News that the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance has used the much-maligned Temporary Foreign Workers Program demonstrates that the initiative has positive outcomes if used correctly, said Chatham-Kent-Essex MP Dave Van Kesteren.
Contacted last week, Van Kesteren said, “I wasn’t aware of them (CKHA) using it. I’m not aware of all the people utilizing the program.”
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CKHA Communications Director Zoja Holman said the program has been a useful tool in the physician recruitment.
“Physician recruitment is a very competitive area and we have a wide variety of tools, this being one of them, to help us present Chatham-Kent as a potential area for physicians to locate.”
She said 40 physicians have been recruited to Chatham-Kent in the past four years, and federal programs and partnerships with the municipality and the CKHA teaching affiliation with the Schulich School of Medicine are all part of the effort.
“We have had four family medicine physicians graduate from our site and three of them are now practicing in the community,” she said. “We have grown to hosting three residents per year who work and live full time in C-K for their two years of training, and we host anywhere from five to 10 learners in the facility per month – a great way to showcase what C-K has to offer, both from a community perspective and health care perspective.”
Van Kesteren admits there are employers who haven’t followed the rules in regards to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
“We know we have some work. There have been some abuses. Unfortunately, some employers – not in this area – have abused the system,” he said. “Minister (Jason) Kenney is revamping the program and is putting some penalties in place that are pretty severe.”
Van Kesteren was quick to point out the Temporary Foreign Workers Program is different from the Migrant Workers Program, something that many local farms and greenhouse companies utilize.
“The Migrant Worker Program is time sensitive. If you ran an orchard, for example, you’d have your people come in the spring and prune the trees and have them through the harvest, and then they go home,” he said, adding the workers return year after year.
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is designed to allow employers to bring in staff when confronted with skilled and general labour shortages, but only when Canadians aren’t available to do the job.
“It’s not there to replace our workers. It’s there when an employer can prove what he’s offering is essential and he’s made every effort to get workers from Canada, and then he can apply,” Van Kesteren said.
Locally, the MP said the primary use of temporary foreign workers is actually in one specific sector of agriculture.
“In Chatham-Kent Essex, the majority are used in the mushroom business,” Van Kesteren said. “Because the labour pool is so intense for farm workers, it gets depleted. Companies have to bring in people from Windsor, but when that isn’t successful, they use the foreign worker program.”
He added these growers don’t use the migrant worker program for one simple reason: “Mushrooms don’t stop growing. They grow 12 months of the year.”
Van Kesteren said sometimes companies use the program to bring in help for a very short time period.
“There was a case where an industry in Blenheim had some equipment that went into the factory. They had to set it up and train people who had to work it,” he said. “The individual who had the knowledge (to train) was from the States. He had to come in for a couple of weeks to train.”
In a perfect world, Van Kesteren said the workforce would be located right beside the area of need. But that’s just not the case
“Unfortunately, a lot of these places are a long way from the large labour pools. They quickly use up the labour pool that’s in their area and still need additional workers,” he said. “We are moving towards better worker mobility to give Canadians the first chance.”
