N.B. Farmers Say Ban On Foreign Workers Short-Sighted And Surprising
Tim Livingstone, the co-owner of Strawberry Hill Farm in Pembroke, N.B., had prepared an additional dwelling and vehicle in preparation for physical distancing and quarantine of his foreign employees in the first week of May.
He was in Mexico early this year to visit them. But his plans were disrupted Tuesday when Premier Blaine Higgs announced the province’s borders will be closed to temporary foreign workers.
On Tuesday, the provincial government updated its mandatory order under the state of emergency to restrict temporary foreign workers from entering New Brunswick.
Higgs said with many serious COVID-19 outbreaks in surrounding jurisdictions, the province’s borders must remain closed for now. The restriction doesn’t affect the status of approximately 1,500 temporary foreign workers currently in the province, many of whom are unemployed due to the pandemic. Higgs said they’ll work to place these workers in jobs where they’re needed, including farms and seafood processing plants.
“Under normal circumstances, we welcome foreign temporary workers in New Brunswick,” he said. “They play an important role in New Brunswick’s continued economic growth…But right now, the risk of allowing more people to enter the province is simply too great.”
On Wednesday, Higgs said New Brunswick has about 70,000 unemployed people, and industries that require temporary foreign workers need 600. He called on New Brunswickers to step up and fill those job vacancies. He said seasonal and casual government employees may also be called back to work.
But farmers say it’s not the number of people that’s the problem. It’s the skillset, knowledge, and willingness to do the physical work required at farms that they need from workers, said Lisa Ashworth, the president of the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick.
“We’re always willing to hire local people and train them, but there’s certainly a huge learning curve because the majority of the population is several generations removed from primary agriculture,” she said. “They’re coming in with zero knowledge of the job and the safety requirements. There are serious safety concerns with just hiring anybody
She said the sector only needs about 200 temporary foreign workers. But they play a key role in the primary production part of the supply chain.
The sector has relied on temporary foreign workers for years because recruiting locally for on-the-ground roles has` proved challenging. While the industry has some “very dedicated employees,” they’re aging and the farming lifestyle isn’t for everyone.
“The requirement to show up everyday rain or shine and put in an honest day’s hard work is one of the limiting factors,” she said. “And we can’t seem to entice people to do that no matter what the wage is, because you have to do [the work] when it needs to be done.”
Livingstone hopes the government will overturn its decision, at least before June comes around.
“I’m more worried about the harvest. Planting is an easier skill to train and even if it takes twice as long, you can get through it. But harvest is another matter,” he said. “I felt like the government was making a shortsighted decision and was not adequately listening to the stakeholders involved.”
The four employees from Mexico have been working with Livingstone six months out of the year, for between one and four years. He says they’re key staff who plant, care for, and harvest the 50 vegetable and fruit crops at the farm, including essentials like potatoes.
“They are well-trained and highly-skilled in what they do. They are a core team that allows us to hire more Canadians and allows us to do what we do,” Livingstone said. “Not bringing them in has a lot of impact on a financial, physical and emotional level on us because of the fact that we don’t have that core group that we rely on to make the farm work. So, it means that costs are likely to rise.”
Livingstone estimates, conservatively, that he’ll need two to three more people to replace each worker. That means increased labour costs, not to mention the expected high rate of turnover as people return to their previous jobs later in the farming season, and because agriculture work is not for everyone.
“We’re not talking about being trained for one crop. We’re talking about being trained for all aspects of 50 crops over the entire season,” he said. “I have had somebody in the past who didn’t know which end of a broccoli plant is in the ground. There are people who garden that aren’t starting that basic, but as a society, it’s not a skill that we all grow up with.”
“The issue is not an hourly wage, the issue is productivity….a person’s output and quality makes a huge difference,” he said.
Livingstone said he has invested “a lot” into the temporary foreign workers because it takes about a year to train them, even though they’ve experienced working on other farms.
Plus, with COVID-19 health measures from the federal and provincial governments, farmers like him have also invested in ensuring they comply with safety protocols. For Livingstone that included the added car, home, room, as well as two weeks’ worth of wages for the workers while they stay in quarantine.
Ashworth said safety is the highest priority for farmers because the workers are coming into their lives.
“We’re the first group of people who will be oversensitive to the protocols to keep our families and employees safe because we can’t afford to close down a farm. Many people will go bankrupt if they have an outbreak,” she said. “So we’ve already invested in these protocols and now as planting is getting ready to start, we found out that that was a waste of money and we also don’t have a labour force.”
Scaling Back Operations
Although Livingstone is seeing record demand as people are more interested in local food, he’s thinking of scaling back operations because of the high costs.
That will trickle down to consumers, and Livingstone is worried that could spell food insecurity for his vulnerable customers, including seniors who are on fixed incomes.
Strawberry Hill Farms produces vegetables and fruits, and livestock meats and eggs. It supplies hundreds of families through its weekly vegetable box program. It also sells through an online shop and wholesale to smaller retailers.
“These are serious concerns that we have. We’re trying to develop a plan to deal with it but it’s challenging.”
A Surprising Decision
Livingstone and Ashworth said the province’s decision came as a surprise.
In late March, the federal government said temporary foreign workers will be allowed in the country, provided they comply with public health measures.
On Friday, they said they received a guidance document on how to manage temporary foreign workers.
All of the directives until Tuesday led farmers to continue preparing for the workers to arrive, promising to honour labour agreements with workers in Latin America and the Caribbean whose families rely on that income, Ashworth said. Most of the workers are supposed to arrive in May or June and stay until September or October.
Besides, Ashworth said “the first step” for the provinces to have more food security and be self-sufficient – something Higgs noted last week – is to have a reliable workforce. Many of the farmers AANB represents have told Ashworth they may not be able to plant, and harvest if they don’t have the workers they need.
But on Wednesday, Higgs said meetings about restricting foreign workers had taken place before Friday and that it’s a move that requires action.
He cited Singapore’s spike in COVID-19 cases that were due to foreign workers. Media reports including from the National Post said the high numbers – 15,000 confirmed cases overall – are largely because hundreds of thousands of migrant workers were housed in cramped accommodation.
Higgs said while he’s sympathetic to the plight of the agriculture and fishing industry, “these are not ordinary circumstances.”
“We’ll work with every farmer so they can produce as much this year as they did in previous years because our goal is to get back to the new norm and a production system that feeds our population,” he said.
Ashworth said farmers want a conversation with the government about the move.
“We would like further clarification on why, if we follow Health Canada and World Health Organization recommendations, the statement is that we’re increasing the risk to the population,” she said.
Livingstone also wonders why the risk calculation from a one-time entry of foreign workers is different from truck drivers who are crossing borders daily to bring in food and other products from Quebec, Ontario or the U.S.
Some workers also still cross the border from other provinces for various commercial projects. The premier said Wednesday border activity is under ongoing scrutiny, but noted the need to balance that with keeping businesses running.
The premier said the government will go through the 600 applications for temporary foreign workers to come to New Brunswick to “understand the specific needs of each company or each profession, and then make the decision based on that.”
“To say it’s an absolute would be unfair until I understand the criteria for the current 600 that I’m aware of,” he said.