Finance committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you, and again thank you for your service to Canadians. My name is Jan VanderHout, and I am the vice-president of CHC, as well as a greenhouse vegetable grower from Hamilton, Ontario. As Brian mentioned, our sector is very diverse. Whil

Finance committee  Exactly how much that will impact the planting is a bit of an unknown. There are already farmers deciding to reduce the amount of crop they are putting in. The crops being seeded today are the ones that will be harvested in two, three or four months, so lettuce seeds and broccol

Finance committee  There is a bureaucratic hurdle, and a lot of it has to do with the things that are going on in the source countries. For example, the workers need to go through biometrics in Mexico, and then they need to get a visa before they can travel. This has been ironed out to a large de

Agriculture committee  One of the things that I think is being overlooked is the exposure we have as producers to a large exodus of workers if there's an outbreak on our farms. Imagine asparagus growers, because that's the imminent one right now, who go through all of this process to get their worker

Agriculture committee  I'm a greenhouse cucumber grower, and we hire Mexican workers through both the SAWP and TFW program, and even today we have workers in isolation. There are a few parts to that question. One part is we are paying the workers while they're in isolation. That comes to about $900.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee on behalf of the Canadian Horticultural Council, representing the growers of over $5.7 billion in farm cash receipts for produce annually. Canada's agriculture industry is primed for immense growth, as identified by the

Agriculture committee  Absolutely, there is risk of bankruptcy of fresh fruit and vegetable farms across the country. We are currently seeing farms with outbreaks of COVID-19, making it virtually impossible to maintain their crops, and if they're in the middle of harvest, then it's hard to get the harv

Agriculture committee  I hope you don't mind if I answer this one, too, Brian. That's a really good question. I think altogether too often Canadians forget where their food comes from, and they think it comes from their grocery store. The reality is that all of our food comes from farms and food produ

Agriculture committee  Perhaps it could be better coverage when the farm is taking its own measures to reduce the risk. It would incentivize farms to hedge their risks through diversification.

Agriculture committee  I am very much in favour of both of those things. As for the bankruptcy protection, I consider financial protection for produce growers essential for empowering the growers to have confidence that they are going to get paid. The reality is that by the time a bankruptcy registers,

Agriculture committee  Absolutely, labour is a much bigger problem this year. In years past we also were challenged by labour shortages, and more often than not they were filled through the use of temporary foreign workers. This year, although the Canadian government has done a good job at helping us t