I'll start.
Thank you, and good morning. My name is Victor Santacruz. I represent the Canadian Nursery Landscape Association.
I'll tell you a bit about our association. We're a not-for-profit ornamental horticultural association. We are the association in Canada. We represent over 3,300 member companies, and we date back to 1922.
As for our industry, we are part of the ornamental sector, representing nursery and floriculture. We are the nursery side, which is also the single largest sector in horticulture, with over 9,000 ornamental products, representing a farm gate of over $2.1 billion annually. Our sector provides value-added dollars, so at the consumer level it's estimated that we represent over $12 billion of the Canadian economy.
Our industry has absolutely no government production subsidies, and we employ over 200,000 people. We're also the fastest-growing sector in agriculture, growing over 8.7% annually over the past few years.
To put it briefly, a lot of things that our industry does are because green matters, and we like to use that tag line because we're also an environmental group. We do a lot of greenscaping, landscaping, and because of that we are a seasonal industry; there's no doubt about it.
Our industry does not look for government handouts. We look for solutions, with deliverables that are of benefit to the industry and to Canada, so we ask for everything that we do to be inclusive of our industry. So we appreciate the opportunity to talk here today.
As has been communicated to our association by industry and its members, employment insurance is a big issue for us. We believe employment insurance does not adequately handle the seasonality of the nursery and landscape industry. Qualified seasonal workers are often encouraged to look elsewhere, in non-seasonal industries. We desire to work with government to find win-win-win relationships for our industry, government, and our employees.
We don't put blame on the EI offices. We understand that they're working with a system, that they're doing their job, but ultimately it does not serve well our industry or our members or, again, the employees either.
It has been a common occurrence for industry to communicate to us that local EI offices are suggesting to seasonal workers that they find employment in other industries that can offer year-round employment. This short-sighted action has exacerbated the labour shortage for industry and led to more industry frustration and discontent.
We feel that EI should encourage improved training and communication with our industry to ensure that skills of these workers are elevated in order to encourage and improve synergies with other industries that directly or indirectly benefit from our economic impact. There is a more progressive policy than simply encouraging both skilled and unskilled labour to seek employment elsewhere.
We have worked with government in the past to create education and industry certification programs to better train our workforce and increase the professionalism of our industry. Over 10 years ago, we worked together with the Horticulture Human Resource Council and our industry to develop a certified horticultural technical program, which is a Canadian and American industry certification program that further develops the skills of our workforce. This program is still in existence today and it is growing annually. It is a positive example of how industry and government can work together to accomplish and further the goals of improving human resources in Canada. Our association has a proven track record of being able to work effectively with government in a constructive way to create mutual benefits.
Regarding labour shortages, again we've been trying to be proactive in raising the level of professionalism within the industry through our certification programs and have also been doing work in communicating to high schools, colleges, and universities to try to improve input into our industry. Yet we continue to face these labour shortages and a diminishing labour pool due to external forces, including EI practices.
One of the things we're dealing with right now in specific areas, such as Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia, are certain labour shortages, specifically due to some of the construction boom that has created a demand for labour and cannot simply be met by our industry. This situation will ultimately slow us down, and that economic impact will affect others. We would like the HRSDC to create a nursery and landscape association labour market opinion in order to facilitate the industry to access foreign unskilled labour to address our short-term seasonality concerns. We recommend that this be done over a two-year process or a two-year time span in order to review the effectiveness of this.
We also feel that it would be of great assistance to us if we could work with government to help move people from areas such as Newfoundland, where they face high unemployment, to areas such as Alberta. Again, we need assistance with that. We're not looking for financial assistance, we're looking for solutions, and that is one of the things we request.
The bottom line is that that's my little spiel for now. I'll pass it over to Harold, and he will give some specific examples, because he is in the industry and can tell you how some of these issues have affected his company personally and those of some of his colleagues in our industry.