Agriculture committee  In the fall, about 33 different associations and producer groups co-signed a policy document asking for a code of conduct, so there's quite a family or suite of associations and producer groups involved in this. In that collective, I would say that different groups have reached o

Agriculture committee  All provinces right now are on phase one of their vaccine rollouts, so they're just starting to think about what phase two will look like. I'm very pleased to say that from Ontario east, all the provinces have indicated that essential workers, including our workers, would be inc

Agriculture committee  Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta have not indicated what their phase two will look like, so we don't know. As I said, unfortunately B.C. has not included or singled out essential workers as a specific category for vaccine prioritization. Once they're finished with residents of

Agriculture committee  Yes, it's our understanding that.... First of all, the Quebec government has indicated—and it's on the website so it's visible—that essential workers and food processors will be included in vaccine prioritization, so we're clearly very pleased about that. Quebec is a very large p

Agriculture committee  I think we absolutely need to adjust it to 20%, and I think we need to consider whether it should just be open-ended. There are other safeguards in the program, which require, for example, that employers look to local markets first to make sure they are, as a first effort, trying

Agriculture committee  I think we've been very lucky here in Canada. We obviously saw shortages on the grocery store shelves early on last March. I think we saw some more in the fall, certainly where I live, with the second wave of the pandemic. I think Canadian companies have done an incredible job of

Agriculture committee  I'm sure many of you have been to a food plant, but a lot of people watching this haven't. When you drive down the highway and you see a big building that looks like a warehouse, there's a good chance it is some sort of manufacturing plant, including possibly a food plant. It's a

Agriculture committee  Sure. If you think about skilled trades, that is, professions such as electricians and millwrights, there is an incredible shortage of skilled trades, not just for our sector but for manufacturing across the country. We are literally unable to fill all the positions we have. You

Agriculture committee  When we use foreign workers in the food-processing sector—and primary agriculture would be very much the same—sometimes we use temporary foreign workers because the jobs are seasonal. If you think about canning tomatoes, for example, that's a seasonal job. Other times, we're brin

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation to appear today. Food and Beverage Canada is a national association whose members include provincial food and beverage associations, as well as leading Canadian food and beverage processing companies. Food and beverage manufactur

Finance committee  We are talking about entry-level positions in food companies. In any manufacturing facility, if you think about the quintessential assembly line, we're looking at people who might be working along that line—adding the hazelnut in the Ferrero Rocher, for example. You are looking a

Finance committee  It's complex; it's a number of different things. Certainly what we find is that most jobs are probably above minimum wage, but these are lower-level, lower-paid positions, for sure. One of the big challenges we have is that when you're in an industry that has all of this pressure

Finance committee  It's both. Part of it is looking at Canadians and seeing if there are under-represented groups in our workforce—women, people of colour, people with disabilities, people from first nations. We can take a look at what the barriers are for them in actually entering the workforce so

Finance committee  It's certainly been a contributing factor in our labour challenges. We went into COVID-19 with a shortage of labour and we're now at about 10% vacancy rate on any given day, so it has been difficult. In some circumstances companies have felt that they have had a challenge in fill

Finance committee  We employ about 300,000 people, and it runs anywhere from executives to food scientists to marketing experts. The vast majority of our workers, in fact, are what we call front-line food workers, meaning the people you think of on the assembly line, the butchers. Those well-paying