The Director of International Trade, Government and Media Relations with the Canadian Meat Council, says, as new free trade agreements come into force, lost opportunities in Canada’s meat processing sector as a result of a shortage of workers will increase.
The federal government has announced plans to launch a full-scale review of the recently revised Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Revisions that have hurt meat processors were the annual reductions in the allowable number of foreign workers from 30 percent to 20 percent to 10 percent and the reduction in the period of time foreign workers can remain in Canada from 2 years to 1 year and in the renewal from 2 years to 1 year.
Ron Davidson, the Director of International Trade, Government and Media Relations with the Canadian Meat Council, says timing of this review is extremely important.
We have plants today that are operating with 100 or 200 empty positions. These plants have opportunities to produce more value added products. They have opportunities waiting to export. Canada has an advantage in the agriculture food industry and we are missing opportunity throughout the world because we aren’t able to have enough workers for our plants so timing is important.
It’s particularly even more important as we look forward to the new export opportunities provide by the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Canadian Europe trade agreement because currently we don’t have workers to increase production for these new export markets. It would be a matter of shifting product from existing markets to those markets so we really do need the workers, we need them now and we’re going to need them even more so very shortly.
Davidson says it’s important to have the workers to keep our plants competitive so they can stay in business even until we gain access to these new export markets.
