Evidence of meeting #76 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was business.
A video is available from Parliament.
National Manager, Owner Operator Recruiting, Day & Ross Freight, Day & Ross Transportation Group
Yes.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
—for both written and verbal. Do you think that's the level that's required, or should it be a lower level?
National Manager, Owner Operator Recruiting, Day & Ross Freight, Day & Ross Transportation Group
No, level 4 would be fine if it were for the whole program, but for individuals to get into the provincial nominee program to get their permanent residency, they must score a level 5. With the drivers we're hiring, we don't have time, or they're on the road driving and don't have time to take English classes to get to that level 5, so right now we're just looking for people with level 5 English.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I need to end there.
Mr. Harvey, it is a pleasure to have you with us tonight.
Liberal
TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
I want to start by first acknowledging Ms. Kwan's comments. I think they're very reflective of my own comments and where I'm going to go with this too. I'm going to build on what she was speaking about.
I want to add a little bit of context to the conversation before we get too far along, so I'm going to give you a few facts. They're based on the recent study that was done by the Canadian Trucking Alliance, which states that by 2024 we'll have an estimated shortfall of transportation drivers in Canada of 48,000. The average age of a transportation driver will be 49 in 2024, which will be up from 44 in 2006, which means that the demographic is aging, and they're not being replaced. Temporary foreign workers already comprise 20% of the Canadian workforce in the transportation industry. The industry will represent $24.1 billion in GDP to this country by 2024, and it's increasing at a rate of about 2.2% per year.
I wanted to state that, and I also want to touch on the multicultural association. You spoke quite positively about the Carleton County multicultural association, which is led by Celeste Roberts. She definitely understands the intricacies of having a robust multicultural association in a very rural area. For context, the town of Woodstock would have around 6,500 residents, and the town of Florenceville-Bristol, where that association originated, has about 1,600. It's one of the strongest multicultural associations in Atlantic Canada, and that is because of companies like McCain Foods and Day and Ross Transport, who have really led that charge to be inclusive employers in a rural area. Kudos to you for that.
My riding of Tobique—Mactaquac, in the middle of which Day and Ross Transport is located, has over 350 transportation companies in a very rural riding. The reason for that is because it's where the I-95 intersects with the Trans-Canada, so it's a strategic transportation corridor. The average size of the majority of those companies, I would venture to guess—and our witnesses can give me their thoughts—is six to eight trucks, probably in that ballpark. They're predominantly groups of either owner-operators or very small companies that work as brokers for companies such as Day and Ross Transport.
I'm acutely aware of the struggles that both Dave and his wife Janice went through with their first application under the Atlantic immigration pilot program. At the beginning, when the program was starting, they were there at the ground floor; they were there on day one. They really pushed hard to get through the program, but there were gaps in knowledge as to how the program was going to roll out at the beginning. I think a lot of the struggles they faced were directly related to that. It definitely has the possibility of being a much stronger program.
I used to be in the transportation industry. I understand the struggles, and what it's like to get drivers. In fact, the first highway truck I ever bought I bought from Dave. I think I was 24 years old. I made him clean his stuff out of it. I drove by and bought it right out of his dooryard.
Can someone elaborate on the importance of having this pilot in place as it relates to Ms. Kwan's comments around allowing families to come together and stay together and be here? Having used the LMIA program myself in the food processing industry, I've seen first-hand the struggles that families go through in trying to get here in a piecemeal fashion over six or eight years. It's absolutely ridiculous. Can you speak to what you're hearing from drivers about the importance of having their families be able to come here with them at that time, and how that relates to their work life?
National Manager, Owner Operator Recruiting, Day & Ross Freight, Day & Ross Transportation Group
Sure. I will start with this. I think one of the keys to having people settle and stay in New Brunswick is having them come with their PR, or at least a faster path to the PR, because we can get a family coming as a unit and have the husband working, driving a truck, and the wife is going to be able to work too. A family would then have some roots in our province, or in our towns here of Woodstock or Hartland, and they would feel part of the community.
Under the LMIA process, if a truck driver comes in and his spouse has come along, the spouse would not be able to work. I don't think that fosters a good community relationship. We need two people working, the family unit together, and we will see a successful immigration process in New Brunswick.
Dave, do you have anything to add to that?
Owner, Tisdale Trucking Ltd.
Yes.
First, I'm glad you didn't hold that truck against me, T.J.
Owner, Tisdale Trucking Ltd.
Do you? Good.
