Ottawa sees few claims for residency under Agri-Food Pilot
The Agri-Food Pilot, which opened in May 2020, was expected to welcome 2,750 migrant workers a year over three years, but the immigration department says it only received a total of 343 applications completed per year. August 31 this year.
The program was designed to fill long-standing labor gaps in full-time, year-round industries, such as meat processing, mushroom cultivation and greenhouse production. Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) who came to Canada to work in these industries could be sponsored by their employers for permanent residence as long as they met certain criteria.
The program was particularly in demand at meat processing plants, which have restrictions on the number of TFWs that can work at the facilities. The gates are at 10 percent or 20 percent of the workforce, depending on a plant’s historical use of the TFW program. If a worker is admitted to the Agri-Food Pilot and put on the road to permanent residence, they are removed from a plant’s hood, and that company can then recruit another TFW.
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