Okay, thank you.

Has your organization heard any concerns about exploitation or maltreatment of people who have come in under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, or would you be an organization that would hear about them if there were such concerns or complaints?

I don’t think we would necessarily be an organization to hear it directly. We would hear it in the media, perhaps, and we monitor things relating to the industry.

From my vantage point, there is a low percentage of workers in the food system who are temporary foreign workers. From what I understand, reading the evaluation reports from the government, the number of inspections that have found non-compliance is very low as well. Certainly, the media stories that we do see are a very small number of the overall numbers of temporary foreign workers. But the bad news gets coverage.

Right.

The vast majority of the inshore fisheries are from small communities, with the local captain and the crew is different, but the harvesting plants tend to be in larger communities, although they bring in people from different places.

Have you heard of any challenges for temporary foreign workers who might be racialized or from different kinds of source countries having difficulties making the transition into small fishing communities or within the slightly larger communities where the plants are located?

Our plants are still located in relatively small communities. There are not that many in Halifax, for example. Whether they’re in Lockeport, Dartmouth or Shelburne, they’re still relatively small communities.

I think it just gets back to the fact that there are fewer community organizations and municipal supports for migrant workers to integrate more smoothly into some of those smaller communities. That’s a challenge, but that’s not just for seafood; I think that applies to small rural communities in agriculture across the country as well.

Thank you very much.

I am afraid maybe you will not be able to answer my question, because it goes into the line of what Senator Kutcher has already asked. I want to have your comments on working conditions and the welfare of the migrant workers.

You talked about the media and the stories, but I was more concerned about a study that came out from Dalhousie University last March. They did have interviews with 15 migrant workers from New Brunswick. It really painted a very disturbing story on low pay, long hours and overcrowding.

My understanding is that your organization — it’s not what you do — monitoring, documenting, knowing about those things. That’s what I’m understanding.

How about recommendations? Does your organization have a position on the recommendations that we hear and see in this report? We’ve heard them here as well on work permits and not employer-specific, that sort of matter. Do you have a position on those recommendations, or do you have recommendations when it comes to welfare?

Our companies are leaders in the industry on sustainability and we do our best in terms of attracting our workforce and treating them well.

My personal reaction to the recommendation of open permits is that the program is already very costly. That would add more risk to the companies trying to get temporary foreign workers; if they were allowed to come and then quickly move to another employer, it would create more problems than it would solve.

In the case of any abuses or anything like that, there’s already a provision for a temporary transfer, or more effective transfer in the case of an abuse. We just need to make sure that those provisions are used effectively.

Thank you.

Mr. Lansbergen, I want to follow up on Senator Petitclerc’s question about the report from New Brunswick. You stated that the 15 respondents to the report are not representative of the makeup of your workforce, yet you stated earlier that you don’t gather evidence on migrant workers in your workforce. Help me with my confusion here.

Certainly. In preparation for this appearance, I looked at evaluation reports from ESDC and at reports from the Cooper Institute. The report itself said there were over 2,000 temporary foreign workers in New Brunswick in that given year. To me, 15 interviews out of 2,000 doesn’t sound like a representative sample, and certainly not statistically significant if it was a quantitative sample.

In terms of Canada as a whole, in 2021, there were 61,000 temporary foreign workers out of employment in the agriculture and agri-food sector of 2.1 million, which would represent about 3%. Temporary foreign worker use is still a small part of the overall labour force in our food system, but it is an important one to address some of the labour challenges that we do have.

Thank you. You may well know that members of this committee will be embarking on a fact-finding mission. We will go to New Brunswick and P.E.I., so we will dig a little further.

I want to ask you a question about open work permits. Again, in response to your answer to Senator Petitclerc, you said there is a concern that people with open work permits will move from one employer to another. Is that not the cost of doing business? Isn’t that what employees do all the time: make a choice?

