Solving the seasonal agricultural worker crisis

Despite the federal government's new reforms in the use of temporary foreign workers following revelations in the media of abuse and misuse of the program, the agricultural stream of the temporary foreign worker program has remained practically untouched. In fact the program has been flourishing, having gone from 13,590 approved positions in 2005 to 39,700 in 2012 - with nearly 3/4 of total approved positions being through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP).

Many Canadians are starting to feel cheated by the temporary foreign worker program with the number of temporary immigrants admitted now being higher than the number of permanent immigrants. They feel cheated out of jobs that, in a weakened Canadian economy, could potentially be going to Canadians or be used to bring permanent new arrivals.

But to this, Canadian farmers can only shrug. After all the federal government seems to agree with them, there is enough a demonstrated lack of available seasonal agricultural workers to merit the protection of the SWAP. Just listen to Mr. Edwin Klassen, manager of a potato farm in Manitoba, as he tells of the human resource difficulties being faced by farms,

“If I got three skilled applicants today I’d hire them on the spot... Right now the labour market is very tight. I’m getting very few quality applicants for hire,” says Klassen. “I’ve been in this position for five years and in the past I would very often have had a list of anywhere from 10 to 20 applicants who would want to be grading potatoes, and since last summer that list is down to two or three.”


“I know that other potato growers and cereal farms are drawing labour from Winkler, Morden and other areas as well,” says Klassen. “Quite a few grain farms are operating 10,000 to 20,000 acres, so they have a workforce of a dozen or more. They’re all looking for the same skills — guys who can operate equipment or repair a piece of equipment.”

The catch of course is that the positions this company is having great difficulty filling are seasonal jobs, guaranteeing employment for a few months at best, and they are requesting workers with a fairly wide breadth of specific skills already under their belt.

It may be a hard pill for farmers to swallow, but seasonal jobs are not a liveable income for workers. The reason you can't find help is that no skilled, experienced worker is going to take a job with zero job security that will only provide for them and their family for a few months. A worker with marketable skills will only take work that, at the very least, provides a liveable income and a significant degree of job security.

So what are the alternatives? Let's break down a few.

1) Student summer jobs

With most seasonal positions needing to be filled over the summer season, an obvious choice is the one segment of the population who are available for hire during the summer only - students. And there's certainly no shortage of summer student labour. This summer alone 460,581 Canadian post-secondary students were looking for but unable to find a summer job, with the post-secondary student unemployment rate sitting at 16.5% percent this summer. Over twice the rate of the general population.

Around the end of the school year farmers should be trying to advertise a summer job in places where students can see it. Colleges and universities typically have summer placement centres of some sort that will be glad to take your job posting. It's also possible to hire students who enrolled in college programs with cooperative education components, especially in the many horticultural programs in Ontario colleges.

2) Apprenticeships and cooperative education

Most farmers are seeking out workers who already have the fairly wide breadth of skills required in agriculture under their belts instead of training workers themselves. This is a missed opportunity since training itself is a form of payment which costs little to the farmer but is invaluable to many, especially so young workers trying to get a start on their career.

A common route that many youth are happy to go is apprenticeships - with more provinces rolling out agricultural apprenticeship programs such as the dairy, swine and fruit farm apprenticeships in Ontario, the farm technician program in PEI or the "green certificate" programs in Alberta. Taking on apprentices is also rewarded with tax breaks and wage subsidies that offset the cost of taking on full-time workers.

3) Coopératives d’utilisation de main-d’œuvre

A popular system in Québec translating to "cooperative for the use of labour", it involves several local farms coming together to form an association which employs full-time, salaried workers collectively. The workers are shared between the farms, which are quite often involved in completely different facets of production than one another, allowing the workers to be engaged throughout the year working with many different crops.

The primary advantage to the farmer is that they have the benefit of multiple skilled workers available throughout the year at a fraction of a cost of engaging full-time workers; the primary advantage to the worker is that the employment is full-time rather than seasonal with high job security. This solution requires quite a bit of cooperation with your fellow farmers, but if you're on good terms with your neighbours this can save you a mint in labour costs.

*****

Agriculture is the basis of the rural economy. When agricultural producers are unable to provide an employment model which is viable for workers and are forced to rely on temporary foreign labour - who contribute nothing to the economy, and instead export their wages back to their home country - there is a crisis at hand.

Farmers have a responsibility to ensure the vitality of rural communities. Rather than depending upon a broken program extended by a government which is more than happy to introduce anything which dilutes the local labour market and thus the conditions of working class Canadians, farmers should be finding innovative and cooperative solutions to create viable employment opportunities, especially for the youth, who are the future of our rural communities.

Where were eastern Ontario's public colleges when Kemptville needed them?

Province-appointed facilitator Lyle Vanclief addresses the public
at the July 16th town hall meeting in Kemptville. He refused to take
any questions.  (Image: Nick Gardiner, The Recorder and Times)

As many of you already know, on March 12th the University of Guelph announced that it will be closing its two Ontario Agricultural College campuses in Kemptville and Alfred, leaving the only remaining agricultural diploma in the province at Ridgetown in Kent county - a campus located over 600km away from most eastern Ontarians and teaching for entirely different agricultural conditions.

