Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 26th, 2021

[Mark Chambers, Co-Chair, Agriculture and Agri-Food Labour Task Force, Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council]

Thank you, Cyr.

Thank you to everyone for allowing us to meet with you this afternoon and discuss this very important issue.

During COVID, farms and food businesses have been struggling with expensive uncertainty about meeting their staff needs—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Chambers. Your time is up. We allow five minutes to all witnesses to provide their opening remarks. You can talk further as we go into our round of questioning.

Now we will start with our first round of questioning, which is for six minutes each. We will start with Mr. Allison.

Mr. Allison, you will have six minutes. Please proceed.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

That's always the way it is with partners: someone gets all time and the other guy doesn't get any time at all.

Mark, don't take all my time, but do you want to take a few seconds to say what you wanted to leave with us? What was your message?

[Mark Chambers]

Well, my message is very similar to Cyr's. It's not a temporary issue that we have with agriculture and agri-food. It's a permanent labour shortage, and we need to create permanent solutions for this.

What I mean by this is that is we rely on the foreign worker program. Overseas workers who come in augment the Canadian workforce, so we need to to have good pathways to ensure that we can fill that labour need and have a solid Canadian food production system in Canada. We don't want to necessarily rely on imports. We have a massive land base in Canada and we know that we either have to produce the protein here or we have to export that production and someone else is going to produce it. The idea would be to keep that production in Canada and ensure that we have a workforce that can grow those crops, raise those animals and process that meat when it comes to the end.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thanks, Mark.

I was going to point that out. This is not a first-time shortage for labour. This has been a permanent shortage all along. The challenge I have, or the suggestions that I need you guys to give us, is that we're talking about the food security of our country, and we really do need to figure this out.

Cyr, you talked about a loss of $3 billion, but I guess the challenge is that when we start talking about food production, you guys are on the front lines. At the end of the day, if we don't figure out the labour piece.... If you don't put food in the ground, you can't harvest it, and if you don't produce more pork, fish or salmon, whatever it is.... You don't get to harvest that if you don't have the resources needed to put it in. That's a pretty fair assessment. It's not just a loss of dollars, but a complete loss of production that down the road could lead to shortages. Is that correct?

[Mark Chambers]

Yes, it's absolutely correct. The past 12 months during COVID have really sent the message home to me.

I don't know if any of you have driven around car dealerships lately and tried to look at buying a new vehicle—a new truck or something—but they have very little on the lot. We're relying on those cars being manufactured in Mexico or assembled in the U.S. or wherever and coming to Canada, but during COVID, with all the slowdowns and border issues, we've not been able to bring those in.

Luckily, the borders have remained open to let food move north and south, but if we ever run into an issue where food cannot move north and south, we're going to be in real trouble if we don't have a solid, food-secure system in Canada.

[Cyr Couturier]

Yes, and the labour force.

[Mark Chambers]

Right, and the labour force.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Absolutely, and listen, I couldn't agree more. Food security is one of those things that we need to be looking at and we should be doing.

You guys talked about this in some of your other briefings. I don't know if you've mentioned it here, but I have seen in some of your previous briefings a dedicated workforce program per se. Once again, you're suggesting that there would be something in place. We've had a lot of industries, quite frankly, that have said, listen, it's the same thing, and we go for it every year, back and forth, because this is a very critical industry.

You're looking at something that would be helpful specifically for your industry. You talked about the “pathway to permanency”, which we can talk about in a second, but explain what you're thinking about in terms of a dedicated workforce program.

[Mark Chambers]

Well, we want to try to lose the stigma. There are two parts to agriculture and agri-food. There is the seasonal program, which is seasonal due to the nature of the business. The crops are planted in the spring. They grow through the summer. They're harvested in the fall. That's a season. A lot of seasonal workers come. There's a need for that program, but there's also the year-round work that we have: year-round on the fisheries side, year-round on the livestock side, and year-round on the meat-processing side. That's a program we need. We've talked about this in the past. A few years ago, when I testified, we talked about a dedicated agriculture and agri-food workforce program whereby we'd lose the stigma of the “temporary”. It's not temporary.

