Migrant workers have been returning to greenhouses and farms across Ontario over the last month for the second full growing season during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last season was chaotic; this season is expensive, according to Ken Forth. He's the president of Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services.
Forth tells The Afternoon News close to 23,000 temporary foreign workers will make their way to Ontario this year. He says all of those workers need to quarantine in hotels for 14-days and get tested at the expense of the farmer.
"That's a lot of money and it's money we're not getting a lot of food production for," he added.
As an example, he says four workers who recently had to quarantine cost an area farm $40,000.
"We will have all their groceries there for them in their kitchens, they get breakfast in the hotel and then they get paid for the first two weeks," he says. "That whole thing costs $40,000."
It might sound like a vacation, but Forth says 14-days spent in isolation is hard on the workers.
"I don't know if you've spent much time in a hotel room, I've spent my life in them, but I've never spent my life in them for 14-days straight. That can be pretty boring," he says. "We put two of them together in suites so they can talk to each other, watch TV together, and play cards."
Forth says government funding previously covered $1,500 for each worker to quarantine, but scaled that back $7.50 per worker in 2021.
He says some farms will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in migrant workers this year.
— with files from AM800's Kristylee Varley.