Human Resources Committee on March 31st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

There's time for a short question, Madam Zarrillo, if you have one.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I think there's just one more witness to answer.

[Isabelle Leblond, Corporate Director, Human Resources, Conseil de la transformation alimentaire du Québec]

I would like to add that our plants are mainly located in rural areas, where labour is scarce.

We need to be able to plan for retirements. Some plants are already short 300 workers. So it becomes very difficult to manage. At some stage, we reach a critical point, because we know that some people are going to retire.

In the term "temporary foreign workers,” the word "temporary" is part of the title, but these workers usually obtain permanent residence. In fact, 87% of them apply for permanent residence when they are ready. Afterwards, they bring their families. Their family members are also offered employment. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program helps to revive our regions and serves as a gateway to permanent residence.

We anticipate retirements, but there is a lack of labour, because there is a lack of workers in the regions where the plants are located. As Mr. Fraeys said, this is a project that is essential to the survival of our company.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Zarrillo.

Mr. Ruff, you have five minutes.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

My thanks goes to the witnesses.

I have questions for both food and beverages and housing. My first question is for Ms. Sullivan.

My understanding from reading the documentation you provided is that you first asked the provincial and federal ag ministers for the emergency foreign worker program in late November. When I met with the Exceldor and Maple Leaf Foods, who both have processing plants in my riding, the initial ask was to have that program in place by 31 January.

Have you received any indication from either Minister Bibeau or Minister Qualtrough why that ask was not met by the end of January?

[Kathleen Sullivan]

No, we've received no specific response to the question of why we didn't receive a response, or our proposal wasn't implemented by the end of January. I suspect it comes down to the wheels of government departments sometimes moving much more slowly than any of us would like.

We certainly are still hopeful there will still be a response. To Dimitri's point, timing is of the essence. So much of processing is tied to agricultural production and, as I think most of you know, there are often seasons involved in that, so the sooner we get a response and a program implemented, clearly the better. January 31 would have been the best for us. At this point, we will be happy to receive a response as soon as possible.

Of course, I think what will be critical is the substance of that response. Our proposal, in particular, is designed to reduce the burden on companies like Olymel that are looking to bring temporary foreign workers into the country, but we also need to increase the number of people who are coming in. What will be critical to us is whether the federal government agrees to increase the cap that currently exists on food processing companies, which doesn't exist on primary agriculture. That cap has to go up if we're going to increase the number of people who are available to work in our sector.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thanks, Ms. Sullivan.

For the housing folks, I read your documentation here, and I'm going to pursue this line of inclusionary zoning that's within the documentation. The issue is, from a labour shortage perspective, especially in rural Canada, that so many of the industries are having trouble finding workers because there's no place for those workers to live if they do get there. Within the commentary there, you're talking about the percentage of housing, market housing and affordable housing, and that you have to increase that.

When I was talking to many of my developers and builders even last summer, this was the biggest issue, the labour shortage, that I heard throughout the election campaign. The fact is that they are open to it, providing that it's fair to everybody, to all of the developers, so that developer A is being treated exactly the same as developer B. I'd just like you to expand a little bit on the biggest challenges to building more affordable housing, and to expand a little bit on your concerns, because you say caution is needed in this inclusionary zoning.

[Kevin Lee]

Sure. I'm happy to talk about that.

With regard to inclusionary zoning, in principle the challenge is really just making sure that if you're going to allocate and require a certain amount of housing to be affordable housing.... There are different levels of affordable housing. A lot of times affordable housing refers not to the housing people can afford, but to social housing, typically. In the housing industry, that's what affordable housing is. If you're going to say a certain percentage needs to be that affordable social housing, the real trick is to figure out how that's going to get paid for.

I'm here to tell you that when you say that the developers will pay for that, that's not how any business works. What ends up happening is that new homebuyers pay for it, if there are no subsidies provided in some other way by government, either by providing land or providing breaks on development taxes, etc., so is it important that all developers in an area be treated the same with respect to inclusionary zoning? Yes, but it's also important that when you design inclusionary zoning, you're not inadvertently causing the price of market rate housing to go up. Let's say 20% of the units are supposed to be affordable housing. If the other 80% subsidizes the cost of the 20%, you've just increased the cost of housing in your area.

It's also important that, if there were going to be 100 units, and now you say 20 need to be affordable, that's fine, but if 100 were going to be on the market and we have a huge supply issue—which is what's really a big part of what's driving up house prices—you've got to make sure that you're still going to build 100 units and that you get 20 additional affordable units over and above that. Those are sort of the concerns with that.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I think I'm out of time, Mr. Lee. Thanks.

