To be frank, they're actually experiencing the same problems we have. Everybody has somewhat of a shortage. That's also our problem. If we don't attract those temporary foreign workers to come to Canada.... We have a great country to sell them, and for them to come to and help us grow rural Canada. These temporary foreign workers have other options as well. Our recruiting them and bringing them here, and their helping us by working in our meat plants and building rural Canada, is really what it's all about.
We have this huge opportunity, and Canadians don't want to move to the rural countryside. That's not for everybody. The shortage is there. People say all the time, “Well, you bring them in, they move to urban cities.” They don't.
Our research indicates most of them don't. Our research shows that, if you bring them in, and assuming they work out and everything is great and it works both ways—assuming there's a good fit there—those temporary foreign workers stay with our members for over 10 years in rural Canada. They're not moving at the first chance, getting a PR and moving to Toronto, which is what everybody talks about all the time. These employees actually stay with us.
Our situation is not unique, but we have big problem. It saddens me to think about shipping meat abroad when we have the capacity and the industry to process more and to increase our processing capacity, yet we're handcuffed by a labour shortage and by this cap I talked about earlier.