Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate your having me at the committee and my colleague's letting me share some of the time.
I came prepared to ask a few more question on the temporary foreign worker program.
For example, in the Okanagan valley and the Similkameen valley as well, I had complaints last year that many farmers were unable to have their temporary foreign worker permits processed on a timely basis because of issues, apparently, with the embassy that was meant to process them. This caused millions of dollars in crop damage because they weren't able to pick successfully.
This may not be the right committee or the right group to study this, but I think it's really important that the timeliness...especially given the seasonal agricultural worker program and just its name, “seasonal”. It's very important for us to be able to study this.
One thing in the Okanagan that has also come to my attention is that there are great facilities, such as Okanagan College and UBC Okanagan. I'd therefore ask ask Statistics Canada this question.
One challenge that many of the university professors have brought to me is that it's difficult to access some of your raw data so that they can combine it in a way that's meaningful for dealing with some of the skills and labour shortages specifically in the Okanagan.
I'm not sure whether you're able to pass this on or how you would like to respond to it. Could you speak to it?