding and looking at opportunities in the processing sector.

I'm sorry to come back to labour again, but right now I have several members looking to keep growing their businesses but are really challenged right now because they can't get people. Especially for us, we are thankful and privileged to be operating in an environment where farmers are financed, which means we have a reliable supply of food for the Canadian market. As my chair mentioned in his introduction, we're focused on supplying the Canadian market. Given that situation, we need to address our labour challenges.

Also, your Liberal colleague had a question about investment. We're also expecting and hoping that the government will fulfill its commitment to provide trade compensation for our industry. I know our producer friends have already started to see some of those investments being made—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. Laurin and Mr. MacGregor, thank you very much. We're at time.

Colleagues, I know we're a little bit over time.

First of all, thank you to our witnesses for your testimony here today. I know it was cut short because of some of the procedural elements we had to address and the vote in the House. I certainly speak on behalf of all members in saying that if you want to submit something further by way of briefs or information, you are more than welcome to do so. Please go ahead.

To all colleagues, thank you for being here today. Happy Valentine's Day. I didn't mention that off the top. Enjoy your day.

This meeting is adjourned.