The Rural Voice, 1999-10, Page 23Photo by Ted Sh
benefits and we have to import
labour. This is crazy," he says.
But the relationship between the
foreign workers and the fruit growers
in the southern Georgian Bay area is
'symbiotic, says Loucks.
"Our industry wouldn't survive
without them," he said.
Skarica admits that there would
be some difficulty getting
welfare recipients from major
centres to the Georgian Bay area, a
two-hour drive from Toronto. "I
realize we can't ask single parents to
stay in the accommodation the
growers provide and leave their
children behind, but not everyone has
children."
And broccoli farmers in his riding
who also have to bring in foreign
labour are only a short bus ride from
major centres, he says.
Farms are for profit operations so
would have to pay welfare recipients
regular wages of $6.85 an hour.
The foreign labour program also
benefits area businesses because
workers stock up on goods to take
home, says Loucks.
"They don't take much money
home with them, instead they go
home loaded down with clothes.
small appliances even TVs and
VCRs," he says.
Every year at harvest time, Keith
Grant leaves his island in the sun and
heads to Canada. Up at dawn, often
before the frost is off the grass, he
heads out into the orchard where,
sometimes facing rain or snow he
picks apples — 10 hours a day, six
days a week.
On top of a ladder five metres in
the air he carefully selects each apple
before gently placing it in the sack
around his neck. Ten minutes later
when he climbs down the ladder to
put the apples in a large bin, his sack
weighs as much as 20 kilograms.
"It's not easy. It's hard work, but
to us the money is pretty good," says
Qrant, 60, who has been travelling
from Jamaica for 27 years to pick
apples at Oaklane Orchards about 20
kilometres west of Collingwood.
Grant is one of more than 1,000
foreign migrant workers from the
Caribbean and Mexico who help with
the apple harvest every year in the
30,000 hectares of orchard in the
micro climate created by the
protective boundary of the Niagara
Escarpment and southern Georgian
Bay.
Grant misses his wife Cecile and
their 12 children back in Jamaica but
"It's important to me to come here.
At home sometimes I get some work
but often I can't, so this is how I keep
my family."
Grant says he and the other
foreign workers who arrived
September 9 and wiN be picking until
early November, consider it "a
privilege" to be allowed to work in
Canada.
Robert Taylor owner of Oaklane
Orchards depends on Grant to help
him train new pickers not to bruise
the fruit and how to safely place a
ladder.
"He would be hard to repiace, it's
a skilled job ...," says Taylor.
This year he paid $24,000 in
transportation costs to bring in 30
pickers from Jamaica. The pickers
pay back about $120 each towards
their fares.
Taylor supplies a bunkhouse, but
they buy their own food.
"So this is not cheap labour," he
says.
In his father's time growers drew
labour from neighbouring farms. says
Taylor who took over Oaklane in
1972. "But the days of the small
family farm are over. These days
farmers are busy with their own large
scale operations or they have jobs off
the farm to make ends meet."
The geography of southern
Georgian Bay doesn't help with
labour recruitment.
"We have a body of water to the
north, sparsely populated agricultural
areas to the south and in
Collingwood to the east and Owen
Sound to the west people find work
nearer home," says Taylor.
Henry Neufeld manager of
Agricultural Program for
Human Resources
Development Canada estimates more
than 13,000 workers from the
Caribbean and Mexico will help on
Ontario farms this year. The largest
numbers work on farms in the
Brantford, Leamington and St.
Catharines areas.
Workers are mainly from Jamaica
and Mexico but other participating
countries include Barbados, Trinidad
and Tobago and the Organization of
Eastern Caribbean States.0
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