The men and women who harvest our food and feed our families need your help because fear, danger and oppression are daily realities in our food production system — and government is guilty of promoting it.  This was recently confirmed by the United Nations which found Canada and Ontario guilty of violating the rights of farm workers by preventing them from improving their workplace and safety conditions through collective bargaining.

Dangerous Working Conditions

Every day farm workers face dangerous work without proper gear or training. Fatalities are not uncommon, like two workers without respirators who were recently killed by toxic fumes at an Ontario farm.

Deplorable Housing Conditions

Seasonal farm workers are crammed by the dozens into makeshift shanties that go uninspected for health, safety and fire regulations. This shanty for 18 workers has one bath room for 18 workers, no fire escape and windows held together with plastic sheeting.

Unsafe Transportation

Workers are killed or injured every season being trucked to the fields, jammed into unsafe vans and flat bed trucks like animals.  A tragic example: in 2007 a van packed with 17 farm workers flipped and killed 3 passengers in B.C. The driver was fined $2,000 and given a traffic ticket

Health and Safety Violations

Agriculture workers are told not to report injuries or illness. If they do raise concerns, migrant farm workers are typically shipped out that day and banished from ever working in Canada again.

By choking the labour rights of farm workers, Canada and Ontario are guilty of promoting a system where agriculture workers are chained by desperation and gagged by fear of reprisal if they report health, safety or abuse issues.

Help Canada’s agriculture workers but sharing this story — online and in person — with your friends, family and coworkers. Send a message you can’t accept a food system tainted with abuse, or a government that is guilty of allowing it to continue.