As one of the lead civil society organizations fighting for the rights of migrant workers in Canada, UFCW Canada recently joined temporary foreign workers and other social justice activists by showing up at the offices of several southwestern Ontario politicians to demand fair treatment for the country’s most precarious workforce. 

The Canadian agriculture industry has come to rely on the labour of a rapidly growing migrant workforce, which in Ontario includes over 750 temporary foreign workers (TFWs) from Thailand and the Philippines. Unlike most Mexican and Caribbean migrant workers, who come to Canada every year through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), Thai and Filipino workers gain entrance by way of the “Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training” – a TFW program that leaves migrant workers extremely vulnerable to unscrupulous job brokers and exploitive employers.

“The economic situation in the Philippines is really bad,” says Alex Banaag (pictured), a UFCW Canada National Representative who participated in the mass lobbying effort. “Filipinos who come to Canada through the TFW program, put everything on the line for an opportunity to work hard and help their families,” says Brother Banaag, who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines. 

To get to Canada, many people from non-SAWP countries usually go through shady recruiting companies that charge exorbitant fees, often costing desperately poor workers several thousand dollars or more – money that almost always comes from dangerous loan sharks. UFCW Canada and its social justice allies are calling for serious and immediate reform of the TFW program.

“Good, hard-working people who come to Canada with the same motivation and dream that built our country shouldn’t be treated like this,” says Naveen Mehta, UFCW Canada director of Human Rights, Equity & Diversity. “These are people who make tremendous sacrifices to come here and grow our food, and they deserve a system that doesn’t let them get chewed up and spit out.” 

Reforming Canada’s migrant labour and immigration system will be one of many topics discussed at the upcoming Education Has No Borders – A Celebration of the Empowering Effect of Education event, which will be held in Toronto on May 13 at the Tinto Café from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. 

For more information, go to www.ufcw.ca/socialjustice