Good help is hard to find
QUEBECERS HEAD TO THE FARMS TO REPLACE FOREIGN WORKERS
Melina Plante has found that, on her five-hectare fruit and vegetable farm south of Montreal by the U.S. border, one experienced Guatemalan farmhand can produce more than two Quebecers.
She and her husband, Francois D’Aoust, have hired the same four Guatemalan seasonal workers year after year. They typically clock up to 70 hours per week on the farm in Havelock, Que., and though the pay is relatively low, the workers value it.
But this year, Plante said, the farmhands are stuck in Guatemala due to travel restrictions their country has imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19.
They are among the roughly 5,000 seasonal and temporary workers that Quebec’s farmers’ union estimates will be missing on the province’s farms this year because of the pandemic, leaving Plante, D’Aoust and scores of other farmers with a tough choice: They can either reduce this year’s food production or take a chance on inexperienced but eager Quebecers thrown out of work by the pandemic.
In response to the foreign labour shortage, the provincial government on April 17 announced a $45-million program to pay an extra $100 a week above regular wages as an incentive to work on a farm. About 2,800 Quebecers have so far responded to Premier Francois Legault’s call.
But it is still unclear if there are enough unemployed Quebecers able and willing to do the work — and whether those who do will stick around if the economy picks up and their old jobs return.
Plante said bluntly that in the past, Quebecers have proven unreliable farmhands.
“That’s been our experience — and why we turned to foreign labour .... We estimate that one Guatemalan worker can be replaced by 2.5 Quebecers,” she said by phone from her farm.
The provincial program pays minimum wage, plus the $100 per week top-up and requires that applicants be available to work at least 25 hours per week. But Marcel Groleau, president of Union des producteurs agricoles, which represents about 42,000 Quebec farmers, says those kind of schedules simply won’t cut it.
“It will take farms — at a minimum — 40 hours per week, per employee, to replace the foreign labour,” he said in a recent interview.
The Canadian border remains open to seasonal farm workers, he explained, but many of them are having difficulty obtaining travel permits in their home countries.
“The pandemic made us realize how much we rely on foreign labour — but it’s been hard to attract local labour in the fields for many years now,” Groleau said.
Florence Lachapelleis hoping she’ll qualify for the extra $100 per week.
She had already agreed to work on Plante’s farm to help replace the Guatemalan farmhands before the province created the recruiting program. The 19-year-old visual arts student from Montreal met Plante and D’Aoust through family.
Lachapelle said she got involved in environmental activism at her junior college but since the pandemic doesn’t know what to do with her energy.
“I think the key to fighting climate change is through agricultural self-sufficiency and knowing how to work the earth in a respectful way,” she said in a recent interview. “I really want to learn how it works.”