JUNE 2018 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC
15 Labour tops issues as hothouse growers meet
Foreign worker programs continue to
frustrate growers
by PETER MITHAM SURREY – Ottawa was
square in the sights of the BC Greenhouse Growers Association (BCGGA) when members met for its annual general meeting in Surrey on April 20.
While finance minister Bill
Morneau received kudos for reversing course on changes proposed last year regarding income-splitting, growers had fallout from several other federal matters on their minds.
The biggest and most
pressing was labour, given delays in securing foreign workers and in some cases greater scrutiny of the on-farm conditions workers face. “We’re trying to figure out who does what, where, how the different pieces fit together, and when you’re doing your LMIA [Labour Market Impact Assessment] and trying to get your workers, where does that request go along in the whole process? And it’s not been an easy task to try to figure that out,” said keynote speaker Rebecca Lee, executive director with the Canadian Horticultural Council (CHC). “One of the things that we came up with very quickly on this is that the people who are doing the work in Ottawa have no idea what’s going on, really, at the farm level.” Lee’s comments summarized what many BC growers have been saying for months. Whether it’s trying to get information out of the quake-ravaged offices of
Delays in securing foreign farm workers this year has growers seeing red. SEAN HITREC FILE PHOTO
Mexico’s labour ministry or squaring off against government officials at home, many say there needs to be greater understanding of how the delays are impacting farm operations. “It’s a joke. How are we supposed to run businesses?” exclaimed Peter Cummings in his final address as president and chair of the association. “We’ve got the bureaucrats running around out here and in Ottawa who don’t have a clue what it means if you don’t get your labour on time. It’s an absolute disgrace.” CHC organized tours this spring to improve bureaucrats’ understanding of farm operations and the role of foreign workers. Unfortunately, some of the
farms later faced government audits. “We were a little taken
aback by that, to say the least,” Lee said.
Grabbing the bull by the
horns, industry and government sat down May 3 for roundtable discussions in Ottawa. The Canadian Federation of
Agriculture, Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) and CHC as well as the BC Agriculture Council presented their concerns to staff from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the two key ministries
See LABOUR on next page o
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