Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm Craig Mackie, the co-president of ARAISA and also executive director of the P.E.I. Association for Newcomers to Canada.
The Atlantic Region Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies is an umbrella group for organizations providing immigrant settlement services in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and P.E.I.
ARAISA serves as a collective voice and a forum for the 22 member agencies across all four provinces that are all committed to the successful settlement and integration of immigrants and refugees in our region. Member organizations have become more effective as a result of ARAISA's initiatives to support the sector and its contributions to regional and federal national forums such as this.
ARAISA members have been involved with and very supportive of the Atlantic immigration pilot. The program is very successful. It's employer driven, and its success can be measured by the fact that it will become a permanent stream in 2022.
Temporary foreign workers are an integral and essential part of the economy of Atlantic Canada. The COVID pandemic made this even more obvious when most everything else was shut down last spring and parts of last fall. It was the TFWs who were on the farms, in the fields, at fish plants, driving trucks to deliver food, in long-term care facilities looking after our elders, stocking shelves at the grocery stores, and much more. Without these TFWs risking themselves to do these jobs, we would be in even greater difficulties.
Canada needs low-skilled labour. There are not enough Canadians to do the work, yet we make it difficult and sometimes impossible for employers to get the labour they need to operate their businesses successfully and profitably.
A farmer in eastern P.E.I. brings in dozens of TFWs every summer. He told me point-blank that he would not be in business without TFWs.
My colleague from New Brunswick will take it from here.