Agriculture committee  That is an excellent example. As we have seen, labour shortages can have a direct effect on the availability of food. We have asked ourselves about the simplest solution that we could recommend to the government. In our opinion, it could quite easily make a few changes to two pilot projects that were launched in recent years.

Agriculture committee  That is an excellent question. Thanks for noting that we were able to bring 10 associations together. Actually, we're now up to 11 associations. This is a very important topic. In regard to the challenge in our industry, you're asking about a request to increase the cap to 30%.

Agriculture committee  Yes, we are. Actually, what we're asking for is a level playing field. On the production side, we know for temporary foreign workers who have come into our agriculture sector, those applications are processed more quickly. What we're looking for is to make sure that we also get prompt processing times.

Agriculture committee  The idea there is to have a central place within the government to process our labour market impact assessment requests so that they develop expertise. They get applications from all sectors of the economy. We're thinking that if we can have a dedicated centre within ESDC to review our applications, they'll develop some expertise and that's going to contribute to speeding up processing times.

Agriculture committee  My colleague from the Canadian Meat Council mentioned this earlier. There's nothing temporary about jobs in our industry. The idea there is to ensure that the foreign workers who come in, if they're willing to stay in Canada and if the employer is willing to sponsor them—we know it is in a lot of cases—there is a pathway for these people to get their work experience in Canada as temporary foreign workers recognized so that they can apply and become permanent Canadian residents.

Agriculture committee  We know there have been influxes of refugees, such as recently from Afghanistan. We understand. It would be great to find a solution. We have these people coming to Canada looking to get into the labour market. We need people. The idea there is to basically bring these two together so that we can use some of these workers in our industry.

Agriculture committee  I can't speak to this specifically. Some of my colleagues might be able to expand on it. I'll be honest. Labour is somewhat of a new issue for our association. We have been working on this for several months now. I know housing continues to be a challenge, but I can't speak to some of the recent changes that have been floated around.

Agriculture committee  We don't have one. As a result of negotiating these agreements, we were promised programs. In a working group that we had participated in, a number of ideas were exchanged. We had two main demands. The first was to have a program that would facilitate the modernization of the plants so that we could be more competitive.

Agriculture committee  You mentioned the free trade agreements. In fact, the CPTPP is in force, but there are no imports related to our products yet. The new agreement with the United States will come into effect on July 1. It is important that the tariff rate quotas that will be granted under these agreements be given to processors, because they are the ones who will have to deal with the arrival of these products on the market.

Agriculture committee  I would just add one more point that we put forward to the government. Several of our members began, as early as late February and early March, to put up plexiglass screens to separate employees as a security measure. We were told that expenses would only be eligible if they were incurred after March 25, when the Quarantine Act came into effect.

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Jean-Michel Laurin, and I'm president and CEO of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council, CPEPC, or CCTOV in French. I'm joined today by our board chair, Mr. Joël Cormier, who is also senior vice-president, chicken division, at Exceldor co-operative.