Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I'll let Scott address that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There's no doubt that this industry is one that's very difficult, with a lot of hard, back-breaking labour, but it's not what we'd consider low-skilled labour. That's one clarification we would like to put forth. These workers who are coming in are often very highly skilled, and they're extremely good at what they do.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Scott, do you want to address that?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we definitely think that the amount should be increased. As you've mentioned, the time frames for the quarantine period have often increased, and with some of the delays that you've mentioned with Switch Health and some of the other processing delays, a lot of farm workers are being held in quarantine for even much longer than required.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that consulting—like you're doing—with the industry is certainly a first step. I'll defer to Scott Ross, our assistant executive director, who might have some more knowledge on any details.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Scott, do you want to take that?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are two things. Yes, I think the notion of a trusted-farmer model would go a long way to helping alleviate some of the issues that we've seen in processing delays. Some of these farms have been bringing workers in—oftentimes the same workers—for years, if not decades. Streamlining that process and not requiring them to renew their applications year after year and to go through the same delays....

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to speak to you here today. My name is Chris van den Heuvel. I'm the second vice-president for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. We're Canada's largest general farm organization, representing 200,000 Canadian farm families from coast to coast to coast.

Agriculture committee  It's a lot of the horticultural crops that you see growing in your own riding. I don't know if you have any details around the specifics on....

Agriculture committee  I can't address that myself. I don't know, Scott, whether you have anything to—

Agriculture committee  I go back to the point that returning to the 85% is a short-term measure that will hopefully provide some relief to our farmers. Is it going to be the ultimate answer to the problem we're facing? It probably is not. Again, we have to do a deep dive into the issues and the programs to come up with a program that makes sense.

Agriculture committee  Yes, there are certain provinces that you mentioned. Quebec and B.C. just made the announcement where they're doing some top-ups. The unfortunate reality is that provinces have some fiscal issues before them as well and they are not all in the position to be able to make that commitment.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. The effect is not just on young farmers, but on the industry as a whole. When you look at the mental health of our farmers, you see that we're facing increasing stress levels. Farmers have to plant crops in the ground in a couple weeks time, but their bins are full from this past season.

Agriculture committee  Our industry is multi-commodity. When you have a suite of programs targeting certain commodities within that, it makes it difficult for the rest of the commodities to compete in their marketplace. Livestock simply isn't covered at all. Horticultural crops that aren't covered are subject to the exact same stresses—whether it's weather, trade disruptions or whatever—as the commodities that are covered.