Chronic labour shortages increase national food security risk: study

Labour shortages are a global issue across every sector, including Ontario’s agri-business, according to a recent survey from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. 

“We found that almost two-thirds (61 per cent) of agri-business owners turned to their existing employees to work more hours due to lack of staff,” said Jasmin Guenette, the federation’s vice-president of national affairs. 

“The prevailing labour shortages in agriculture must be addressed. It limits productivity and growth and is putting Canada’s food supply at risk.”

Why it matters: Ontario food processors, like farmers, are struggling to find labour, which is limiting food production and development.

The CFIB is urging Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to create policies that reduce the tax burden on agri-businesses, including payroll taxes and the federal carbon tax. It also calls upon government to streamline and simplify the Temporary Foreign Workers program and the immigration process, initiate tax relief programs for hiring under-represented and older workers and stimulate automation via programs and tax credits.

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“We need policies that will support our farmers and agri-businesses to ensure the agriculture sector is competitive and productive and the current shortages of labour are prioritized,” said Guenette in a news release.

The variety of jobs available in the urban sector has thinned the labour pool for agri-business, said Meat and Poultry executive director Franco Naccarato. Labour challenges are exacerbated in the sector because it’s growing faster than vacancies can be filled.

More than 21,000 Ontarians work in the meat and poultry sector, which accounts for one-quarter of food and beverage jobs. A survey showed 95 per cent of members struggle to attract workers.

In 2017, Food Processing Skills Canada conducted a survey that found 13 per cent, or 2,400 jobs, in the sector were vacant in Ontario.

“If you look at productivity on average and (the) total number employed, that’s about 20,000 with $11 billion in sales. That’s about half a million dollars per person,” Naccarato said. “Those 2,400 jobs equate to about $1.2 billion in lost productivity.”

Industrial butchers, retail butchers, live animal receivers, harvest specialists and smokehouse operators round out the top five areas affected.

Hiring challenges aren’t limited to entry-level jobs, said Naccarato. For example, one company struggled to fill a six-figure-salary director’s position because applicants lacked the necessary skill set.

“It’s affecting the whole gamut. The ministry of agriculture … has trouble recruiting and attracting people to government roles on the inspection side of things,” he said. “So, it’s extending even to our adjacent industries.”

Globally, the baby boomer retirement wave is adding to the labour crisis because the remaining workforce can’t fill the gap. That increases the need for temporary foreign workers.

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Naccarato said it’s time to drop the “temporary” moniker and streamline the process through human resource recruitment partnerships and foreign worker trade agreements because those workers are integral to Ontario’s labour.

As an example, Thailand’s labour minister promotes recruitment partnerships and is developing a recruitment and training centre for meat cutting in which potential employers can observe and recruit workers based on their skills, said Naccarato.

A recruiter told him workers build their careers in other countries, retire, and return to their neighbourhoods to build homes, launch a business and become employers themselves.

“It’s the best way we could create foreign aid for countries,” he said. “So, why aren’t we looking at this as an economic opportunity?”

A need for training in meat processing prompted the launch of the Centre for Meat Innovation and Technology earlier this year, said Naccarato.

The centre is expected to build a domestic workforce through career pathways, on-the-job training, scalable innovation and use of modern technology. It provides small classes and micro-credential programming for all sectors within the food and beverage realm, in partnership with CareersNOW.

The latter organization attracts food and beverage processing sector talent through programs including the youth-based Taste Your Future campaign. It offers training and mentorship and focuses on underutilized labour pools.

Chris Conway, CEO of Food and Beverage Ontario, said partnering with groups like Discover Ability Network and Ontario Native Educational Counsellors Association, or with new Canadians, allows the organization to create smoother pathways to employment.

“There are many things that could be considered a disability, and it’s really about that accommodation,” said Conway. “So, (its) understanding what type of different ability you’re dealing with and how you adapt to that.”

A recent Manitoulin program saw 300 students, including Indigenous youth, take training in food and beverage processing.

Naccarato hopes that modelling a world-class meat processing facility at the centre, featuring scaled-to-need robotics and the internet of things, will spark further innovation and investment.

“We’re working with technology companies from around the world and trying to find those technologies, bring them here, and adopt them for small and medium enterprises, and make it easier for them (processors) to adopt earlier.”

Government policies aim to attract, train and retain labour for the processing sector but they overlook how policies can stymie labour access, especially for food and beverage processing and manufacturing.

For example, funding exists at the university level to develop innovative technology, but no programs to scale it, said Kevin Elder, labour market information project manager with Food Processing Skills Canada. The onus is on the industry to fund it.

“There isn’t that funding capacity on the industry side as a whole, so prototype technologies are just gathering dust in universities because there isn’t that bridge built (to commercial viability,” he said.

Until there’s a shift in policy to acknowledge the impact of the labour crisis on the industry, businesses will struggle to access funds to invest in labour-saving tech, he added.

Elder recalled an employer who applied for a government grant aimed at helping businesses invest in technology. The employer was asked how many jobs it would create.

“They said, ‘I’ve got 20 vacancies, and this machine is going to get rid of 10.’ The government wouldn’t accept vacancy mitigation within that funding scope,” Elder said.

Policies must reflect that vacancies aren’t going to be filled, especially for rural processors with smaller labour pools and less ability to attract applicants.

Elder said the industry must highlight the breadth of opportunity within the agri-food sector combined with the benefits of rural living, where a wage will stretch further than the same pay in larger urban centres.

One in five manufacturing jobs fall within food and beverage, he added.

“We’re a major sector, and in some areas, we’re often the main sector. We can never shut down. Canada needs to have this domestic capacity to make our own food.”

Three in 10 people say they would consider a career in the food and beverage industry. Elder is concerned with the other seven, citing lack of policy understanding around who is available to work and how policy can affect a facility’s success in attracting and retaining labour.

“There are municipal governments that won’t allow manufacturing, especially food manufacturing, to be located in certain areas of the city or even within city limits,” said Elder. “(That leaves them) just beyond the reach of existing public transit infrastructure, which affects the ability to bring people in from the local (labour) market.”