I'll ask this question, and maybe Josie or someone else will want to jump in.
I don't want to use the words, “temporary foreign workers”, but I want to say something about “workers”, especially with regard to the seasonal industries here in P.E.I. I've always viewed immigration as a nation building exercise, with the caveat that you will need some people to come into a country, work for a temporary period, and then leave, whether they are working for a conglomerate or a small business and have specialized skills.
For the most part, I would view immigration as nation building. You welcome somebody in, and you want them to stay and build a future and a family. That's what my family did. This afternoon, I hope to go and visit Pier 21 when we arrive in Halifax, where my parents, my grandparents, and my parents' siblings, the children, came in.
On the need for migrant workers here, and the skilled labour force, if you had to rate it on a scale of one to ten for P.E.I., where you would see it? Ten would be the optimal and one would be the really not optimal. We've had some large changes. TFW went from being very easy to have folks come in to very difficult. The pendulum, I hope, is going back to some sort of balance. I just wanted to put that out there.