If you ask Jamaica-born-and raised Travis Watson what home means to him, the temporary foreign worker at Cape Bald Packers in Cap-Pele, New Brunswick, will smile. “It’s right here with a good job, good friends, and a sense of belonging,” he says.

The 36-year-old Watson has been coming to this historic coastal village—where he shares an apartment with other workers from Jamaica—every year since 2017 to process lobster. “I arrive here in April, and then I go back to Jamaica in January,” he says. “Working here helps me support my grandmother and my daughter back home. But while I am here, I also feel like one of the family.”

He’s not the only one at Dieppe, NB-based Champlain Seafood’s member companies who feels that way. According to a recent engagement survey (summer 2024) of the group’s 1,200 employees, its temporary foreign workers provided an overwhelming positive response to the question, “How likely is it that you would recommend your company as a place to work?” What’s more, Champlain’s retention rate of temporary foreign workers (those employed in 2023 returned in the spring of 2024) is over 80 per cent.

“What we honor is fairness and equity when it comes to employees, including temporary foreign workers. It’s our culture and our platform. Local employees, permanent residents, and temporary foreign workers are paid the same wage for the same work.”

—David Saucy, COO & CFO, Champlain Seafood

In fact, a deep sense of mutual respect pervades the culture at Captain Dan’s, Cape Bald Packers, Cheticamp Fisheries, Petit de Grat Packers, Lobsters’ R Us Seafood, Boston Lobster Company, and Boston Wholesale Lobster—the one-time family-run businesses who joined under one corporate roof about five years ago to become one of the world’s largest processors of premium, sustainable wild-caught lobsters and snow crab, and a leading purveyor of live lobster from the Canadian Maritimes and the American northeast. Their experience tells them the crucial value that all their employees bring.

“What we honor is fairness and equity when it comes to employees, including temporary foreign workers,” says Champlain’s COO and CFO David Saucy. “It’s our culture and our platform. Local employees, permanent residents, and temporary foreign workers are paid the same wage for the same work. As a result, all workers, make on average 35 per cent more than the minimum wage.”

This is especially important for companies in rural and coastal areas, which do not often have a ready, local supply of workers available to replace retiring employees. “Companies such as ours need temporary foreign workers to help fill the void,” he says. “These workers help maintain not only our companies, but our small communities and sustain the rural way of life.”

Blaire Martell, Founder of Lobsters’ R Us Seafood in Lower L’Ardoise, Nova Scotia, can attest to that: eight of his 71 employees are temporary foreign workers. “The fact is, we couldn’t do what we do without them,” he says. “For all our Champlain Seafood Companies, 12 percent of our own local non-temporary foreign workers are less than 30 years old; meanwhile, 56 per cent of our employees are over 50. But, in 2024, there was no interruption in our delivery thanks to our temporary foreign workers… We plan to have 20 of them working here next year.”

What’s more, he says, a sense of community persists. “They bond well with the other employees, and they do some socializing after work”.

For Travis Watson in Cap Pele, that’s key. The good, steady, decently paid work is important, but so is the feeling he gets by being “a part of the community. I feel that my contribution means something to everyone’s success.”

Champlain Seafood has been recognized for its 3rd consecutive year as one of the Best Places to Work in Atlantic Canada for 2025