A Southern Ontario farm. via.Because Canadian citizens are increasingly unwilling to work tough agricultural jobs a la Stompinâ Tomâs âTillsonburgâ, the seasonal agricultural sector in Canada depends on migrant workers to hit the fields and greenhouses for harvest. Every year when the seasons are right, workers are recruited from South America, the Caribbean, The Philippines, Thailand, and Mexico, to work on farms that boast Canadian minimum wage along with room and board. For however long it takes, often seven or eight months of 60â70 hour work weeks, seasonal workers are used to harvest tobacco, cucumbers, ginseng, and whatever else grows inches from the ground and breaks a back to pick.Over 25,000 migrants arrive in Canada, mostly in Southern Ontario, every year for this type of work, yet they remain largely invisible to their surrounding communities and the broader provincial and national purview that appreciates cheap produce.Last year, the fate of ten Peruvian men briefly brought foreign workers into the national news cycle when a van carrying them from a job at a chicken farm collided with a truck just outside of Waterloo, ON. Then Premier Dalton McGuinty expressed his condolences, the menâs friends erected makeshift memorials and the community asked questions, but the story faded within weeksâwithout a coronerâs inquest.Since 1996, over 50 migrant workers in Ontario have been killed in workplace related incidents. And while the provincial government has established mandatory inquiries into workplace fatalities within the construction and mining industries, there has never been a single coronerâs inquest into the death of a migrant farm worker.Chris Ramsaroop is an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers, a non-profit organization based in Toronto that aims to promote the rights of migrant workers in Canada. Heâs currently involved in a hearing with Ontarioâs Human Rights Tribunal advocating on behalf of Ned Peart, a Jamaican man who was killed in 2002 when he was crushed on a tobacco farm near Brantford. Justicia is arguing that migrant workers should be given the respect of a coronerâs inquestâjust as resident Canadians do if they end up killed in the workplaceâand that migrant workers shouldnât be made to feel so utterly replaceable as a result. Their final hearing is on June 28th, and if Justicia and Peartâs case is successful, the rewarded inquest will be the first of its kind in Canada.I got in touch with Chris to get his perspective on this case, and the issues surrounding Canadian migrant workers in general.âGuys work 18-20 hour shifts because there are no minimum standards in agriculture. There are no regulations. There are no laws for housing migrant agricultural employees and there is no jurisdiction. They are living in cramped quarters, arenât paid their proper wages and depending on the size of the farm, they donât have access to health and safety committeesâŠâAt a talk held at Ryerson University, hosted by Sustain Ontario, Chris described the conditions he encountered when he visited a âleading organic facility in Southern Ontarioâ where a worker had recently broken his back and was being sent homeâŠâSo we get there. Workers are living there 7 to 8 months a year and Iâm not lying to you, thereâs no bathrooms. Thereâs port-a-potties. The men do not have stoves, they have hot plates. They have no heating for their trailers. I didnât see their shower facilities, I wouldnât want to see them. And theyâre confined to these very, very small quarters⊠for many people like myself itâs no coincidence that you have racialized labour coming from Mexico and the Caribbean to work in these fields. Weâre continuing the condition of slavery and indenture-ship. Weâve decided to call it something else but that is exactly whatâs going on here.âIn our conversation Chris went on to explain that workers arenât provided with adequate training or WHMIS information (which is vital when working with as many pesticides as farmers do) and arenât informed of their few rights. He noted that workers get sent home when they are injuredâor in some cases, as recent amputeesâand that there is no accessible mechanism in place in Canada or in their home countries through which they can voice their concerns.In these conditions, youâd expect their minimum wage would at least be tax-free⊠but no. Absurdly, although they arenât eligible to go on it, migrant workers pay millions into E.I. âThey are always on the margins of society,â says Ramsaroop, âeven though they pay into E.I. they canât receive E.I. because they have to return to their home countryâŠâWhile it would make sense that Canada, with such a hardline stance on human rights would be expanding benefits to migrant workers, last December, Federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, under the banner of the Conservatives great Economic Action Plan, removed one of the only rights they were entitled to, which was to receive a fraction of their minimum wage when they returned home to care for a newborn child.I asked Janet Dench, Executive Director at the Canadian Council for Refugees, about the policies that perpetuate this systemic abuse of workerâs rights and learned that a lot of it is based on simply being labelled as âtemporaryâ or âseasonal.ââAgricultural workers obviously arenât temporary if youâre using them year after year after year. Theyâre temporary in the sense that itâs only part of the year but itâs permanent⊠theyâre coming back year after year because there arenât Canadians willing to take those jobs. So everything is good and we can keep bringing in cheap workers from abroad.â Imagine the backlash if the federal government decided to paint fisherman in Newfoundland with the same seasonal/temporary brush and gave them the shaft that migrant workers are getting?Dench said the second issue is that migrant workersâ rights fall between the cracks of federal and provincial jurisdictions. âBringing [migrant workers] into Canada is done by the federal government and what weâve been seeing is issues for temporary foreign workers fall between the cracks of federal immigration policies and provincial labour laws.âThe main issue that Ramsaroop and Dench came back to was, that in the case of migrant farm workers, there seems to be a kind of rural âStop Snitchingâ mentality. Workers are made to feel that if they complain, theyâll be fired. They are bound to one employer, with no union or labour board to turn to, so their choice is either to keep their head down and take it or get kicked out of the country forever. As Dench summed up, âif youâve been shown to be a trouble maker and have been denouncing abuses then youâre probably not coming back next year.âJohn Steinbeck popularized the plight of the American migrant worker in the 1930âs in his The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men. They are narratives of tough people, men and women, travelling to find work in the fields in an effort to make ends meet for themselves and their families. The struggles are tragic yet romantic, set against the backdrop of sunsets and frontier California. The plight of the migrant worker in Canada reflects none of Steinbeckâs romance, and all of its degradation.So next time you see one of those âFarmers Feed Cities!â stickers on the back of a station wagon or on the fridge of your urban, organic-only neighbourâyou should definitely still think of the farmerâbut also remember the migrant worker who is busting their ass to feed you.Follow Dave on Twitter: @ddnerMore things you should be mad about, Canada:Why Doesn't the Canadian Justice System Take Rape Cases Seriously?The Canadian Government Misplaced $3.1 Billion
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