Seasonal agricultural worker program generates jobs for Canadians too, study says

Monday, February 1, 2016

by SUSAN MANN

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker program is the key reason the Ontario horticultural sector generates $5.4 billion in economic activity and is responsible for generating 34,280 jobs for Canadian residents, according to a new study measuring the program’s impact.

The study was commissioned by the Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services (FARMS), which administers the seasonal worker program. It was completed by Guelph-based Agri-Food Economic Systems.

FARMS president Ken Forth says the organization commissioned the study “because we wanted somebody who is independent to show that we cause economic activity here. Since we (horticultural farmers) bring in 17,000 workers, we cause about 34,000 Canadian jobs to happen.”

The organization also wanted to demonstrate that if the seasonal workers aren’t employed on the farms, “those 34,000 Canadians will also lose their jobs,” notes Forth, a vegetable farmer from Lynden.

Without his seasonal workers to plant, take care of and harvest his broccoli, Forth says he’d have no need to hire trucking to transport his broccoli to market or buy packaging for the crop.

Forth notes without the seasonal agricultural worker program, the horticultural sector “becomes a cottage industry in Ontario.”

The seasonal worker program has been in place since 1966. It was established to respond to a critical shortage of available domestic farm workers, according to a news release from FARMS on the study. The program fulfills the same role today as it did in 1966 and provides farmers with supplementary seasonal workers from Mexico, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad/Tobago and the Eastern Caribbean states.

The important caveat attached to the program since its inception, that employers must first try to find Canadian workers to fill their job vacancies before hiring seasonal workers from participating countries, still applies today. And the shortage of Canadian agricultural workers that farmers experienced 50 years ago is still a factor these days.

The release says a chronic labour shortage continues to “challenge the agricultural sector due to aging demographics, competition with other sectors and fewer numbers of young people pursing careers in farming. As a result, the demand for workers under the SAWP (seasonal agricultural worker program) is projected to remain steady.”
 
In Ontario, about 1,450 farms hire about 17,000 seasonal workers annually. Forth says the seasonal employees can work on Canadian farms for up to eight months each year but on average they’re here for 22 weeks annually. Many workers return to the same farms each year. BF