Evidence of meeting #29 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was occupational.
11:55 a.m.
Director General, AGRIcarrières, Comité sectoriel de main-d'oeuvre de la production agricole, Union des producteurs agricoles
We know about them. Those applications for union certification have been...
11:55 a.m.
Director General, AGRIcarrières, Comité sectoriel de main-d'oeuvre de la production agricole, Union des producteurs agricoles
There have been three applications made that were... There were two that were ultimately rejected, and one that was approved.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
11:55 a.m.
Director General, AGRIcarrières, Comité sectoriel de main-d'oeuvre de la production agricole, Union des producteurs agricoles
It's the exclusion that is in the Quebec Labour Code, yes.
April 10th, 2008 / 11:55 a.m.
First Vice-President, Union des producteurs agricoles
The debate has a lot to do with unionizing the workers. We at AGRIcarrières and the Union des producteurs agricoles are an intermediary between the workers and the employers. We try to improve relations as much as possible, to provide producers with personnel when they need them, whether locally or from outside.
AGRIcarrières always tries to improve employers' training and knowledge and tell them that to keep productivity up, human resources have to be well treated and certain working conditions have to be in place. We even held a seminar in the spring to tell the employers that we think there are winning solutions, to have a productive workforce.
The objective behind all that is for agricultural producers to have workers, for them to be able to find and keep workers, whether the workers are foreign or local. They have to retain their workforce as long as possible. When the workers are well trained, there is automatically higher productivity. In addition, the agricultural producers are competing with a world market.
Quite often, agricultural employers would like to have a little better protection from the outside constraints that have led to the globalization of markets. Quite often, they also have to compete with employers in other countries. Quite often, they also have agricultural workers whose working conditions are far from glowing.
We agree with the social measures, but...
Noon
Bloc
The Vice-Chair Bloc Thierry St-Cyr
I am going to interrupt you Mr. Lemieux, because Dr. Hanley wanted to say something. I am going to give her a few seconds to respond.
Noon
Assistant Professor, McGill School of Social Work, As an Individual
We just have to point out that there is a big difference for temporary workers in all industries, in agriculture or others, between their rights under the law and their actual rights. Most of those rights depend on the worker. It is up to the worker to make a complaint or express a desire to unionize.
In Canada, because their status is completely dependent on the employer, it is very risky for them to do something that could be seen as being against the employer. For that reason, there is a lot of reluctance among temporary workers to unionize, to file complaints under employment standards or to ask the CSST to step in. We have to remember that their temporary status creates a difference between their rights under the law and their real rights.
Noon
Bloc
The Vice-Chair Bloc Thierry St-Cyr
Thank you very much.
Thank you to everyone for taking part in this meeting.
Hon. members, for your information, lunch will be served in the Soulanges room. I would ask you to come back at 1:00 p. m. so that we can have as much time as possible to hear our guests this afternoon.
The meeting is adjourned.
