Migrant Workers

Migrant Workers

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
I had an intriguing discussion with Ken Forth, president of a Canadian Foreign Agricultural Service: "We do employ a lot of Canadians but there is not enough. There is not enough Canadians looking for a seasonal job because on average our seasonal workers come in for an average of 22 to 26 weeks. Canadians are looking for full-time employment. This does not fit the bill if they want a job. What you said about the dairy industry out there, if it weren't for migrant workers they wouldn't be in business, well if it weren't for migrant workers in Ontario there would be no horticulture industry to speak of, it would be turned back to a cottage industry. Every major city has people with the cardboard signs saying something like anything helps, if you stop and say I'll pay you $20 an hour to pick cherries they will say no I make more money begging. It is the same kind of issue here. As I say, we hired day workers who come and go all the time. I hired a small crew to plant because we were harvesting and planting at the same time, the weather being what it is, we were just up against it for a few weeks and we tried to hire some local Canadians. The first day we had enough to fill the transplant or, the second day we were minus a worker, the third day we were -3 workers. Even small farms today are multimillion dollar liabilities. If we plant that crop and we cannot harvest it, who is going to pay us. We hire Canadians but there are just plain not enough who want to do this kind of work. The people out of Mexico and the Caribbean, most of them are farmers or farm oriented.
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