I've had people come in under that LMIA program, with their wives not able to work. It took them two years to get.... The guy did his due diligence and they struggled. They really struggled. They lived where I wouldn't live, I can tell you that. If the two of them could have worked, they could have upgraded themselves right away. What they ended up doing was that as soon as he got his permanent residency, they moved to Ontario. And why wouldn't they? What they saw in Atlantic Canada was a struggle.
If we can get these people in, get their families here, and get it so that their wives can work right away, they can have a better quality of life. They can buy a car. You know the process; then they'll end up buying a truck, they'll buy groceries. It simply stimulates the economy. Eventually they'll buy their own truck and become their own business person, I feel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Mr. Harvey, I'm afraid I need to end you there. You had four minutes and 45 seconds of preamble.
Liberal
TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
It's all good. It was important to get those statistics in there.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Good.
Thank you very much to the panel joining us from Moncton, to Professor Akbari, and to Ms. Huang for your contributions to us. Our study will be done in a few weeks. It will be available and we hope it will be helpful to you in your work, that it will reflect the research you're doing, and we can continue to grow Atlantic Canada.
We'll take a brief pause and we'll bring in our second set.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
We'll reconvene.
We have two sets of witnesses tonight. From Restaurants Canada we have Luc Erjavec, vice-president, Atlantic Canada, and Bill Allen, the chairman of the board. As well, Heather Coulombe from Nova Scotia is here by teleconference.
We'll begin with Ms. Coulombe for seven minutes, and then we'll go to our guests here in person.
Heather Coulombe Owner, Farmer's Daughter Country Market
My name is Heather Coulombe. I'll tell you a little about myself. I returned home to Cape Breton in the spring of 2016 to run my family's business of 25 years, the Farmer's Daughter Country Market. The best way to describe Farmer's Daughter is that it's a general store. We have an in-store bakery where everything is made from scratch, and a grill where you can get such things as a burger or fish taco. We have the best sandwiches, made with our own fresh bread. We roast our own meats. We have hard and soft ice cream, frozen meals, specialty groceries, seasonal products, gifts, and clothing. We are open 361 days of the year.
Winters are hard for our business and getting harder as the population decreases. Three long-time businesses have closed in our community: two gas stations and a restaurant. We are located on the Trans-Canada Highway, so we have a lot of traffic, and we're at the head of the Bras d'Or lakes. We are a community of around 1,000 people: 400 in the village of Whycocomagh and about 600 Waycobah first nations. We are a very integrated community. I think that's an amazing thing that I grew up with, and I'm still very happy to be a part of that.
In the slow season I employ 28 people, and in our high season 40 to 50 people. In the summer I get by with students who return to school in September, and I am busy right up until Christmas . Last summer I relied on students more than ever. September 1 had me really scared on how I was going to get by after that. I did all the normal recruiting using Service Canada, Facebook, and Instagram ads. I advertised on Kijiji, both locally and nationally. I did not have one person apply who could legally work for me at the time.
I had foreign workers apply—none, though, who would have been a good fit for my community. Even if they did, the process to have them work here was going to be too long. I was told I did not qualify for the foreign worker program, as our unemployment rate is too high, which is hard to believe. In my area, everyone I know is working, and I'm not the only business screaming for workers. Cape Breton is considered one region. The whole island is considered one region. Yes, in industrial Cape Breton there's not enough work for a lot of people, but in rural Cape Breton there are not enough workers.
My sister had a solution: show people how great Cape Breton is and they will want to live here. But how do we do that? After a couple of weeks, my sister had the idea: we give people our land, which has been in our family for a while.
So we went ahead and wrote the now very famous Facebook ad that has been shared all over the world. We offered two free acres of land for a work commitment of at least five years. We disclosed that the wage was low, around $11 or $12 an hour and that the land they would be receiving was on a listed road, but they'd have to live off the grid. We also disclosed that our winters are hard.
To date we've had over 300,000 inquiries. The big question is why. Some see it as a job, any job, that can get them to Canada, but most see it as a lifestyle—a sustainable lifestyle, a rural lifestyle. I've had doctors, lawyers, high-powered executives from such cities as New York, Toronto, and London ready to give up their jobs and come to Cape Breton. Successful business owners from South Africa, England, and Sweden want to move their businesses here that are tourism-related, such as the Amazian Lodge in Drakensberg, the Natural Veg Men from England, and Wilderness Life Natural Adventures from Sweden. Those are successful businesses that are wanting to move to Cape Breton. I also had a former major league baseball player wanting to base his new music career from here. Thousands of IT professionals working from home want to relocate here. However, Internet capabilities are not able to accommodate them at this time. These are all people looking for a rural lifestyle, a sustainable lifestyle.
