Thank you very much.
I will stay within the five minutes allocated to us and will share that time with my colleague Ms. Leblond.
Olymel thanks the committee for the opportunity to share its concerns in the context of the current labour shortage and to contribute to the government's deliberations.
Olymel is the country's leading pork producer and its leading meat processor. We employ 15,000 workers in Canada, across five provinces: Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta and Saskatchewan. We are a key player in the vitality and prosperity of our regions.
Over the years, Olymel has continued to improve all its practices to optimize each of its recruitment channels. Despite all of our local and international efforts, we are unable to complement our workforce to support our activities and our growth. The repercussions of the labour shortage are reaching an unprecedented critical level and are being felt in our activities across Canada, but mainly in the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick.
We currently estimate the rate of vacant positions in our plants at 27%, which represents more than 3,700 positions. Those positions are necessary to avoid the downsizing of our company, to make our plants operate at their maximum capacity, to optimize past investments and to successfully carry out future projects. Those 3,700 positions would create an additional payroll of $200 million and an additional investment of $250 million.
I want to point out that the temporary foreign workers employed at Olymel are represented by a union. They have a pension fund and insurance. They have the same work conditions as any Canadian employee; they are entitled to the same treatment and to the same protection. I also want to add that Olymel has a long-term perspective on foreign workers and supports them financially and legally to help them obtain their permanent residence.
One of our sector's major characteristics is that the industry is directly connected to primary agriculture. Animal production is connected to our slaughterhouses. A slowdown in our slaughterhouse activities has major upstream consequences on production. We are closely connected. That special phenomenon must be taken into account when it comes to our facilities' operational capability. Ms. Leblond will come back to this later.
Olymel feels that economic immigration, be it permanent or temporary, is one of the key solutions for meeting our labour needs, especially for positions in the regions that do not require special skills.
Currently, 600 immigrant newcomers are working with us. Nearly 610 employees who arrived through the temporary foreign worker program have been with us since 2018, and we are expecting 600 others over the next year.
I now yield the floor to my colleague Ms. Leblond.