Our goal is to bring folks here, and if they like Canada and we like them, we create a pathway for them to become a permanent resident, year-round, in Canada. On the agriculture side there are some programs available, especially in light of the new one that just recently opened up as well. The challenge on the meat-processing side is that we have a cap on the percentage of farm workers we can have. That really inhibits the ability to grow or maintain consistent production. The company I work for, Sunterra Farms, has a meat-processing plant in rural Alberta, in Trochu. It's a small town. It's difficult to attract people to rural Canada, period. When we bring in workers, they come and they settle in that community. They've grown that community. It's been a big benefit. Then, once they're there for a year or two, they find that it's home, so they stay there. Trying to get people to move from a city to rural Canada is really difficult.

Our goal is to make sure we have a program that doesn't impede the ability of the businesses to grow or succeed. We grow hogs as well. A lot of hogs we send across the border and grow in the U.S. We'd like to grow more in Canada, but we can't raise more in Canada because we won't be able to process them in our plant. It's already at maximum capacity. We can't grow that plant because we can't hire more workers from overseas; we're already at the 20% cap.

Our goal is to be able to bring those people in, and as soon as they all have a pathway to permanency as quickly as possible, we would no longer count them in terms of the cap, and we would continue to focus that way.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thanks. I'll just note that I think it's very important that if we're going to patrol and protect our supply chains, we need to look at a way we can actually do that in Canada. Production is one of those things. We sell a lot of raw products out of this country, but I think we need to do a better job with in-country production.

Thanks, guys.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Allison.

We will now proceed to Mr. Dhaliwal.

Mr. Dhaliwal, you will have six minutes for your round of questioning. Please proceed.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the presenters.

Ms. Lehal, you mentioned all those things to do with the LMIA fraud and the money-gouging schemes that you are hearing about. I'm hearing the same things. I update the minister from time to time. You mentioned ESDC. Any time the employer is involved, I personally believe that no matter what we do, they're going to find a way to gouge money from these vulnerable people. I am sure you will agree with that as well, because this is how they found out.

In terms of how to stop it, we as a government have taken some positive steps. We put up $40 million to incorporate a body that will govern those consultants you talked about, just as you are governed by the law society, I am governed as a professional engineer and B.C. landscapers are governed by their own peers.

We also brought in 27,232 through the express entry draw, for which the point level was dropped to 75. Almost everyone under the age of 30 with one year of experience will get in. They don't need all those LMIAs. There are 90,000 others, including 40,000 students, who don't need LMIAs; 30,000 essential workers, which include farm workers all the way to professionals; and 20,000 health care professionals, starting with housekeeping workers and going all the way to doctors.

There are some obstacles. How do you see that a policy like this will help those vulnerable individuals? What should government be doing moving forward? Should we bring in further policies like this? Also, how can we improve the LMIA process?

[Kamaljit Lehal]

I acknowledge that there have been a number of initiatives by the government to address individuals who are struggling to find a pathway. We saw the situation where the marks to get in under the express entry were lowered.

The difficulty that we find as counsel is that these initiatives spring up, and we're not given much notice, and then we have clients scrambling and trying to figure out who is going to fit in what scenario. There is a real panic, trying to reach out to clients to say, “Okay, we think you qualify under this one or this one.”

My concern is that while the numbers are.... You've said the “90,000” pathway. Those numbers are going to fill up very quickly, and there is still a huge group of people who are left out of it. I think one of the speakers spoke about undocumented workers. Unfortunately, because they have been caught up in this scheming process, they end up being undocumented; otherwise, they were well-intentioned individuals. I'm not exactly sure what options are available to them, but they need to be addressed.

I take note of the active enforcement steps that have been taken by the government, but we still need to think out of the box and come up with something that's more proactive.

I hear you, Mr. Dhaliwal, that unscrupulous employers will still find ways to sabotage the system, but part of that is educating people who are coming from regions.... I believe, for example, if we look at the students who come in, the bulk of the students come from India and China. I've travelled to India, and I've seen the big signs up there about “Get to Canada”. They're huge, and people are being misled. Some front-end work in shedding the light on what the truth is in terms of options for emigrating to Canada is important. Then, for the workers we have here who have become stuck in these schemes or who otherwise are not getting work, why not use them by matching them up with some good employers—some sort of system? One system I was suggesting was using the ESDC to match these potential workers with genuine employers.

