Potatoes in Canada

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Labour concerns in Canada’s potato fields – PART 1

The landscape of the agricultural workforce is changing in Canada, affecting Canadian workers, workers from other countries and employers as well. Over 190,000 temporary foreign workers come into Canada each year and about 40,000 of those are employed in the agricultural sector, says Dr. Kerry Preibisch, a sociologist in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph.

June 10, 2013  By Treena Hein


Migrant workers hired on temporary visas to assist with labour shortage for low-skilled occupation in agriculture. The landscape of the agricultural workforce is changing in Canada

Preibisch’s look at changes in the Canadian farm labour market over the past decade was recently published in the International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food – and one major change she has noticed relates to how many countries migrant farm workers now hail from.

“People from an increasingly wide range of countries are finding jobs on temporary visas in Canada’s food system due to government policy changes in 2002,” notes Preibisch. Back in 1966, Canada instituted the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), a program based on bilateral agreements with 13 different countries, with most from Mexico and Jamaica. Current annual SAWP participation is 27,000.

Since 2002, however, the government has allowed employers who could demonstrate they are facing a labour shortage for any low-skilled occupation – including agriculture – to hire migrants on temporary visas from anywhere in the world. (This 2002 program is now called the “Stream for Low Skilled Occupations.”) Preibisch notes that by 2008, the Canadian agricultural sector employed foreign workers from almost 80 countries. And the types of work they are hired for, she observes, has also broadened.

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However, as unemployment stays high or worsens in some areas of Canada, the question arises as to whether as many migrant workers will be needed in the country’s fields and processing plants. Preibisch notes that Canadians avoid many agricultural labour jobs as they are difficult and seasonal. “Many employers do want to hire Canadians, but migrants can become a preferred source of labour,” she notes. “They also find it hard to retain Canadians in some cases.” To be able to hire migrant workers, employers currently have to advertise and show they can’t fill the positions with Canadians (submit an application for a labour market opinion), but Preibisch notes that there are ways around this requirement. “The employer might do limited advertising, and it’s also plausible that some Canadians are hired,” she explains, “but the first day of work is made so hard and unpleasant that they quit, and word spreads.”

Kevin MacIsaac, general manager of the United Potato Growers of Canada (UPGC), says that migrant worker issues are not something that his organization has anything to do with, but offers some personal observations. “Most farms can no longer find Canadians to do menial labour and physical work,” he says. “I have visited farms on P.E.I., in Quebec, in Ontario, and in B.C. that were using migrant workers. [The workers] are happy to have a job and don’t mind doing some of the tasks local residents would hesitate doing.” However, MacIsaac also notes that “these workers are sometimes limited in the level of work they can perform – not much equipment operation or management skills. Translation of operation manuals and tech manuals into their language is still cumbersome. Driver’s licence is OK but things like pesticide applicator’s licences are difficult [for them to obtain].”

Permits and working conditions
As dictated by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), all foreign workers and their employers must sign a contract that (as stated on the HRSDC website) “provides details about the worker’s job and conditions of employment, including the maximum number of hours of work per week, the wage rate for those hours, and the amount of money that will be deducted from the worker’s pay.” The HRSDC website also describes “government liaison officers of source countries,” who are available here to intervene on a foreign worker’s behalf, and “confirm that workers have acceptable housing, ensure [they] have health insurance and Workers’ Compensation coverage, gather details of worker injuries, collect pay records from employers, approve worker transfers, and consult with employers who wish to terminate a worker’s contract.” Preibisch notes, however, that while this formal role for representatives of source countries exists under SAWP, that is not the case under the 2002 program.

In addition, work permits given to migrant workers are employer-specific (which means a person coming to Canada is only permitted to work for one employer during that year). Preibisch notes that in the eyes of many, this is an urgent issue as this arrangement accords employers disproportionate power. These concerns are echoed by many other academics in a new 2012 book of essays called Legislated Inequality: Temporary Labour Migration in Canada, co-edited by University of Ottawa professors Patti T. Lenard and Christine Straehle. In an October article on the CBC news website, Lenard said that “the book clearly documents what has long been suspected: temporary workers in Canada are vulnerable to abuse.” This vulnerability is due in part, she says, to sector-specific permits. When workers “are not permitted to change employers, [it] means they are denied one of the main ways in which [they] can protect their rights.”
With the current arrangement, if migrants want to leave their employer for any reason, Preibisch says a process does exist whereby they can find a new employer and that person can apply for a labour market opinion, but this may be too time-consuming for most migrant workers, especially if the situation is difficult and the migrant is residing in employer-owned or rented accommodations. “Therefore, some are calling for sector-specific permits,” she notes, “so workers are able to work at any employer in the sector within the time frame of the work permit.”

However, there is also the perspective among Canadian employers in the ag industry and other industries that if employers live up to their commitments to their employees, they do not want them leaving for another employer after they have put in the time and effort to bring them here and train them. Speaking with regard to SAWP, Ken Forth does not support the idea of sector-specific permits. Forth is the president of Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services, the non-profit organization that administers some of the SAWP. “The worker has responsibilities and so do the employers,” he says. “The employers have the legal responsibility to provide proper housing, a minimum number of hours of work and so on. The housing is government-inspected and if it fails to meet the standard, the SAWP employer can be kicked out of the program for two years. I have never heard a call for sector-specific workers from my members, from our government, from the workers or from representatives of foreign governments, and I meet with them all the time. It’s not on the table.” Neither the Potato Growers of Alberta (PGA) nor the Ontario Potato Board (OPB) would comment on sector-specific permits.

Other concerns
Preibisch notes that the ability of Canadian employers to pull from a ballooning number of countries hasn’t had a positive impact on temporary workers in many cases. “While workers in some processing plants are in unionized environments with standardized working conditions, overtime pay and so on,” she says, “those on farms are more vulnerable.”

“Simply put, the increased competition from workers from many other countries puts pressure on people to accept unreasonable working conditions,” Preibisch says. “If they don’t agree to working longer hours, for example, workers can be threatened with being replaced with those from other places. Many Mexicans are now being replaced with Guatemalan people, not so much because they’ll take less pay, but because Guatemalans are perceived as willing to work longer hours and work harder in comparison.”

Although most of Canada’s temporary foreign agricultural workers still come from Mexico followed by Jamaica, Guatemala is now in third place, Preibisch notes. Migrants from many areas of the globe are more desperate than previous groups of workers, she asserts: “They face less political freedom and more marginalization, and are willing to work very hard here.”  
In her study, Preibisch also observes a significant lack of regulation and monitoring of migrant recruitment and employment in Canada. “This can and does result in abusive practices by employers, and some conditions which could be considered close to slavery,” she states. Although employment standards are provincial, Preibisch says, there needs to be more co-operation between federal and provincial labour agencies to ensure all workers are treated according to legal requirements.

See the second part of this article in the next issue.


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