Mr. Speaker, successive Conservative and Liberal governments over the past several years have not found a solution for seasonal workers. What does this mean for my region and everywhere else in Canada?
I have travelled around all the provinces, from Newfoundland to Vancouver, and I hosted 54 meetings with people from 21 different regions. When employers lose trained staff, it is hard for them to find new workers who can work on a production line in a fish plant, for example. Not just anyone can walk into a restaurant and know how to do what needs to be done. Not just anyone can become a logger. Those kinds of employers have lost good workers.
As another example, no one becomes a fisher overnight. It takes months to become a good fisher. Some regions have lost skilled fishers. People were fed up, so they went to work in western Canada, and now our employers are suffering because of decisions made by previous Liberal and Conservative governments.
Today, we are still paying the price. We need to find a solution for seasonal workers. We need to find a way to help that industry, instead of hiring temporary foreign workers and saying that Canadians will not work.