Canada’s meat
packers want to hire Syrian refugees.
They have been
short of workers and have been using the federal government’s temporary worker
program to bring in workers from other countries.
Rory McAlpine, a senior vice-president for Maple Leaf Foods
Inc. is offering to hire Syrian refugees to fill vacant jobs at two of its meat
plants., said "we would be very pleased and honoured to be part of the
solution in terms of helping find employment for the Syrian refugees."
"We have jobs
available."
McAlpine said initially
Maple Leaf could hire 25 refugees at its pork plant in Brandon, Man., and about
10 at its smaller operation in Lethbridge, Alta.
The company is looking for
physically-fit people with manufacturing experience who could be trained as
general production workers and meat cutters.
The Canadian Meat Council
has been urging the federal government and the provinces to do all they can to
settle some of the refugees in smaller rural communities in Western Canada,
Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada where their labour is needed.
McAlpine said the challenge
for the industry is that most of the government-sponsored refugees are to be
settled in major cities.
He said Maple Leaf is
waiting to hear how the settlement of refugees will unfold to see how many
candidates it can interview.
Meat packers have looked to
refugees and immigrants for employment for decades.
In Kitchener, for example,
the plant manager at now-defunct MGI Packers said in the 1990s that his
workforce tended to reflect waves of recent immigration with word of mouth spreading
among the newcomers.
