Citizenship and Immigration committee  Direct immigration programs with more incentives to go to the rural plants and farms is what we all want for permanent full-time jobs. Unfortunately, like we keep saying, the temporary foreign worker program is our only option for placements in the rural.... It functions as a pla

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We'd be in favour of that, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that's actually what we're absolutely supporting. If we could get our on-the-job training, two years' experience recognized, then that would, as another path, even within our current agri-food immigration pilot, give them more access. That's absolutely what we support. Wit

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we do support open work permits within the agri-food immigration pilot. We were a bit confused as to why it wasn't included in the criteria. Every plant and farm has a handful of open work permits. We also support them for the vulnerable workers, if they have a problem with

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For language testing, it is very true, similar to how the experience in the plant and on the farm is the education the workers need. There also isn't a recognition that, if they're working in these jobs, they are learning English as they're working. That is not recognized.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For us, with the mushrooms, our number one thing is if we could get the education criteria amended. I think it would be very difficult with the department regarding language, but they are increasing criteria both for language and for education in all the provincial nominee progra

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, for agriculture and agri-food the shortages are immense. Marie-France talked about 4,000. That's what we're talking about for meat processing. The Canadian Agricultural HR Council explained the shortage for the primary agriculture, but we're happy to start with the 2,750 pil

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, they're very receptive, and we're going to be supporting as many workers as possible within the new pathways. However, we are concerned. I've spoken with the immigration consultants, and we feel that it will likely fill up by June. For our 30,000 quota, we're competing again

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's the other thing. We're hoping for education from the department, and we did ask for that on Friday. We would like them to provide a webinar for the employers, to start with them, before the end of May. We specifically asked for that. Within—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. What you're saying, Mr. Allison, is exactly what the industry's been asking for from multiple governments for many years. They would like to see an agriculture and agri-food workforce program. We're hoping this new immigration pilot could be a piece of that, but as y

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm actually done. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Ryan. The main thing that mushrooms and meat processing have in common is that we both provide full-time permanent jobs. For mushrooms, we've been very excited to work on the agri-food immigration pilot with meat processing. We feel that this is a new recognition and

Agriculture committee  Yes. Actually, our sector is 70% Canadian workers, and we have about 900 temporary foreign worker program agricultural stream workers across Canada. They were in Canada. The 50 workers were the ones who were just on vacation. However, as Ryan said, we have a 20% job vacancy rat

Agriculture committee  We know it's a high-expense industry because of the capital investment and the amount of labour. We can look into that and get back to you.

Agriculture committee  Go ahead, Ryan.