Food, trucking industries race to reverse provincial ban on temporary foreign workers
Premier says vacancies can be filled by foreign workers already in province, unemployed New Brunswickers
Industries that depend on temporary foreign workers say they still hope to persuade the HIggs government to reverse a ban on any more of the workers entering New Brunswick during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Premier Blaine Higgs announced the ban Tuesday but several groups and organizations say they hope to change his mind or win exemptions.
"We're not accepting that this is something that can be announced without any consultation," said Lisa Ashworth, president of the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick.
She said the consensus after an emergency conference call with her board was to keep pushing for a reversal. "It was a resounding 'continue on, we are not accepting this, this is not OK.'"
The Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association also wrote to Higgs on Wednesday urging him to consider an exemption.
"Since we are an essential service, I don't know why they put a pause on this for us," said executive director Jean-Marc Picard.
Watch: Unemployed people could fill vacant positions usually taken by temporary foreign workers, premier says
Seafood processors are also speaking to provincial officials to try to persuade them to reconsider.
"I'm certainly not prepared to throw in the towel," said Nat Richard, the manager of corporate affairs at Downeast Cape Bald Packers in Cap-Pelé. "I'm still hopeful an accommodation can be found."
Richard said the processing sector is already making stringent health measures the top priority in their plants, and it can be done without putting the sector here at a disadvantage while other provinces continue to admit foreign workers.
But Higgs remained firm at his daily COVID-19 briefing Wednesday, acknowledging the disruption but deeming it necessary.
"We must continue to exercise caution," he said. "I want to keep that death count at zero."
The premier's Tuesday announcement left producers and processors scrambling.
Trickle-down effect on prices
Tim Livingstone, whose Strawberry Hill Farm near Woodstock grows 50 different fruit and vegetable crops and sells them in boxes to hundreds of customers, says without the four Mexican workers who were due to arrive next week, his labour costs will increase.
"With our costs doubling or tripling, we have no choice but to raise food costs," he said.
That will likely lead some of his customers who can't afford the higher prices to turn to cheaper produce from other provinces.
He said he'll either go out of business or lose some customers permanently.
Higgs suggested again Wednesday that New Brunswickers, and foreign workers already in the province, could fill the labour shortages at farms and processing plants.
Since it now appears likely the federal government will allow the spring lobster season to open May 15, the premier said the province will work with processors to find the workers they need.
With 70,000 unemployed New Brunswickers and students in the province, the premier said it should be possible to fill the approximately 600 farm and fish plant vacancies.
Richard said seafood processors are ready to hire local workers first but "chronic, systemic workforce shortages" have been a fact of life in the sector for more than a decade.
And Livingstone, who already employs two New Brunswickers for every foreign worker he hires, said Higgs's idea is not as simple as it sounds.
"It takes a lot of training to get anyone who's not familiar with the day-to-day of agriculture up to speed with this," he said.
His four regular Mexican workers "walk on the farm and they know the spacing, they know how to plant, they know how to harvest all of our 50 crops. They walk in knowing all of this."
Farmer receiving mixed signals
Higgs said Wednesday he's "confident that we have the people who have the right skill set or could be trained to have the right skill set in a short period of time. … Let's give New Brunswickers a chance to show just how good we can be."
The ban on foreign workers came only a couple of weeks after Higgs mused publicly about encouraging more food production in New Brunswick to respond to the disruption to global supply chains created by COVID-19.
Livingstone said only eight per cent of vegetables consumed in New Brunswick are produced here.
"That was the message that the province relayed two weeks ago, that eight per cent was a very fragile line to be on," he said.
"We really need to bring those numbers up, but at the same time now they're saying you can't have the skilled people you need to do that, so it's a contradiction, I feel."
Higgs said the 1,500 temporary foreign workers already in the province can stay but allowing any more would risk reigniting the spread of the coronavirus, which has been on a downward trend in New Brunswick.
The federal government has offered employers $1,500 per worker to cover the costs of them self-isolating for 14 days after arriving.
According to Statistics Canada there were 1,690 temporary foreign workers in New Brunswick in 2019. The majority, 995, worked in seafood processing, while 215 drove transport trucks and 185 worked on farms. Five were doctors, all of them specialists.
Examining wages
On Twitter on Wednesday, economic development consultant David Campbell said seafood processing wages were higher than the national average a decade ago but have since dipped below.
"A little wage escalation in seafood processing is a good thing," he said, pointing out that Pêcheries Bas-Caraquet had hiked its hourly wage offer by five dollars, to $21.25 per hour, in a Facebook post Tuesday morning.
That rate "should get more interest," he said.
Listen to Lisa Ashworth of the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick explain how farmers were caught off guard by the decision
Company owner Rodolphe LeBreton told CBC News the wage increase was a bonus to attract workers during the pandemic and wasn't done to make up for the loss of foreign workers.
He said his plant has never hired foreign workers and they're not necessary. "We have enough people in Canada who aren't working," he said. "The day I have to bring foreign workers into my plant is the day I close it."
But Livingstone said not all employers can afford to raise wages.
With farmers paid by volume and workers paid by the hour, highly productive workers like the Mexicans he brings in are able to harvest more, leading to more sales that keep the farm viable.
"Our Mexican guys get paid very well," he said. "People think it's cheap. It's not. It's because they show up every day and they produce. They want to work and their output is phenomenal."
He said they're willing to work six-day work weeks, which is important for some crops that need to be picked multiple times in the same week.
"It's very tough to get Canadians to come in on the weekend at all so it's tough to get that harvest done on a critically sensitive crop, especially when weather is a factor," he said.
Ashworth said the decision caught farmers off guard, given Ottawa has opted to allow foreign workers to enter the country despite a border shutdown. "We're concerned that one province has decided to go it alone," she said.
She said farmers who don't follow strict COVID-19 guidelines risk losing the federal funding for self-isolation costs, so there's a strong incentive for them to comply.
'I am incurably optimistic'
Livingstone says he will have to decide soon whether to refund about $100,000 he has already collected from families for summer vegetable boxes — some of which he has already spent on supplies for the season.
He may also cut off any new sign-ups for boxes, and, with wage costs likely to increase, he may lose money on the boxes he's already committed to distributing.
"It's a tough spot to be in. ... We're going to take a hit one way or the other."
But he said even though Agriculture Minister Ross Wetmore told him Tuesday the decision was "a done deal," he supports any effort to change the government's mind.
"I am incurably optimistic. Maybe that's why I farm," he said.
"If there is enough pressure and enough understanding around what this means — and around the reality that food is also an important commodity that we tend to take for granted — I think it's possible that we could still see a change in that decision."
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