Thank you so much for this question, Mr. Fraser.
You will have received from the clerk our emergency preparedness document. I think on page 3 of that document we outline some measures that we suggest be taken in regard to the recruitment of agri-food workers to address this labour shortage.
In terms of the work we've seen done on the temporary foreign worker side, it's fantastic that we get access to those people. We're still going through some of the rigmarole to get Guatemala to send people to us. That causes a lot of concern, particularly in Quebec, because they see a lot of workers from Guatemala. The $1,500 will certainly be used up as we try to finance the isolation requirements for those foreign workers.
Beyond that, we do need to see access to PPE. That's vital so that we can all keep healthy on the farm and keep doing what we need to do. We need to have the sense that those workers are essential. It would really be fantastic if we could have.... We've heard stories of xenophobia, of comments like “Go home” and “Why are you taking jobs from Canadians?” That's just so far from the truth. These people are heroes. We should be celebrating them and thanking them for coming here and for having confidence in us to keep them safe.
Specifically in regard to attracting displaced Canadian workers, you've heard of the “working while on claim” set-up. We have proposed that there be 0% clawback on working while on claim. Government is going to pay people to be on EI or have CERB. If they could have those payments as well as the wage they would earn on-farm or at an agriculture processing facility, then that, we think, would go in the category of hero pay, because ultimately we do need to incentivize people to have the confidence to go and work on farms.
We would also like to see rapid testing available. We think that this would go a long way to ensuring that people on farms are kept safe. When the first tests become available, maybe if the first 20,000 are made available to our health care system, the next 20,000 could be made available to our agri-food system. What's happening in High River, for example, with Cargill, is catastrophic. We're going to get into animals being culled. I don't want to mince words here. There's an animal welfare issue, and it's highly expensive. We just can't turn the tap on and off in animal production.
These are some of the things we're seeing. You'll find more details in our document when you have a look at it.