Investment of $45 million to attract Quebec workers to work on farms
On Friday the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, André Lamontagne, and the Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Solidarity, Jean Boulet, announced $45 million in funding to meet labour needs in Quebec’s agricultural sector.
According to UPA President Marcel Groleau, the partnership between the Government of Quebec and the UPA comes at just the right time.
“The COVID-19 pandemic raises serious labour access issues for the agricultural sector, which is already experiencing a shortage of workers. Thanks to the Agricultural Employment Centres (known as Centres d’emploi Agricole, or CEA) in each region, we will be able to provide services to interested Quebec workers as well as to businesses that express a need,” commented Groleau in a recent press release. He added that Quebec is the first province in the country to implement such an initiative.
This investment will allow
UPA and Agricarrières, within the the
Premier Francois Legault says he takes “full responsibility’’ for the lack of orderlies in struggling long-term care homes, where more than half of the province’s 688 deaths related to COVID-19 have occurred.
Legault told reporters Friday he didn’t want to get into a fight with the health-care unions when he first took office in 2018, and therefore decided to hold off on paying public-sector orderlies more until contract negotiations began.
Historically, the unions representing workers such as orderlies, nurses and other staff in Quebec’s health-care system negotiate as a large group to leverage bargaining power. The collective agreement for all health-care personnel was only set to expire at the end of March 2020.