Thank you.
Yes, we are well supported by the Minister of Agriculture and by Ms. Qualtrough. We had a meeting with her last week, and she was very open and responsive. However, I must say that things have not necessarily changed for the time being.
We're concerned with processing times. Tomorrow is April 1, and farmers will start sowing their fields. Then we, the processors, will have to take the crops into the plants. On our side, we still have a small wait time of about three months, but it is essential that the workers arrive in the next few weeks. I will admit that we are very worried because, given the current processing times, we wonder how this will be possible.
Last year, in the case of the cucumber processing plants, the harvest took place in August and the workers arrived in September. This is not very useful. It's a waste of time for the officials who had to work to get them here. So we proposed to simplify the process so that it would be much faster. Earlier, Ms. Sullivan proposed the well-known emergency program. What we are asking for is reduced processing times, and we have proposed solutions to this end. For example, the LMIAs could be grouped together. As for visas, we could reduce processing times to a few weeks or a few months for Quebec, which also has the constraint of hiring French-speaking workers. We would like these processing times to become more reasonable. Before the pandemic, it was possible to welcome workers within three months. That is what we hope, in the very short term, for our industry.