Good work has been done, but there are still a lot of gaps that need to be addressed.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

You mentioned undocumented workers. Before the COVID-19 situation escalated, Ms. Dhillon and I met with some refugee claimants from Montreal. They came and met us on the Hill. They were able to speak perfect French and perfect English. They've been working here for the last 10, 15 or 20 years, but their cases weren't finalized.

I'm sure you are getting similar cases. Would you suggest that the government have a plan, similar to the one we brought in for 90,000 people, to deal with refugee claimants who have been here for a very long time?

[Kamaljit Lehal]

I understand the conundrum of the government. We see this in some decisions, where comments are made that they've stayed under the radar and they've misused our immigration process. However, many of these people have been giving back, but have been taken advantage of because they are undocumented. There should be a pathway available to them to get some status in Canada.

We have the agency applications, of course, and they take a long time. Many of these people don't want to risk going that route, because then they become known, and they're worried about being deported.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

How about the caregivers? We are bringing in a program to fast-track 6,000 applications. Do you have enough time for them to get organized?

Also, on the 90,000—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Dhaliwal. Your time is up.

We will now move on to Madame Normandin. You will have six minutes for your round of questioning. Please proceed.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being with us today.

My first questions are for Mr. Chambers and you, Mr. Couturier, if the people you represent also work in processing and not just in agricultural production.

Mr. Chambers, you mentioned that the 10% or 20% limit on foreign workers is a barrier. You also said that we could solve this problem by granting permanent residence more quickly. However, I'd like you to tell us about the speed of the process.

Would it be a good idea to raise the limit, especially in some regions where the unemployment rate is very low, for instance?

[Cyr Couturier]

It would be a good idea to raise that limit, especially in areas where there's low unemployment, but also in areas of high unemployment. The reality is that in animal processing or food processing, there are shortages in many parts of the country. There's lots of unemployment as well. How can we encourage Canadians to go there? That's going to be part of the solution.

I'll let Mark talk about the limit.

[Mark Chambers]

Increasing the limit is important. It's a way to get more folks in from overseas and get them on a pathway to permanency. It's very difficult when just a small percentage of folks come in. They have to learn the Canadian system, take their English test, do a lot of different things and assimilate into Canadian communities. Having a small cap makes it very difficult to get enough people through that. However, I don't think it should be a free-for-all so that it's wide open and there's no intent to create a pathway to permanency. Our goal has always been.... The foreign worker program has always been a stepping stone to a pathway to permanent residency, but the cap has restricted the ability to get enough people through there.

We've always worked on that premise, and we know we're not going to keep everyone. Rural Canada is not for everyone, but if we can, we'll keep a lot of people. Some of those folks will move to other sectors and work in other sectors, and those are the jobs we need to fill. As our goal, if we can get people landed in rural Canada and not have restrictions such as a cap that prevents us from getting enough people there, raising the cap.... Before, something like 50% was much more workable and gave us the ability to transition a lot more people through to permanent residency, grow the business and continue to keep the small, rural Canadian communities sustainable.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

We sometimes hear comments that this shouldn't become an open bar to prevent abuse and that foreign workers are seen as cheap labour. It's complicated to bring in foreign labour, and there's a lot of paperwork to deal with.

Generally speaking, companies prefer using Canadian labour when it's available. Is that true?

[Mark Chambers]

That's true, but there's a myth there. You made a comment about cheap labour. The myth is not true. A lot of the meat plants today are unionized. Our plant is unionized as well, so the wages are set for all Canadians and all workers that come into the plant, regardless of which country they're coming from. It's not cheap labour. A new foreign worker who arrives is hired the same way as a Canadian who arrives, and as they progress through their skill set and learn things, they move equally, whether they're a Canadian or a worker from overseas. The other part is that when you bring in a foreign worker, you're burdened with more costs—a pile of them—than you would have for a Canadian.

The myth people keep thinking, that workers coming from overseas are cheap, is completely misunderstood. It's very expensive to bring people here from overseas when you have to pay their flight, set up their house and make sure you get their banking, SIN numbers and health cards sorted out. There's a huge cost to that.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

[Cyr Couturier]

I would add that this is very true, but it's not only that. For example, in Mr. Dhaliwal's riding, we have seafood processing plants that are probably going to be closed. Most of the folks there have become Canadians or permanent residents, and they're very well paid.