Labour shortage hits Canada aquaculture
LABOUR shortages are holding back Canada’s aquaculture sector, the industry’s main body says.
The Canadian Aquaculture Alliance says that while fish farming is the country’s fastest growing activity, companies are losing sales because there are not enough workers - and it is a situation likely to continue.
The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) has completed a three-year study of the Canadian aquaculture industry and released the Aquaculture: Labour Market Forecast to 2025 study.
In 2014, aquaculture employed 4,000 workers, primarily in British Columbia and the Maritimes. According to a survey conducted as part of the study, labour shortages – a persistent problem for this sector – affected 58 per cent of operators, with 450 jobs going unfilled due to a lack of domestic employees.
While the number of vacant jobs is relatively small, this labour shortfall is estimated to have cost the industry $57 million in lost sales.
More than one in four survey respondents (29 per cent) reported that they delayed production and 21 per cent reported that they lost sales due to a lack of available workers.
For the purposes of this research, the aquaculture industry is defined as operations that farm-raise finfish, shellfish, or other aquatic animals; the definition does not include operations involved in processing activities.
It says aquaculture relies on exports for a significant share of its sales, and the study projects that a strong global market demand for fish protein will increase average production outputs by 4.2 per cent per year for the next 10 years.
While the number of aquaculture farms has dropped by 20 per cent since 2008, the remaining operations have increased in size and capacity due to consolidation.
To meet production targets, the industry is expected to require 5,800 workers by 2025. However, as many as 1,300 jobs could go unfilled.
The alliance concedes the rural nature of aquaculture poses significant challenges to worker recruitment and retention.
Declining rural populations have made it difficult for operators to source labour, and a lack of public transportation in these areas has limited the ability of workers to get to and from rural work sites.
Also, the aquaculture industry has little access to foreign workers because it is not on the National Commodities List, which grants employers access to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme and the Agricultural Stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Programme.
On the bright side, aquaculture’s younger-than-average domestic workforce means that the industry can expect to lose fewer workers to retirement.
To address the labour issues identified in the research, CAHRC, with the help of the Canadian government, has developed agriculture specific human resource tools designed to support modern farm operations to manage their workforce.