In their March 12th statement the university attempted to justify its austerity actions,

"Despite efforts over the past several years to introduce new revenue-generating educational programs and attract new students, enrolment at both campuses remains stagnant while operating costs have increased. Costs per full-time equivalent student are substantially higher at these campuses..."

The wording of the announcement is very telling. The decision was not educationally motivated but financially - what they call "stagnant" enrolment rates have been consistent without decrease ever since U of G took over Kemptville operations in 1997.

Kemptville is being discarded as a bad investment by the university, regardless of its essential nature to the economy of eastern Ontario, it failed to be "revenue-generating". I for one was under the impression that colleges were a public service, not a source of revenue for university administrators to furnish their sunshine list salaries.

I myself was hoping to attend Kemptville this September and was shocked by the news. Kemptville has been an institution among eastern Ontario farmers for nearly 100 years. Any and every kid hoping to take over the family farm went to Kemptville if they could. For generations it has been the basis of farm education in our communities, and without it a whole generation of rural youth will be without access to the latest agricultural knowledge.

Fortunately for me there was an alternative. Immediately after the closure announcement for Campus d'Alfred talks were underway with Collège boréal and La Cité collégiale, Ontario's two French-language colleges, to keep the doors of the tiny francophone campus open. In the end a funding partnership with Collège boréal, through which Alfred already had a partnership for its veterinary program, managed to save the campus. By March 29th the institution was once again accepting applications, just over two weeks after the official announcement of closure.

Other prospective Kemptville students are not so lucky to be bilingual as I am. For them, the choice faced right now is between a jump to the other side of the province and abandoning the family farm, or no education at all.

So, while Ontario's French language colleges immediately came to the aid of Campus d'Alfred, where were the English language colleges of eastern Ontario?

Afterall the Kemptville College Renewal Task Force, a committee formed by the Kemptville College Foundation, announced on April 8th that they were in talks with St Lawrence and Algonquin colleges. Yet by a month to the day later when the task force launched a formal request for expressions of interest, it seems the colleges had lost interest.

When I was in Kemptville on July 16th for a town hall meeting (that's me with the ponytail in the video!), we were informed that the task force had received only two formal expressions of interest by the May 28th deadline - one from a private sector group and one from a public sector group, both of which were said to be "international" (as in, not Canadian institutions) but remained unnamed.

Furthermore we were told that at this point Kemptville would not be resuming operations in time for September, and that even a potential September 2015 start date was unlikely at this time. The solution that was ultimately reached for the interim was having the municipality of North Grenville operate the college itself, a task it was willing to take up so long as it could be assured that municipal taxpayers wouldn't be footing the bill. Since this solution requires both negotiations with Guelph over their "intellectual property" (the agriculture diploma program) and negotiations with the province over funding, the task force informed us they were expecting a three-year period before the college would be up and running once more.

So what happened to the interested colleges? It couldn't be that they got cold feet about having satellite campuses since St Lawrence College already has three campuses, as does Algonquin. At any rate we weren't getting any answers from the task force as to why the colleges had dumped them - when asked outright, the task force dodged the question. Presumably because any negotiations which took place were strictly confidential. 

From Algonquin we can get a bit of information from the minutes of the Algonquin President's Council for their March 12th and April 2nd meetings,

"PC members discussed the potential impact and opportunities of the closure on Algonquin College and agreed it will conduct a high level financial and academic program review of the Kemptville College entity and report back to PC by the end of June on what opportunities may be available..."

The minutes give a report back date of April 2nd. Sure enough in the April 2nd meetings, we see this,

"C. Brulé updated PC members on the review of the University of Guelph's Kemptville campus. Discussion included steps taken to date, anticipated next steps and the expected frequency of the exchange of updated information. Discussion followed regarding apprenticeship and communication strategy."

And then, nothing. The minutes list no follow-up date, and Kemptville isn't mentioned in any subsequent PC meetings. From St Lawrence we get even less information, the minutes of the May 6th meeting of the Board of Governors gives a brief mention by Vice President Academic Lorraine Carter,

"The Sr. Vice-President provided a quick verbal update on Kemptville, pointing out that the team is still looking at ways that St. Lawrence College could support this demographic"

I've sent an email to both Claude Brulé and Lorraine Carter, who are mentioned in the minutes, to ask whether Algonquin or St Lawrence respectively plans to be involved in the Kemptville renewal process but as of yet I've received no response. I haven't got high hopes that I'll receive anything but the same vague answers provided at the town hall meeting.

One thing's for certain, both St Lawrence and Algonquin definitely chose to abandon Kemptville and consequently abandon all of eastern Ontario's agricultural communities. Perhaps they made the same revenue-based analysis that U of G had made. Both of these colleges have much larger budgets than Collège boréal and yet were seemingly unwilling to come to the aid of this vital educational institution in their locale the way boréal did so swiftly. And without these colleges' aid on the horizon, the future of agricultural education in the province looks bleak indeed.