Labour Exploitation

For weeks this past summer, IJB reporters fanned out across farming regions of the B.C. interior and southwestern Ontario to document the lives of temporary foreign workers who harvest and produce our food. At local shopping malls, soccer tournaments, while riding shuttle buses between farms, inside ramshackle housing or leaning on fence posts at the end of 12-hour days, they told their stories.

Nearly 80,000 migrants labour in Canada’s farms and food-processing facilities each year, often with little to no stability, for a chance to feed their families back home in the global south. Though these migrant workers have become a vital resource in Canada’s agricultural industry, advocates and watchdogs have been sounding the alarm on how Canada’s temporary foreign worker program leaves workers vulnerable to abuse.

At the core is a controversial work permit system that binds them to a single employer in Canada.