Yes, certainly. However, I think that in terms of the cost of participating in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, there are additional costs outside of attracting a Canadian or a permanent resident to work for you. They first have to show that there’s no Canadian available to work in the position. They then have to conduct the Labour Market Impact Assessment, try to attract a worker from a foreign country and work with that government as well as with the authorities here. There are additional costs already in the program. If it’s an open permit where the worker could leave easily, that adds to the risk.

Okay. Thank you very much for that answer.

[Translation]

Given the aging population across Canada — in the Atlantic region as well — how can you manage this through the opportunity to hire international students?

When they arrive, do they go straight into this industry? Have they been hired for it? Also, from the moment they get their permanent residency permit, are you aware of any of them wanting to change options, or are there so few options that they don’t move? Are you aware of any such situations?

That’s a good question.

[English]

I think attracting university students and graduate students to the industry is as challenging as it is to attract unskilled labour to our industry — certainly, the better educated the more mobile you are.

We see a lack of fisheries scientists in government and universities who conduct the core fisheries science. FCC has started an annual scholarship to help attract fisheries scientists in universities.

In terms of other skilled trades, like engineers, certainly for the vessels, we compete with other sectors like oil and gas. That’s a challenge, because they tend to pay even more than we do.

It will continue to be a challenge, particularly because, as you said, we have an aging workforce. We need to continue doing as much as we can.

[Translation]

The industry is very diversified. The fisheries can be very different from one to the next. The association representation of the industry is diverse because of this. The companies and harvesters, even for their own organizations, tend to look to us for certain things and it tends to be a little narrower.

Quite frankly, I’d be at a loss to identify an organization with the particular mandate to help address some of those issues. For us, it’s not within our mandate.

I’ve heard about all the challenges in your region. I understand that it’s the community organizations in a region that usually plan programs to welcome newcomers. From what I understand — I don’t know if I understood correctly — some organizations tend not to encourage newcomers; did I understand correctly?

I see. Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Lansbergen, thank you for being here, for your testimony and for your responses so far. I think some of the questions I’m going to ask you will follow up on some of the questions my colleagues have already asked and you’ve not been able to answer. For the record, I’m going to ask again and ask that you provide this information to us in writing after today.

One of my questions has to do with the host countries of the temporary foreign workers. I would like you to provide that information to us. That’s following up on Senator Kutcher’s question.

I’d also like to follow up on Senator Osler’s question around gender and bring an intersectional lens to that and ask for intersectional data around gender and also around race and disabilities. I’d be really interested in knowing who is currently participating in the industry from those intersectional identities and which host countries you are attracting temporary foreign workers from. I know you won’t have that information. I’m tabling it so you can get that to us. Thank you in advance.

Now, a question I hope you can answer: In your testimony you alluded to one of the reasons for there being a labour shortage was because of one’s perception of the working conditions. I would like you to say a bit more about that. What are the perceptions of the working conditions that are keeping folks on the East and West Coasts from going to these jobs that you describe as very attractive ones?

Right. The processing plants are a cool, wet environment, so not everybody wants to work in an environment like that. On the vessels, certainly for the offshore fleet, they go out on a voyage for several weeks at a time, so they’re away from their families. It’s long hours when they’re on the vessel, and it’s hard work. Not everybody would necessarily be attracted to that. To compensate, we try to offer the best wage as possible as well as benefits and things like that.

In an evaluation that ESDC did, they had a survey of Canadians and the top reasons why they are not interested in applying for positions in our sector are: 37% said hard work and physical labour; Twenty-seven per cent was non-standard work schedule, which would probably lean more toward the vessels; remote location, the double-edged sword of small communities; uninteresting work and repetitive, 21%; temporary and seasonal jobs at 19%; and, poor working environment at 18%. I guess there are multiple answers that you can give because it adds up to more than 100%, but those were the responses that came up in the evaluation. I would have to say they’re probably fairly reasonable. Some people like the type of work and some people don’t.