Does VFF use imported farm labor? In April, flights arrived in Canada carrying thousands of temporary foreign workers destined to begin jobs on farms across the country. Their labour is so crucial to food production in Canada, that federal and provincial governments resolved to ensure they could arrive, despite borders being slammed shut due to COVID-19.
Ottawa put in place rules requiring employers to ensure the newly arrived workers could be quarantined at their workplaces for two weeks and have proper access to meals and health supplies. The federal government announced support for farms and food producers to the tune of $1,500 for each worker to help cover the extra costs of ensuring the workers could be isolated for two weeks.
Around the same time, two planes carrying hundreds of temporary foreign workers landed in Vancouver. But those workers were not whisked away to the farms where they were to be employed for the season. Instead, they were escorted to government-operated quarters where they were quarantined for two weeks in hotels emptied out for the purpose. Only B.C. and Prince Edward Island require workers to go into government-operated isolation.
Today, Justine Hunter reports that eight of those workers tested positive for the novel coronavirus while in quarantine. The eight workers were all heading to different farms, which might have meant COVID exposures for hundreds of farm workers.
“They could have infected other staff and really shut down those operations," Agriculture Minister Lana Popham noted. Seven of the eight workers have recovered and have been cleared to work.
The program was implemented after a nursery in the B.C. interior was shut down after a COVID outbreak infected 23 workers, believed to be traced to the arrival of temporary foreign workers who arrived in Kelowna in early March. The workers were living in shared housing provided by the nursery.
PEI is the only other province that provides accommodation for those workers before they travel to their workplaces. Other provinces have been helping agriculture businesses to manage the quarantine period on their farms. Ontario has had dozens of COVID cases among its temporary foreign workers who came to Canada to work in agriculture.
In B.C., if the new arrivals have no symptoms when they land, they are sent to hotels near Vancouver International Airport. The province is paying for the rooms, food-service and worker support costs during the 14-day self-isolation period. During that time, employers are responsible for paying their temporary foreign workers for a minimum 30 hours per week, at the hourly rate that they would make if they were working.
Ms. Popham said she hopes B.C. will be able to bring a total of 6,000 farmworkers to the province this year.
“It’s entrenched in the way we do business here,” she said. “If we hadn’t figured out a solution, we would have had a very different situation in this sector.”