Citizenship and Immigration committee  I will go ahead and respond. In our case, they are not farm workers, but we were allowed to keep employees longer than the original permit allowed. So there was some adjustment to the COVID-19 situation. In that regard, I have to acknowledge that efforts were made.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As much as you're saying that the situation existed in the 1970s—and I agree—it's getting worse every year. It's getting to a point right now where it's going to break. Honestly, there are some investments that our head office in France is challenging, not because of the value o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Ms. Normandin, the situation is worse than that. I have four plants in Quebec and I don't even have the right to move employees from one to another. So we are a long way from a situation where various companies could share employees. I would love to be able to have a partnership

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are times during the year when I may need more staff in one plant and fewer in another. For example, one of my plants may have a surplus of crops, because the harvest was very good. But I can't assign my workers from another plant there to meet the needs. It's absolutely ri

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's kind of like Groundhog Day: We do the same thing over again every year. We provide the same justifications of our need to use the same people to fill the same jobs. Every year, we face the same reluctance and the same barriers. It's unbelievable: we have to redo everything w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can answer that question as well. For sure, it would. In the small communities where we have our plants, because our facilities are in rural areas near agricultural land, when these workers come in it's a feast. The population of the village grows automatically. There's inve

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, it would definitely be helpful. I'll give you an example. In our plants, people who have that work permit are hired for low-paying positions that don't require any special skills. Yet we need forklift operators. We could train these individuals. It only takes three or four

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I certainly can. It has complicated things a lot. Here I am speaking of all of the tests and everything that needed to be done to make sure that the housing would respect all of the regulations needed to protect the employees and the workers themselves, and also the other workers

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's totally correct. [Technical Difficulty—Editor] the North American businesses were presenting to the group for our capex budgets, and we were asking for $50 million that we would invest this year, the coming year, in Canada. Some of it is for automation. We will try to inve

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am Daniel Vielfaure, the DCEO of Bonduelle Group and CEO of Bonduelle Americas. Bonduelle is a global food company specializing in frozen and canned vegetables. Here in Canada, Bonduelle is responsible for mostly all of private-lab

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. Based on my experience with the TFW program, there are some changes that are desperately needed. We need to simplify the program application. Application fees should be reduced or eliminated. We need to create pathways for the permanent residency of workers. Many of our wo