Cape Breton and Atlantic Canada are unique. Most of our cities are growing while rural our areas are declining. Businesses and schools are closing. With this campaign, I have brought four employees to my business, totalling 13 new residents to Cape Breton. I have met three families who were considering other parts of Canada but after seeing my post moved here—not to work but to start their own businesses. There's a newly married electrician and his wife from Ontario. An overwhelmed dad from B.C. and his six kids just put on an offer on a small farm about half an hour from me. They want to work that farm and sell at our farmer's markets, now becoming more and more busy and productive. A worker who works two weeks on and two weeks off in the Arctic has a wife and two kids. He's from Ontario, and he's wanting to set up base here now.
Other municipalities also contacted me. In Lunenburg County, they are having the same issue recruiting people to work for them. They contacted me because they wanted to meet with me to see what I did. They did a campaign this year. They were sending a bus all across Canada to try to recruit employees.
The Cheticamp chamber of commerce has asked me if I can help them come up with an idea of how they can recruit people. They're just an hour away from us. Tomorrow I'm speaking at the Colchester County chamber of commerce, which is down in Truro, because they're having issues too. It's all smaller rural areas, not the big cities.
Catalina, who we call Lina, joined us in June. She is a landed immigrant from the Philippines who spent the last year back in the Philippines because her mother was dying of cancer. She has lived in the cities of Niagara Falls, Kingston, Toronto, and Vancouver. She came to Canada wanting to be embraced and found it hard to make friends who weren't from the Phillippines or other parts of Asia. She has not come across any discrimination since moving to Whycocomagh, and has told me that for the first time in her life she feels like she belongs, finally part of a community
Areas like ours are usually a stepping stone to get to Canada. After a few years they leave us and move to cities like Toronto or Vancouver. Local Tim Hortons and Robin's donuts have brought employees here to work. None of them are here now. They have moved on to what they say are the bigger and better things of the city.
We need to make sure that immigrants in Cape Breton and Atlantic Canada are going to stay, that they are going to be the right fit. Bring them to the areas where they're going to be embraced. We do not fit under the same rules as the big cities, where there are lots of immigrants. We're unique, and we cannot be the stepping stone.
Many people have contacted me saying they're already approved to come to Canada, but when I look at what they're bringing to me, they are not going to be a good fit for my business or my community. I think that is where we really have to work. Bring in the right people who are going to move to Cape Breton or Atlantic Canada looking for the lifestyle, not just a job.
I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you very much.
I'll just add that it's a great-looking lemon meringue pie on your Facebook page.
Mr. Erjavec.
Luc Erjavec Vice-President, Atlantic Canada, Restaurants Canada
Thank you.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight, on behalf of Canada's $80-billion food service industry, about immigration to Atlantic Canada.
The food service industry is a vital part of Atlantic Canada. Restaurants are one of the only industries to span the rural-urban divide and operate in every corner of the region, from the large cities to the remote communities. In Atlantic Canada, we are the third-largest private sector employer, with nearly 70,000 employees, generating $4.7 billion in sales and 1.8 million customer visits a day.
We are also proud to open the door to opportunity for young people, new Canadians, and those facing barriers to employment. Every dollar spent in a restaurant generates $1.85 in the rest of the economy, providing opportunities for farmers, fishers, builders, designers, brewers, and a whole list of other local suppliers.
More than two-thirds of our 7,000 businesses in the region are independently owned and operated. Our pubs, our bars, our coffee shops are the centrepiece of most communities, welcoming tourists and locals alike.
We are grateful to be consulted on Atlantic immigration. We believe immigration is crucial to the survival of both the region and our businesses. An abundant workforce is essential to the industry because of the labour-intensive nature of the business. Nearly 30¢ of every dollar coming in from sales goes directly to payroll in our businesses.
We are also an industry of young people and proud to be the country's largest provider of first-time job experiences. Nearly half of our employees are under the age of 26. This is a major reason why we need more immigration to Atlantic Canada. In this region, we are experiencing the nation's largest decline in youth. The labour shortage in Atlantic Canada is real, and the shortage of key staff is leading operators to decide to reduce hours or close early. This leads to fewer hours and job opportunities for other restaurant staff and a smaller market for our suppliers. In fact, in our recent quarterly survey, 55% of our operators say that the labour shortage is having a negative impact on their business.