As a final comment, I know we've proposed a housing task force for across the country. I'm likely going to be hosting one of those in my neck of the woods. I'm looking forward to your association's participating in that in the coming weeks. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Now we'll go to Mr. Coteau for five minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much to all of the witnesses today. All of the presentations were great.

I was reading from Statistics Canada, that employers were looking to fill 69,000 positions in construction work in the fourth quarter of 2021. That number is just remarkable.

I was recently walking down the street near my home, and a gentleman shouted out to me, “Hey, do you need a job?” I said, “No, I'm okay right now.” Then I asked, “What job are you offering?” It was for a crew doing some construction work. That's the first time it's ever happened to me that someone offered me a job just walking down the street, so you can tell that there's a need out there.

This impacts, obviously, people's residences and our economy. It's a very serious issue. I know that in my city and right across the country.... In Toronto, there's about a 17.5% unemployment rate for youth. Across the country, I think the number's almost 14%.

How do we tap into that next generation of potential construction workers? I'm assuming the pay is quite good. There's a lot of work out there, and it's highly skilled. This question is to Kevin Lee and to Mr. Collins-Williams. What are we doing to actually tap into that next generation of young unemployed people?

[Kevin Lee]

Maybe I can start off and pass it on to Mike.

It's definitely something we've been very active in, because it's critical that we get the next generation interested. We have quite a few initiatives in this area, just to encourage and overcome different barriers and perceptions. I would say there's less of a problem with young people and more of a problem with parents, guidance counsellors and, sort of, the system.

For many years we've been directing people away from careers in the skilled trades, and having a skilled trades career of second, third or last choice, as opposed to making it a first choice.

Just because you do well in school doesn't mean that you wouldn't be a wonderful electrician or plumber, and probably a super successful one who ends up running their own business, has a great career and is a great contributor to the economy.

We're doing quite a bit of work in that area to try to promote the benefits to the next generation.

Mike, I'll pass it to you to add on to that.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Maybe, Mike, I can just add a little bit to that, and maybe you can talk about this. I think I've talked to your association about these types of opportunities before for young people.

How do we tap into marginalized youth in communities with 25% unemployment rates? I've seen the carpenters, groups like the Hammer Heads that try to take on some of those challenges to attract marginalized youth into construction work.

Do you have any ideas on what we can do as parliamentarians to support the industry as a whole?

[Mike Collins-Williams]

I think I'll add to Kevin's comments, and it fits in exactly with your question. We really do need to promote—and this goes for the industry as well. We need to do a better job of promoting the opportunities for careers in construction.

Not every kid was meant to go on to seven years of school to become a doctor or a lawyer. There's tremendous opportunity, as Kevin has said, in the construction field. It's an opportunity to work outdoors. It's an opportunity to work with your hands. It's an opportunity to really create something, and 10 or 15 years later to able to go back into the community and say, “Hey, I built that.”

It's also a very rewarding career. You can have people in their mid-to-late 20s literally making six figures. It's an opportunity to become an independent business person and to build your own crew.

Something that we're trying to do as an industry is to get people at even younger ages. We're trying to get into high schools. We're trying to talk to the guidance counsellors and the teachers about the opportunities but also go to job fairs.

I think there's an opportunity to do more recruiting, just like universities and colleges go into high schools and do recruiting. I think our industry needs to play a role in that, and perhaps there's a role for government, through our education systems as well, to promote the diversity of job opportunities out there.

There used to be shop in a lot of high schools. That has started to disappear. People need to be well-rounded and learn a variety of skills, but there may be kids in grade nine and 10 who have no idea what they can do with their hands and what skills they have to build and create things. In those marginalized communities, that's a path where you don't have to go to college or school. You can come right out of high school, get an apprenticeship, and instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on tuition, you can be making money right away as an apprentice.

Not only is it a pathway to a career; there are not as many barriers at the start if you have the ability to earn money right away.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

On that note, Mr. Coteau, we will close.

I want to thank the witnesses for appearing today before the committee with their informative testimony. Thank you so much.

Committee members, before we leave, as you are aware, I reached out to a number of you concerning next Thursday, which is budget day. Since then, I understand that the whips have agreed to our cancelling next Thursday's committee meeting. As I said, I consulted with the vice-chairs and Madame Zarrillo. We will not be meeting next Thursday.

With that, we will see you on Monday. Thank you so much, again.

The meeting is adjourned.