The Chair of Manitoba Pork says it appears adjustments being made by the new federal government to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program will make it more responsive to the needs of the pork industry.
The issue of access to labor was among the topics discussed this week as Manitoba Pork held its Fall Producer Meetings in Niverville and Portage la Prairie.
George Matheson, the Chair of Manitoba Pork, says working in a swine barn can be hard dirty work and a lot of young people would prefer to do something else and a lot of the barns are located in remote areas away from urban areas but many people prefer to live close to major centres so it’s been difficult to access domestic help fro quite some time.
On the federal scene, with the government now in power for about a year, one of the big issues we had was the source of labor that we need for our plants and for our barns often has been coming from the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The previous government made adjustments that were not going to work for us. They were going to make it more difficult for us to access a labour source. This federal government, we feel will allow these foreign workers to stay in the country longer, hopefully gain some English skills that will allow them to apply for citizenship and then become full time residents and part of this country.
On the processors side the previous government had restricted the percent of foreign workers that could work at the plant and this new government has expanded that so that more foreign workers can work in our processing plants. This government seems to be stepping back and making adjustments so that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program can work for the pork industry.
~ George Matheson, Manitoba Pork
Matheson says both producers and processors had relied on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to fill positions that would have remained vacant and the changes being made to the program now are a step in the right direction.