The industry always tries to hire Canadians first, and we are continually trying to find employees in underutilized labour pools. However, this has not curbed the demand or filled our need, and the industry is experiencing acute shortages, particularly for cooks and kitchen helpers. Without these key employees, operators are forced to curb hours to prevent employee burnout. This leads to fewer offerings for tourists, less economic activity for communities, fewer hours for employees, and fewer sales for industry suppliers.
Restaurant operators are desperate for employees, particularly for cooks and many low-skilled positions. In recent years, the restaurant industry has been a top user of both the temporary foreign worker program and the provincial nominee program to meet our labour demands. In combination, we have found these extremely useful in finding employees and transitioning them to become Atlantic Canadians. PNP programs have been the most helpful, and I encourage you to recommend expansion of these programs, with the inclusion of all skill levels.
When the Atlantic immigration pilot program was announced, we were very optimistic and extremely pleased, because it did not require an expensive LMIA and we thought it would be efficient and focused. Experience has taught us that “efficient” and “focused” are the last words we would ever use to describe this program. To business operators, it is an extremely complex, complicated, and time-consuming bureaucratic process that has made many operators decide to just give up in frustration rather than try to use this program.
We need these 2,000 extra immigrants, but we are afraid that we won't reach the numbers and it will not be renewed. Most employers who have attempted to use this program have become designated employers and have been waiting in limbo for months and months for third party settlement plans, for letters of endorsement from a different level of government, or for the immigration department to process a candidate's application.
I'm going to turn it over to Bill, who is the chair of our national board and an operator in New Brunswick who has operations in three of the maritime provinces. He has used many of these programs and has been proud to bring many people to settle in Atlantic Canada.
Bill Allen Chairman of the Board, Restaurants Canada
Thanks, Luc.
I appreciate being invited to attend this evening. I'll just give you a little bit of history in regard to how beneficial the temporary foreign worker program and the Atlantic pilot program have been.
Over the last 10 years, my group of six restaurants throughout Atlantic Canada—P.E.I., Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—have utilized the program to bring in over 50 temporary foreign workers who have made their way through into the provincial nomination program, and then through to, in many cases, their PR. It's been successful, it's been rewarding, and it has been a tremendous help to the consistent operation of our businesses. It's been very appreciated by the Canadian component who have worked for us.
Prior to the program, we were struggling to maintain operation and closing parts of our dining rooms just because we could not get the manpower and the fuel to put into the system and the restaurants. We would cut back hours. In one of the travel plazas, which is the Big Stop, we went from running 24 hours to 18 hours because we just couldn't find enough people. Consequently, Canadians lost positions as servers in those situations as well.
Life started to return to normal once we started to utilize the program and had the benefit of having the temporary foreign workers in the program. Then they became provincial nomination certificate holders as well and permanent residents eventually.
Our business activities became very professional, and it was easier to operate. The good story about that is that many of the Canadians who work side by side with the culinary talent we were able to bring in ended up being inspired by some of the skills sets they were able to work with and consequently moved on to get their own culinary degree. I've been able to work with them, see them develop in the industry as a whole, and become chefs in higher-end hotels or higher-end restaurants.
The previous program worked well, and I thank you for all of the work we did with that one. I was really pleased with the Atlantic pilot program, excited to get engaged with that, and start to use it. It slowed down the applications for the LMIAs in the process, because we had the opportunity to use the Atlantic immigration pilot program. Then it all stopped and got to a snail's pace as far as the processing was concerned.
The application process is extremely complex. If you want details in regard to that, I'm open to help you with all of that. We handle them all in-house with one of our administrative people, so it's not an immigration consultant we use. I've become very familiar with the process.
Under the new program, there's language testing that needs to be done and the credentials that need to be done. That has to be facilitated by the candidate in the country they're in. They have to find a spot where they can get that done in the country where they reside. That could be a two-week or two-month situation. Then they need the money to do their language testing skills. That's followed by a skills credential process that they need to complete online to validate that they fit the skill set required in the occupation. After this is all completed, then they have to do a settlement process, which is an online process and quite often very intimidating for the candidate. We can only help them with so much of it. You have to rely on them to fill out each piece of this complex process. That's where it became very difficult.
Chairman of the Board, Restaurants Canada
Okay.
In addition to that, it's not a digital application. This is a 55-page paper application. This is how complex the Atlantic program is for one candidate. That would take six or eight months to get to this point so we can process.
That gives you a little bit of history on us and how I've used the program.