Related editorial on the Recognized Employer Pilot along with advocating for open work permits to reduce abuse:
In early 2020, many Canadians noticed the once lush produce sections of their grocery stores were increasingly barren.
What many Canadians didn’t notice is the reason for the absence of fresh fruits and vegetables: COVID-19 outbreaks among migrant farm workers across Canada, including in southern Ontario.
The outbreaks, and their effect on food supply, reveal the value and vulnerability of the migrant workers, many of whom are hired through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
The program, which is set to be altered this September, permits employers to hire foreign workers when no qualified Canadians are available. The initiative has proven wildly popular, and successful applications have increased exponentially in recent years. But so too have accusations of abuse, of workers enduring unsafe workplace and living conditions.
Temporary labourers frequently work long hours for low pay and limited benefits, and they often live in employer-supplied, cramped quarters replete with shared sleeping and washroom facilities — the very conditions that increase the risk of infectious disease outbreaks and other health threats.
Consequently, for the welfare of the workers Ottawa needs to ensure that changing the program doesn’t increase the abuse that has long plagued the regime.
For its part, the federal government insists the alteration, known as the Recognized Employer Pilot, will do the opposite. According to Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault, the pilot will reduce the administrative burden on employers who “demonstrate the highest level of protection for workers,” and allow them to receive permits lasting three years, rather than the current 18 months. The change will come first to employers in agriculture, then to all others starting in January.
Rewarding responsible employers could help to protect both workers and ease the paperwork, and Ottawa has also promised to conduct more rigorous assessments before permits are issued. But three years is a long time, long enough for workplace and living conditions to deteriorate dramatically.
Government inspectors do monitor employers’ compliance with regulations, but that oversight has itself been substandard. In response to the COVID outbreaks among farm workers, federal Auditor General Karen Hogan issued a scathing report accusing inspectors of failing to ensure employers followed regulations.
If the pilot program is to be successful, then, it must be accompanied by improved, vigilant monitoring of employers’ compliance with safety standards throughout the three-year period.
That won’t, however, eliminate the problem that makes abuse possible: The power imbalance between employers and workers. That is the product of two factors — employer-specific work permits, and the tenuous immigration status of workers.
Employer-specific permits require workers to remain with the employer who hired them, which means some must make the impossible choice of suffering abuse or unemployment.
Aware of this, Ottawa introduced the Vulnerable Worker Open Work Permit program, which can grant abused workers a permit that allows them to move to a different employer. But the worker must first complain, something many are loath to do for fear of deportation or reprisals for employers.
In any case, by limiting open permits to those who have faced abuse, the program essentially treats abuse as a kind of hazing, an initiation rite workers must endure if they’re to gain entry to the exclusive club of open permit holders.
In contrast, if Ottawa granted open permits to all temporary workers, it would help to empower them as they could choose their employers — and abusive employers would have trouble retaining talent unless they cleaned up their act.
As for immigration status, the Star reported that workers pay income tax and employment insurance and contribute to the Canada Pension Plan, yet most remain “guests” in the country.
Most workers therefore live under constant fear of deportation, some for decades, which eliminates what little leverage they have with employers. Opening up new pathways for permanent residence would, on the other hand, help to equalize the relationship between employers and workers.
And when workers’ welfare and Canada’s food system are on the line, an equal relationship is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
Multicultural Meanderings 