Seafood processors want some foreign worker exemptions
Posted Jun 27, 2014 07:44:59 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s seafood processing industry is expressing concerns with changes to the federal government’s temporary foreign worker program.
The Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association says it would like to see the industry treated like agriculture and be exempted from some of the recently announced revisions.
Executive director Marilyn Clarke says the program is mostly used by the fish and lobster processing sector.
She says the industry is facing imminent labour shortages.
Labour Minister Kelly Regan meets next week with federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney.
Regan says she will argue for some industries in the province to be treated differently.
A spokeswoman for Kenney says the changes are aimed at restoring the program to its original purpose to give employers access to a limited supply of foreign workers when there are no qualified Canadians to fill jobs.
Alexandra Fortier says employers in Nova Scotia requested more than 23-hundred temporary foreign workers in 2013, despite an unemployment rate of nine per cent.
