Despite “inflammatory” language in a new United Nations report accusing Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program of being a breeding ground for modern forms of slavery, a recent Senate report made similar findings, accusing the program of failing both workers, and the employers and industries that depend on them. 

Independent Senator Ratna Omidvar (Ontario), chair of the Senate Social Affairs, Science, and Technology Committee, told The Hill Times that while the committee’s final report may have come to slightly different conclusions with less inflammatory language, the underlying facts “are not terribly dissimilar.” The report offers six recommendations to help the federal government improve the program.

“Because of how the program has grown, we need [more] structural solutions than what the rapporteur suggests,” said Omidvar.

In his final report dated July 22 and published earlier this month, Tomoya Obokata, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, wrote that Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery, as it institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights.”

The final report reiterates Obokata’s initial observations following a 14-day fact-finding visit to Ottawa, Moncton, Toronto, and Vancouver in late August 2023. It offers a number of recommendations among its conclusions, including a call to strengthen the mandate and enforcement powers of the Office of the Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise.

The TFWP allows employers to hire non-Canadians from outside the country on a temporary basis—predominantly in the agricultural sector—to fill labour shortages. However, since its creation in 1973, the program has grown dramatically, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

According to government data, 83,643 temporary foreign workers were accepted into the low-wage stream in 2023, a nearly three-fold increase from the 28,121 workers accepted in 2019.

Economists and labour advocates have also criticized the recent upsurge, pointing to 2022 changes that broadened employers’ abilities to access the program, and arguing the TFWP has led to artificially suppressed wages for young people and other, already low-wage Canadian workers.

Speaking to reporters during a press conference on Aug. 14, Immigration Minister Marc Miller (Ville-Marie-Le Sud-Ouest-Île-des-Soeurs, Que.) objected to the rapporteur’s characterization. 

“I think to some extent it’s quite offensive to treat people that have employees that are temporary foreign workers as slave owners,” Miller told reporters when asked about the final report, adding that he had met with employers and visited farms that employ foreign workers, unlike Obakata.

However, while he called the rapporteur’s characterization of the TFWP “inflammatory,” Miller said he isn’t denying the “underlying facts that there are abuses,” and that it’s his job to ensure they are stopped.

“Any person in Canada, regardless of who they employ, needs to treat people with dignity and respect according to the law, and that isn’t happening in some sectors that employ temporary foreign workers, and that needs to end,” Miller said, adding that multiple different reforms would need to be implemented, some of which he and Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault (Edmonton Centre, Alta.) have already begun.

Earlier this year, Boissonnault announced that some of the “time-limited” measures introduced to address the “post-pandemic economy” would be ending. As of May 1, new Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIA) would only be valid for six months—down from 12—and certain employers identified by the 2022 Workforce Solutions Roadmap would reduce the total number of foreign workers employed from 30 to 20 per cent

Additionally, on Aug. 14, The Globe and Mail reported that the government is planning a “sharp cut” to the low-wage stream of the TFWP, and on Aug. 16, Bloomberg News reported Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) is “mulling” a “name-and-shame” policy for individual business owners and managers who abuse migrant workers.

Currently, non-compliant employers are listed publicly on the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada website, which details fines received, payment status, and current eligibility with the program.

Most recently, on Aug. 19, the CBC reported the government’s plan to announce a six-month pause on approval of temporary foreign worker applications to low-wage stream jobs in the Montreal area beginning Sept. 3.

In a statement to The Hill Times, Boissonnault’s office wrote that the health and safety of foreign workers is “paramount,” and employers have a responsibility to ensure their well-being.

“It is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that employers are complying with the program and to hold those who are not to account,” Boissonnault’s office wrote, adding that in 2023 his department completed 2,122 inspections, and issued $2.1-million in fines to non-compliant employers, an increase of 36 per cent over the year prior. Additionally, 12 employers were banned from the program, up from seven the previous year.

Boissonnault’s office said he is also considering LMIA fee increases to pay for integrity and processing activities, as well as implementing regulatory changes for employer eligibility. 

NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party’s immigration critic, said the UN report should come as no surprise to the government, as it echoes “what migrant workers and labour advocates have been saying for a very long time.” 

