The Human Resources and Training Coordinator with Manitoba Pork says the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program has been a valuable source of workers for the province’s pork industry, especially in remote areas.
The Manitoba government has announced changes to the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program designed to improve processing times for immigrants recruited to work in Manitoba and fast-track nominations.
The provincial program allows employers to recruit foreign workers without the need for a labor market assessment, a time consuming requirement of the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Janice Goldsborough, the Human Resources and Training Coordinator with Manitoba Pork, says, the desire is to hire locally but in areas where there’s low unemployment, especially remote areas, it’s difficult for pork producers to find workers.
A lot of our independent pork producers have used this program to get workers in faster to fill more of the entry level type positions such as the farm tech workers, the hog farm workers.
Maple Leaf and HyLife, our two larger producers, have also taken advantage of the program to get people, especially HyLife, for their processing plant. Maple Leaf as well for their plant out in Brandon has used the program to get people in faster.
In terms of the location, it’s basically been all over the province. Again Neepawa for HyLife, Brandon for Maple Leaf and the independents, they’ve been all over the province but especially in more remote areas where it’s harder to find local workers.
~ Janice Goldsborough, Manitoba Pork
Manitoba’s most recent labour market forecast projects 177,800 job openings in the province between now and 2021, with demand spread across multiple sectors and at least 25 per cent of projected openings are expected to be filled by immigrants.
