Citizenship and Immigration committee  If I could just—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  From a food processing standpoint, that is 100% the case. As I said at the beginning, we're short about 30,000 workers on any given day. Temporary foreign workers are just a part of our workforce. We are short of permanent workers. There's a structural deficit, when it comes to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would say there are three big areas where we all should be focusing. One is skilled trades. We have a massive deficit in this country when it comes to skilled trades—things like electricians and millwrights. That affects all manufacturing sectors. I'm sure Elizabeth will tell u

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll start in general and then turn to Daniel because, obviously, he's got first-hand knowledge from his company. Broadly, when we talk to the breadth of our members across the country, when we went into COVID-19 we were facing a very serious labour shortage and still are. This v

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of the broader labour question, like any workforce, ours is quite broad and diverse. We hire line workers, scientists and managers, so we try to fill those jobs through a number of different sources. Definitely, when it comes to foreign workers, we have a deficit in our

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Kathleen Sullivan, CEO of Food and Beverage Canada, a national association representing Canadian food manufacturers. I am joined by my co-chair Daniel Vielfaure. Food manufacturing is one of Canada's largest and most important industries. Foun

Agriculture committee  Right now we're still in the middle of the pandemic. We're obviously in the middle of the second wave, and things are probably worse, or recently have been worse, than they have ever been, so no, companies aren't, at this point, anywhere near thinking of planning to roll things b

Agriculture committee  Sure. Having the local colleges focus on programs that are geared toward food processing, like Conestoga College, absolutely.... I think, as well, this is often at the provincial level, but there's a leadership role for the federal government in taking a look at how we certify sk

Agriculture committee  There are, 100%. Bear in mind that when the pandemic first—

Agriculture committee  You are 100% right. I think students are a huge potential workforce for us. A program in Ontario, for example, was developed a few years ago, Taste Your Future, that was social media-based and very much focused on raising awareness of our industry as a potential job or career opp

Agriculture committee  We are definitely working very closely with the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, so all of the other grocers who aren't in the big five, if you will, are quite active. In fact, I have a meeting with them tomorrow, so we're working quite closely with them.

Agriculture committee  The labour shortage is something that we hear about from every single province in the country. It may look different or manifest itself differently in different regions, but it is wholesale pretty much across the board. I think where I'm frustrated is that, like you, I've already

Agriculture committee  I'll start, if I may. If you look at codes of conduct in other countries.... The U.K., for example, has had a grocery code of conduct for a number of years. That code of conduct is exclusively focused on the large retailers. We don't have to do that in Canada. We can create a s

Agriculture committee  The federal government does offer programs to help industries and businesses in adopting automation and robotics, but to a large extent those programs are not applicable to our sector. I think it would be helpful for the federal government to re-examine the programs they have and

Agriculture committee  The processor fund was $77.5 million. We estimate the cost of adjusting to COVID-19 to be close to a billion dollars, so obviously the fund was not sufficient. We certainly recognize that many sectors, and every individual in Canada, have been affected by the pandemic, which is w