minute they get here, for a high-paying job in the oil business.
They’re of huge value to the agricultural economy in Canada.”
Paskal bristled at the suggestion that companies like his use
foreign workers to avoid paying proper wages.
“We treat them the same as Canadian domestic employees.
There’s no difference. They have the same entitlements to
health care, to benefit programs, to bonuses. Everyone is
treated the same here.
“It’s not that they’re cheaper—that’s not the issue here,” he
said. “They’re committed to being in agriculture.”
Paskal insisted his company does everything it can to attract
workers from within Canada. He described one recruiting drive
that took him to Port Hawkesbury in Nova Scotia.
“Not one person showed up at the job fair,” he said. “Not
one. And they’ve got 18 per cent unemployment there.”
With the tightening of the TFWP, Paskal doesn’t believe
Canadian workers will fill the void.
“I can try to pay them a competitive wage that keeps me in
business,” he said, “but I can’t hold a gun to their head and
make themmove. So, then, what am I supposed to do? As I sit
here today, we’re 10 or 15 people short.”
While Paskal frets about his company’s welfare, he also
worries about the foreign employees who depend on him.
“They’re the backbone of my company. They’ve taught us
a lot—they’ve taught us about the value of relationships, that
people aren’t just numbers. It’s probably one of the best things
I ever did in my life, to be honest with you, to bring foreign
workers.”
Paskal Cattle is just one company, but its labour frustrations
are echoed in the agriculture sector throughout the Prairies,
said Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst, executive director of the
Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC).
Domestic labour is in short supply these days, and most people
who are looking for work aren’t looking at agriculture.
“Agriculture requires people to work in atypical positions,”
she said. “It’s not a desk job within a building, with a nine-to-five
kind of schedule. It’s physically demanding work, often in rural
settings, with a 24/7 kind of operational schedule.”
In 2012, the CAHRC worked with the Agriculture and Agri-
Food Value Chain Roundtable to launch a Labour Task Force
to help craft strategies for dealing with labour shortages in the
agriculture industry. In March 2014, the task force released its
Agriculture and Agri-Food Labour Action Plan (
ccrha.ca/labour-action-plan), which calls for a twin strategy
to increase the supply of labour while also improving the
knowledge and skills of workers in the industry.
“The plan needs to be collaborative in its approach, and a
partnership between industry and government. We need to
work together on this,” said MacDonald-Dewhirst.
Recent changes to the TFWP—increased fees, shortened
work permits, caps on numbers—haven’t helped, she said.
“Things were hard already, and now they’re even more
difficult.”
She also sees people in the industry struggling to absorb the
implications.
“They’re still trying to get their heads around it. Some
elements have been communicated well, and others are still a
little fuzzy in terms of how the plan will roll out and evolve.”
At the same time, MacDonald-Dewhirst would like to see
better public awareness about the benefits Canada has seen
through the TFWP.
“It’s a challenge when only the negative stories are published,
because there are so many positive stories about the win-win
nature of the program.”
Above all, said MacDonald-Dewhirst, time is of the essence.
“We’re already in shortage. What’s going to happen five
years from now?”
MacDonald-Dewhirst would get no argument from Scott
Entz, general manager of Cargill’s meat processing facility in
High River, AB.
“We’re about 300 people short now,” he said.
Labour scarcity makes it impossible to carry on business as
usual, Entz explained.
“The first thing you do is you work more overtime, which
starts to impact our competitiveness because our costs are
higher.”
Meanwhile, the company ends up having to reduce its
emphasis on value-added products.
Spring
2015
grainswest.com
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