Mr. Chair, thank you very much for your firm intervention in getting the committee moving again--I hope.
I just want to speak for a moment about Mr. Cadotte and myself. We are both retired from the manufacturing sector and have worked a little with some of the migrant workers in our community. As a matter of fact, we have worked on the line during the harvest pack at one of the major produce packing operations in Dresden, Ontario, for a number of years. We became aware of some of the issues on what was happening with migrant workers through experience, social interaction, and working beside them.
I want to let you know a couple of very important moments in my life. One of them was on a day off from our work in the harvest pack operations when we were able to bring some migrant workers into our homes for dinner. As a matter of fact, a member of the Rastafarian sect from Jamaica, a member of the Christian sect from Jamaica, and a first nations person from Canada sat down together in my home. It was a very proud moment for me to be able to bring the migrant workers into my house to meet my family and interact with Canadians, which is almost never done.
Another proud moment occurred on January 26 this year when 350 members of the Canadian auto workers stood up in front of a fish processing plant in Wheatley, Ontario, to say we thought the rights of migrant workers and foreign workers were very important and we were willing to fight for them.
Those two issues were of great significance in my life. I'm very happy that both of them occurred, and we are going to continue working with migrant workers.
Mr. Cadotte will carry on and give our presentation as Friends of Farmworkers.