The weather this last week has been up and down with one day a beautiful spring day and the next a cold wind off an iceberg somewhere. Even Mother Nature is confused. The leaves on the trees want to come out but only small buds have appeared. There is nothing growing in the fields except over-wintering stink weed. I hope spring comes before we are supposed to have summer.
I have no hoar frost rain marked for this week but starting on May 18-19, I have a three-day rain marked. For non-believers, wear your rubber boots anyway.
On the home front, we have started seeding. The day we were going to start seeding, our hired man Eddie quit. I got the air seeder loaded and Cole and I got it to the field. I am now the only tractor operator. I can run the outfit, but it is with some difficulty if I have to get on and off the tractor. That was a wasted day as when we got to the hills we discovered we had picked up some piece of metal on the road and it had stabbed one of the air seeder cart tires. I had to have Rhinehart Tire come out the next day. It didn't take long and Kevin had the hole patched and a tube put in.
Last fall I got all my fields spiked. This spring when I am seeding, the land works up soft and smooth. I am prejudiced but I really think it looks nice. If it looks nice, it will grow a nice crop. My sympathies go to the zero tillers as they will never have that satisfaction of seeing their land smooth and black. You might break your ankle walking across it, I do not care.
In the labour market opinion (LMO) controversy, it looks like Jason Kenny has caved in to the pressure from the unions and their friends in the civil service. All new LMOs for restaurant workers are to be cancelled. This is totally ridiculous. This is like killing houseflies with a sledgehammer. There are no other replacement workers. If there were abuses of the system identify those people and deal with them. Don't make everyone else suffer because of a handful of people. There are no replacement workers in some parts of the country like right here. I have run an ad for a farm worker for four months, I have received over 50 replies from all over the world - Ukraine, Philippines, Singapore, India, etc. There were a few Canadians, some from Ontario, but those only wanted to continue their unemployment and they used me to show they were looking for work but really they were not. The only Canadian that showed up was Eddie and I hired him. Now he has quit due to health problems. Some things creep up health wise when one is 60 plus.
In the Western Producer, there is a good article written by Kelsey Johnson who suggests that the foreign worker program should be permanent. The problem with the current program is that about the time a worker is trained he has to go home. This leaves the employer back at square one, having to find and train another person. It is a most unsatisfactory situation. Allow the foreign worker to bring their families and become permanent residents. That is the answer. The people who are willing to leave their home and other families members are the best people. To see them here, they are happy and smiling, they are happy to be here and they are happy to have a job.
The general public have no concept of what it takes for an employer to get a foreign worker. First you have to apply to Service Canada for permission to hire a foreign worker. There is a form on the Internet you can print off or you can do it online. Because of the wide range of questions, a person may not have the information needed at their fingertips so I choose to print it off and after getting the information I needed, I fax it to them. Then there is a three- to four-month wait for them to phone you with more questions. If you get a favourable labour market opinion (LMO) and they decide if you are qualified and need a foreign worker, the foreign worker you have chosen must apply for a work permit. More hoops to jump through. They need a passport. They must have police clearance with no criminal record. They must pass a medical exam. They have extensive drug tests to be sure they are not users. I have asked that they speak English so any foreign worker must pass an English test.
There is nothing wrong with all this but it all takes time. Then there is the unwillingness of the foreign embassy to expedite the process. And a work permit can take another three to six months. After all that, you hope you will get a satisfactory worker. They are here for only two years, just long enough to be trained and then you have to let them go home.
It's a program designed to give the politicians lip service to the need for workers, but gives no long-term solution. Plus it obviously can be cancelled at the whim of the government. If there were Canadian workers available, no one would go through the hassle of dealing with this program, but there are not.
In the Ontario election the Conservative Party is in the lead with the last poll at 37 per cent. The NDP at 29 per cent and the Liberals at 28 per cent. Is it enough to get a majority? The only poll that counts is the one on election day June 12.
Joke of the week: Three boys are in the schoolyard are bragging about their fathers. The first boy says, "My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, they give him $50." The second boy says, "That's nothing, my dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song and they give him $100." The third boy says, "I got you both beat. My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon and it takes eight people to collect all the money."
