Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
I'm going to ask a question of Ms. Tranberg, from the Alberta Cattle Feeders' Association, on the temporary foreign worker program.
In my previous life, I required temporary foreign workers because I'm in an agricultural field of year-round work that is not attractive to the youth of Canada today. We have to come to the realization that it isn't. There's an ongoing argument that they will do agricultural jobs, like milking a dairy cow or feeding a beef animal, but they'll choose not to do that, because there are a lot of opportunities for the youth of today, and we encourage them to pursue their best career paths. However, we still have to have agriculture, so your recommendation to have a direct agricultural stream would be a tremendous step forward, just to identify that we need the year-round presence. This isn't for the seasonal agricultural streams, but that's fine. They function. The people go back home and they return.
There is an Australian model I've looked at. I just want your viewpoint on it.
In Australia, an LMIA is for three to five years and is tied to a region, but it remains open. Workers who come have to stay in that region. If it's an agricultural region, like where your beef feeding is occurring in Alberta, then they could leave a particular operation, but they would have to stay in the region to complete their PR and get their PR status.
I would like to hear your thoughts on that. I think we need to incentivize the LMIA to get workers to come for agriculture, and then give them a direct path to PR.