Ontario growers worried over COVID travel restrictions and migrant worker mobility
Canada is reliant on foreign workers for its food supply. In a normal year, some 24,000 seasonal agriculture workers will arrive at the nation’s farms and orchards. Most come from Mexico and the Caribbean, but the federal government suspended commercial flights from those locations on Jan. 31.
Ken Forth, President of the Foreign Agriculture Resource Management Service, said they have the resources to get workers on Canadian soil. We can book total airplanes, like we can book charter flights. And that s what we re doing now, he told toronto.ctvnews.ca..
TORONTO With the growing season starting in a month, fruit farmer John Thwaites doesn t know how much of his workforce will be available. At this point, I m not 100 per cent sure that all the men are going to make it, he says. Thwaites farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake is one of over 2,000 in Canada using seasonal foreign workers. He employs 60 men in a season, and some have been working there for 20 years. He says they lost 40 percent of their asparagus crop last year because of difficulty getting workers to Canada. He hopes that won t happen again this year. Rules change from week to week, as we know. And we re always concerned that governments may change their minds on letting the men in, he says.