“The way the program is set up exposes workers to exploitation and abuse because they’re reliant on their employer to retain their status in Canada,” Kwan explained. “If they face abuse and exploitation and complain about it, they stand to lose their job, and—in the worst-case scenario—they stand to be deported back to their country of origin.”

Kwan said the government has taken a “haphazard approach” to addressing problems with the TFWP to date, focused almost solely on the low-wage stream, but—while misuse of that stream is “particularly deplorable”—she said the root of the problem is structural to the entire program. 

“The government has to address the main structural issue, and that is the power imbalance that exists between the temporary foreign worker and the employer,” Kwan said. “The only way to do that is to ensure that the temporary foreign workers actually have landed status on arrival, then they are not dependent on the employer, and would not have to suffer potential abuses and exploitation.”

“It doesn’t matter what stream it is, all the temporary foreign workers programs subject migrant workers to potential exploitation because of that power imbalance,” Kwan said, adding, though, that the NDP supports calls to end the program’s low-wage stream.

While the government and groups like the Canadian Chamber of Commercemay reject the UN rapporteur’s characterization of the program, the recent Senate report found similar abuses within the program. 

On May 21, the Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science, and Technology released its own report on Canada’s migrant labour infrastructure, which it said is failing both workers and employers. 

Beginning its study in November 2022, the committee heard evidence and testimony from temporary foreign workers and employers, academics, policy experts, and government officials. Members also visited workplaces in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island on a fact-finding mission. 

While Obokata did not visit any farms or fisheries—as the Senate committee did—Omidvar said the Senators who worked on the report were able to come to their findings with “clear eyes,” having accounted for all perspectives. 

Fittingly, those perspectives informed the first of the committee’s recommendations to provide what Omidvar said are “structural solutions” to a program that has grown in a rapid, disorganized, and often piecemeal manner for decades.

In its report, the committee offered six recommendations, the first of which is the establishment and funding of a tripartite Migrant Work Commission, modelled after the Canada Employment Insurance Commission, that would include a commissioner representing migrant workers, employers, and the federal government. 

“Right now, there is no single place where either an employer or a migrant worker can go to address their issues,“ Omidvar explained. “In particular, there are not enough avenues of complaints for migrant workers that are nimble, effective, and worker-friendly.”

The second recommendation mirrors the UN report, but Omidvar said the committee recommends the full phase-out of closed work permits in the next three years, rather than immediately.

“You cannot go from extreme heat to extreme cold without creating severe cracks and fissures in the system,” Omidvar said, explaining that while the committee had identified closed work permits as an area of concern, the federal government would need time to negotiate with provinces to create regional, sector-wide permits to replace them.

Omidvar said the third most important recommendation is that workplace inspections be unannounced as a standard, adding that the current practice allows for unscrupulous employers to engineer a compliant workplace to give the illusion of compliance when inspectors arrive.

While Omidvar recognized that could also be true for the workplaces the committee visited—or at the very least, that only already compliant “good workplaces” would have even accepted their request for a visit—she said the workplaces she did see were undoubtedly having a positive impact on its workers and community.

At one seafood processing plant, Omidvar recalled speaking with employees who had arrived as temporary workers and successfully applied for permanent residency with the aid of sponsorship from their employer. She said that the new influx of residents had reinvigorated and revitalized the community with “new families, teachers, and parishioners” filling the local church every Sunday.

On the other side of the spectrum, Omidvar said the committee also met with migrant workers in closed-door meetings in other communities who detailed instances of abuse, including withholding access to health care. She explained that those abuses can be particularly problematic in rural and remote communities without nearby doctors or medical facilities.

Additionally, many of those workers said that there was a lack of clarity on the pathways to permanent residency, she noted. 

“They’re operating in a fog of information, and we need to make those pathways crystal clear,” Omidvar said, adding that Canada needs an annual migrant worker level plan, as it has for annual immigration. 

“The whole system post-COVID has been kind of bent out of shape with exceptions that we made to meet various needs,” Omidvar said. “Now, we need to get back to the drawing board and reconfigure this in a sensible, pragmatic, and doable manner that ensures the rights of migrant workers are paramount.”

Click this link to read the news story:

https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2024/08/21/structural-solutions-not-inflammatory-conclusions-required-to-fix-tfwp-senator-omidvar/431924/