Health committee  I am Philippe Massé, director general of the temporary foreign worker program, and I am joined by my colleague Tara Cosgrove, who is the executive director responsible for program integrity. The objective of the program is to enable employers to access foreign workers when Cana

Health committee  Yes. You have my apologies for the technical problems. Can you hear me properly?

Health committee  As I was saying, I'm joined by my colleague Tara Cosgrove, from the integrity services branch at Service Canada. As mentioned earlier, when it comes to food security, the government recognizes that the agriculture, food and fish processing sectors play a vital role. That is one

Health committee  Thank you for the question. The quick answer is yes, with the lifting of the travel ban. All temporary foreign workers were exempted from that travel ban, so we are accepting applications for all sectors at this moment. That being said, we are prioritizing those in the agricult

Health committee  I don't have recent figures, unfortunately, in terms of the intake we've had since—

Health committee  Absolutely, we can.

Health committee  As I mentioned, the travel ban did not restrict foreign workers entering the country to only agriculture. It's open to everyone. Of course, the labour market has changed. Our assessment process includes checks for the labour market situations. Employers must demonstrate that ther

Health committee  As I said, we're adjusting to the current situation and responding to a number of pressures. This is something we're looking into in terms of how we manage intake into the program going forward. As I mentioned, the decision didn't restrain employers from applying. We're assessin

Health committee  The federal responsibility for health requirements as it applies to foreign workers or foreign nationals covers the two-week quarantine period. After the two-week period, it's the responsibility of local public health officials.

Health committee  There are a couple of aspects to this. First, it is important to understand that all workers, when they arrive in Canada, if they don't directly have access to provincial and territorial health systems, must be provided with coverage by the employer to bridge any gap. There are o

Human Resources committee  I wish I had a longer answer. These are the responsibilities of my colleagues. I don't have the latest status, although I know they were looking at opportunities to expedite some of the processes that are at play. Mr. Kent, you correctly identified the important role of the prov

Human Resources committee  It's the same here. We found out about it at the same time.

Human Resources committee  We can certainly look at some of the research that was done, and there were certainly studies around the impact of the TFW program in the fishing sector and the agriculture sector, and we can share those studies with you. We know that Atlantic Canada, in particular, New Brunswick

Human Resources committee  Yes, I agree. I think there will be an opportunity to look at the impact of this whole COVID situation on the program and what that means going forward. We'll be turning to those impacts very soon. There are a lot of lessons to be learned in terms of the adjustments that we're go

Human Resources committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for your question, Ms. Normandin. The process is already well under way at the Department of Employment and Social Development. Most employers already have the necessary approval. That is already in place. For those who do not, we are giving their file