Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Casey Vander Ploeg. I am the vice-president of the National Cattle Feeders' Association. I'm joined today by Ms. Jolayne Farn, who is the HR manager at one of Canada's largest cattle feeding operations, Van Raay Paskal Farms in southern Alberta.
I'll say just a few words first about who we are and what we do.
Every spring, there are millions of calves born on some 75,000 farms and ranches across Canada. After a season on pasture eating grass, these calves are sold to cattle feeders and placed in a feedlot operation, where they're fed a high-energy grain ration that takes them from 500 or 600 pounds to a market weight of 1,500 pounds. Canada's feedlots range widely in terms of size, from 1,000- and 5,000-head operations to over 100,000 head. These larger operations employ hundreds of people. Every year, cattle feeders in this country finish over three million head of cattle and generate $9 billion in farm income.
Without question, a chronic shortage of labour is the single largest challenge facing Canadian agriculture. It results in lost sales of over $400 million annually for our beef industry, and over $3 billion when you consider all of agriculture. Despite Herculean efforts, agriculture simply cannot attract enough domestic labour to fill these rural jobs, and because there is no stream within the immigration system to secure agriculture workers, we rely on the temporary foreign worker program. It's the only gateway for our sector to secure foreign labour, which we then work to transition to permanent residency.
Before I turn to Jolayne to detail some of the concerns we have with LMIAs and the TFW program, I want to stress a critically important point: Cattle feeders are not interested in low-skilled foreign temporary workers. We need permanent full-time skilled workers. The temporary foreign worker program is designed for temporary workers and is not a natural fit for our sector, but it's the only option we have.
I give the floor over to you, Jolayne.