The food service industry is very similar to what Tony articulated for the accommodation industry. There continue to be pockets across the country where there are still real issues in terms of being able to find staff, and I'm talking about all skill levels—but during the severest part of the crisis there were restaurants that had to close their operations for different parts of the day. There were franchisees throwing the keys back at franchisors. There were huge lineups at restaurants because they were so short-staffed. Owner-operators were doing all the jobs within their restaurant.
When the changes were made to the temporary foreign worker program so that we were able to take advantage of that program, these people were welcomed into the communities and they were welcomed by their colleagues. It actually made it easier for us to get Canadians to work in those restaurants as well, because a Canadian who wouldn't apply for the job would suddenly see that it wasn't totally chaotic. Those people who had trained in hotel and food management programs would say, “Okay, yes, there are actually people here to manage; I'm interested in taking a job at a restaurant,” as opposed to knowing they were going to come in and work 16-hour days, seven days a week, doing everything from cleaning toilets to trying to do.... Well, there was no payroll to do, because there were so few people they could hire.
It brought a real sense of stability to a lot of restaurant operations. There were real advantages. There were so many advantages that I could go on forever in terms of what the temporary foreign worker program provided.