Canada's seasonal ag worker program dodges most temporary worker reforms

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

The farming industry is mostly exempt from changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker program announced by the federal government last week, but one farm leader remains concerned with how the new rules will be implemented.

“Implementation of any new set of rules is always a concern,” says Mark Wales, Ontario Federation of Agriculture president.

Wales says he’s not worried that the stronger enforcement measures for rule breakers and the tougher penalties, both announced as part of the changes, also apply to on-farm primary agriculture and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker program.

As part of the changes announced Friday by Employment and Social Development Minister Jason Kenney and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, inspections of employers will be stepped up so one in four employers using temporary foreign workers will be inspected annually. In addition, starting in the fall the government will impose fines of up to $100,000, depending on the severity of the offense, on employers who break the rules of the program, says the government’s website document outlining the changes.

In April, the government launched a confidential tip line for Canadians to report abuses of the temporary foreign worker program and has received more than 1,000 tips to date, the document says.

Wales says the seasonal agriculture worker program “has always been very well run and is very regulated. The seasonal agricultural worker program has not been part of the problem. And in the case of Ontario, the temporary foreign worker program hasn’t been a problem either.”

The temporary foreign worker program is a smaller component of employment on farms than the seasonal agricultural worker program, he says. In Ontario, there are about 3,000 people employed under the temporary foreign worker program in agriculture, mostly in the mushroom and greenhouse industries along with some in livestock. Most farmers use the seasonal agricultural worker program if they need temporary employees but can’t find Canadians to take the jobs. But for some sectors, such as mushrooms, the seasonal agricultural worker program isn’t available to them, Wales says.

Wales says of the approximately 100,000 people employed in agriculture in the province, about 15,000 to 16,000 are employed under the seasonal agricultural worker program.

Blenheim-area fruit and cash crop farmer Hector Delanghe, owner of Delhaven Orchards Ltd., says “as far as the seasonal agricultural worker program goes, there’s no changes.”

Delanghe says farm leaders have been lobbying to ensure agriculture doesn’t get slapped with unworkable changes to its farm employment programs.

As part of the changes announced Friday, the program is being reformed so it is clearer and has greater transparency. In addition, access to the program is being restricted to ensure Canadians have the first crack at available jobs and stronger enforcement coupled with tougher penalties are being introduced. The changes include immediately lifting the moratorium that prevented the food service sector from using the temporary foreign worker program.

Employment and Social Development Canada spokesman Eric Morrissette says by email the labour market test for all employers that allows them to bring temporary foreign workers to Canada is being changed to a new Labour Market Impact Assessment from the Labour Market Opinion. The new assessment process is more “comprehensive and rigorous,” he says. But on-farm primary agriculture and the seasonal agricultural worker program is exempt from a number of measures including:

• The new $1,000 per temporary worker fee.
• The cap on the proportion of an employers’ workforce that can be made up of low wage temporary foreign workers.
• The reduction in duration of work permits to one-year periods from the current two-year periods.
• The reduction in the period that a low-wage temporary foreign worker will be allowed to remain in Canada, but this exemption applies only to the seasonal agriculture worker program.

The exemptions are in place because “there are proven acute labour shortages in this sector and the unfilled jobs are truly temporary,” Morrissette says.

Stan Raper, United Food and Commercial Workers Union national coordinator for the Agricultural Workers Alliance, says he doesn’t think the changes will make it harder for farm employers to get foreign workers if they need them. “The real focus of the low-skilled side of it seems to be really on the service and restaurant sectors.” The government is making it harder for employers to get foreign workers in those industries. “I guess they’re arguing students or unemployed people in Canada could be taking those jobs,” he notes.

Raper says “the temporary foreign worker program was designed to be temporary but the seasonal agricultural worker program has been in place for 50 years. The last changes to the whole temporary foreign worker program were done 10 years go. These are permanent problems with temporary fixes.” BF