Okanagan farmers, and farmers across the country have growing concerns over whether they’ll have enough employees to have quality and quantity crops this year. Foreign workers are experiencing delays in attaining work Visas do to a new system of processing.
Glen Lucas, Manager of the BC Fruit Growers Association says he’s heard of delays lasting over 2 months. “That has delayed the start of our season which is really of great concern to us because that really impacts the quality of the fruit. Just tending the orchard, you can’t delay things, the season happens whether you have workers or not so we need those workers in a timely fashion.”
Lucas says it was reported to him that as of March 13th applications had been submitted for 17,800 foreign workers by Canadian farmers, 8800 of those have been authorized, and 7600 are still being processed.
He stresses the increase in dependency on foreign workers for Canadian farms. “This year, as in normal years, experiencing a shortage in local workers…that shortage is getting worse every year. Mainly because of demographics in Canada. We just have fewer younger people for the pool of jobs that is available and those young people tend to want to work in the cities rather than on farms.”
Lucas did say there’s been improvement in the Visa process over the past few weeks, since complaints from farmers to the federal government. “The Canadian embassy in Mexico, instead of rejecting work permit applications for the smallest reason, they’re now communicating with the Mexican government to correct those small errors. We’re hopefully that will be eliminated in time.” He says farm leaders are also working with Service Canada to improve processing for the seasonal agriculture worker program.
BC farms employ around 7000 seasonal workers each year. Half of those are in the Okanagan.