Guest column: Canada’s migrant worker program a model for the world | Windsor Star

Ken Enns, owner of Enns Plant Farm, on the need for Temporary Foreign Workers in the agriculture sector:

Our workers are here on eight-month contracts, can leave and go home at any time they want, must be paid minimum wage plus whatever bonus is negotiated, full health care coverage when they step off the plane, full workman’s compensation, free weekly transport to town for shopping and supplied living accommodations.

They go home after eight months with a very large amount of money to put their children through university, they support their families, send home generators, tools to start machine shops, home appliances and all the things they cannot get at home.

We have many workers who have applied to return now for 25 and 30 years in a row. They continually ask if they can bring more of their family members for the next year — hardly the request from a person who is a “slave,” as described in the article.

We have the finest labour program in the world and we should be holding it up as a model for the world to follow. This is how you treat and protect your migrant workers.

Instead of trashing the program, we should be increasing it. Instead of giving foreign aid to impoverished nations, we should have their people come here and we could get some benefit for all that aid.

Our industry is one of a very few that can compete with and do better than the Americans. Our labour program is one of the reasons.

Guest column: Canada’s migrant worker program a model for the world | Windsor Star.