What I believe I said was that, first of all, under the provincial employment standards legislation, the protections for agricultural workers are less than those for other workers. They have fewer rights and their conditions are inferior. These are hazardous jobs; agriculture is a hazardous industry. The agricultural employers are attempting to, in our view, create conditions of shortage unnecessarily--that is, artificial shortage--by pressuring for legislation that provides lower standards, lower wages, so that the domestic labour supply is not going to respond. The farm employers are not behaving like competitors in a free market. They want to have protections and they want to have subsidies. In my view, the temporary farm worker program is a subsidy to these employers.
On March 31st, 2008. See this statement in context.