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
Comments
So we have agriculture with an exemption but yet we as tax payers pay for lazy ass people to collect welfare .
Take the exemption for ag away and get rid of welfare and there will all kinds of people ready and in need of work .
Yeah we have all kinds of people who could be doing these jobs but do you think they have a chance? Why would these farmers hire some toothless old broke-down welfare recipient when for the same price (ie. minimum wage) they can get some healthy 35-year old from Mexico? Obviously the ease of getting TFWs have pushed some of the more undesirable people (old,ugly, poor, slow, uneducated) out of the labour market and onto the welfare rolls, where as you say, us taxpayers are expected to support them.
Many people are in homeless shelter or on welfare because either because their insurance company did not pay after accident or disability and are unable to work hard long days. Welfare is a needed floor that prevent people from living on the street or having to steal food to eat. Many of these same farmers that want to get rid of welfare would very unhappy if people cameinto their field and started to harvest crop to eat.
It is one thing to be sympathetic to those who truly need the help but there are so many , generations actually who are screwing the system .
If you think people aren't stealing from farmers already then you are very much so mistaken . There are people who think a farmers land is their land to use and is public park land .
It is extremely difficult for the farm community to chastise those who appear to be "screwing the system" or "stealing from farmers" especially when our own entitlement programs such as supply management and ethanol mandates allow us to do exactly the same thing and, in supply management's case, have allowed us to do so for the better part of a generation.
In addition, farmers should be big supporters of welfare because it allows people to be able to afford to purchase the products giving us our entitlements.
Or, to look at it another way, without generous welfare programs, the consumption of milk in Canada would be far-lower than the point to which rip-off supply management pricing policies have already driven it.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Many people use farmers land as their own. This is true and wrong for them to do.IT is also wrong to think more people will work cheaper if we do away with safety nets. People will steel before they go hungry.
There may be all kinds of people looking for a pay cheque but that isn't the same as looking for work.
A 50% wage subsidy for people on welfare to work on farms plus increasing TFWs wages by $5.00 per hour half going to the worker and the other half going to help pay the wages of these (welfare bums).
The farmers should also have to pay the $1,000 fee per worker
They should be limited to 200 manweeks per farm per year not to used in the packing lines. They should allow 1 worker per farm from dec 10 to march 30. One TFW worker permit per year free then $1,000 per TFW for the next 9.
TFW.(s) on farms need to have more inspections and much higher wages
Old? We have age discrimination laws which employers customarily ignore. Ugly? As you. How about fat? As you. Poor? So you're a freak billionaire? I make a k/hr on it's way to 2k. So according to your own stipulations your rate of pay qualifies you as a loser. Who voted you as arbiter ahole?. So, I vote that poor is less than 1k/hr. earners. Slow? Still got your grandpa's whip? Uneducated? What's your posted IQ genius? If it's less than mine then you're the new loser class. Firsthand, employers are running recruiter tag team scams for further wage and admin subsidies which recruits must agree to pay/funnel on the recruiter side or it's NEXT. Employers crying that they can't find workers? I know of people fired to make room for foreign workers the minute they landed. Applications from Canadians deleted, thrown out and otherwise dismissed. They are lying when they say they can't find Canadians to do the work. They post that they need 100 if 20% is the new limit in order to get their 20 that they already had last year with 40 total employees. Scam freak program. Just to ice the deal the employers throw credit, bonding, background checks, driver's abstracts, urine and blood testing onto the pile and plead can't find anyone after doing all possible to push Canadians out. Muskrat Falls has to hire Aboriginals first, Newfies second. Who needs Canadians? In Quebec, NB it's French first. In the North it's Aboriginals first. In all other places those same people who accept back of the bus for Canadians they demand equal opportunity. Effing system. According to some commentators we should execute the homeless and starve the rest. Welfare people live a prison sentence with a near impossible way to escape. The urban legend that welfare is a surfer bum paradise simply shows gross ignorance and the perspective of a coward. If anyone needs to work harder to solve this issue, then it's the owners. The griping is just a smokescreen to put downward pressure on wages. Used to be proud to be called Ind businessman. Now these same tards I would fold before I'd hire them. If you don't want to hire Canadians so much that you're willing to lower your character to that of a gutter snipe then leave me country. No-one's stopping you. If your own very survival depended on hiring Cdns then it would all be solved in months nationwide.
Many farms and trucking companies hire offshore workers only because they are cheaper. Any farm or trucking company or fast food place should limited to 10,000 hour per year of offshore worker above that, the company should have to pay $15.00 per hour plus free housing and free internet. Then the demand for TFWs would drop sharply.
The seasonal worker program should shut down until ever farmer using it can show that they could not get people already living Canada to the job at $15.00 per hour
Many farmer do not seem to understand that in Canada people can not drive 20 km to work pay rent and put 2 kids trough college on $11.00 per hour and sent home on rain days.
The orchards in BC are getting around the system by advertising online and in the papers but never responding to the Canadians who apply for the jobs. I have years of experience and apply for the jobs and never get a reply from many of these orchards and they have Mexicans working every season. When we went in person to one orchard they told us that they only hire Mexicans. Another orchard laid off all the Canadians after cherries finished , only to keep the Mexicans for the apple harvest.
Many greenhouses in ontario are doing the same thing limit all farms to 5,000 hours of offshore labour per year. Also limit all other corp(s) to 3 offshore worker per year.
They will not hire people already HERE
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