Thank you very much, and good morning.
My name is Mr. Chris Ramsaroop, and I'm a national organizer with a group called Justice for Migrant Workers. We're an organization that advocates and works with seasonal agricultural workers who come up from the Caribbean and Mexico. Many of us have family members who have come up through this program as well as many close friends.
To contextualize the program, the seasonal agricultural worker program began in 1966. It is a guest worker program that was initiated between the Government of Canada and several countries in the Caribbean as well as Mexico. There are over 20,000 workers who come under this program in every province, with the exception of Newfoundland. Workers come up for anywhere from eight weeks to eight months.
To contextualize further, we support the recommendations that have been submitted by several organizations, such as the FCJ Refugee Centre, KAIROS, the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, and the United Food and Commercial Workers, on non-status and temporary workers. And we wish to submit some additional comments and recommendations as they relate specifically to migrant agricultural workers. Before going over those recommendations we'd like to tell you about some of the conditions these workers face while working here in Canada.
Many of these workers work 12 to 15 hours a day without overtime pay or any type of holiday pay. They use dangerous chemicals and pesticides with no safety equipment or protection and training. They live in substandard housing, which I have pictures of, with leaking sewage and inadequate washrooms. They have an inability to access most employment insurance benefits despite their contributions. They face various barriers to accessing adequate housing services. And they're prohibited from forming collective bargaining and joining unions. For actually taking a stand for anything they believe in, they could be sent home. As such, many workers are reluctant to stand up for their rights, since employers find it easier to send workers home at their own expense instead of dealing with their serious concerns. The lack of an appeal mechanism in the seasonal agricultural worker program forces many workers to remain silent out of fear of being expelled from the program.
Canada has historically relied on migrant labour to build this nation. Today migrant workers are indispensable in domestic work, construction, and agriculture. The low wages of migrant workers have supported a multi-million-dollar agricultural industry. Despite the economic importance of migrant workers' contributions, they have been consistently denied basic rights and citizenship. Today agricultural migrant workers are among the most marginalized in the labour force in Canada.
Within its mandate to examine the employability of seasonal migrant workers we ask the standing committee to explore policy changes that would address the structural discrimination faced by migrant workers.
First is the right to employment insurance. Despite paying millions of dollars into the EI fund, migrant workers are currently only able to claim parental benefits. Migrant workers must be able to claim regular and sickness EI benefits. As a result of the work of several of our organizers, a couple of years ago workers were able to find a loophole and they were able to start accessing parental benefits. As such, it's helped provide some basic income security for many of the workers who face unemployment and underemployment in their home country.
Is there a precedent for extending benefits to the home countries for their workers? Yes, there is. As you may be aware, we do have an established agreement for residents in the United States who can apply for regular benefits under Canada's employment insurance scheme. The agreement is between Canada and the United States respecting unemployment insurance. Many of these migrant workers meet the criteria established for regular benefits if you consider the principles of the social insurance scheme. When workers become unemployed through no fault of their own, because of their permanent non-resident status and the fact of our immigration laws, they have to go home.
Second, they have a strong attachment for labour in the economy of our country. Over 80% of these workers come back year after year.
Third, many of the conditions that are conceptualized by our employment insurance scheme are what they're facing in their home countries. Many of them do not work, and many of them survive on the small pittances they make here in Canada. As such, we ask the government to put regulations in place and sign a reciprocal agreement with the home countries of Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Mexico to have an agreement similar to what we have in CPP.
Fourth is an end to repatriation. As this contract is an employer-sponsored contract, workers are basically repatriated for standing up for their rights. We've counted over the last ten years over 5,471 workers who have been sent home: 2,200 signatory workers have been deported for “breach of contract”; 889 have been deported for medical reasons; 2,319 have been deported for domestic reasons. However, because there's no further information, nor are there any means where workers can challenge the deportation, no more information is known. But we can provide anecdotal evidence of why workers are being sent home. They're being sent home for standing up for their rights. They're being sent home for complaining about some of these housing conditions we're talking about. They're being sent home because they're sick. They're being sent home because they want change.
The way we came to our work is because several workers stood up for their rights in a place called Leamington, Ontario. Because they stood up, they were told they had breached their contract and they had to go home. That's something each one of us here can do. We can stand up for what we believe in.
We're asking you to look into the contract. HRDC and Service Canada play an important role in negotiating the contract, so that a dispute mechanism, an appeals mechanism, is put in place to ensure that workers have a chance to appeal these decisions.
As organizations such as STATUS, KAIROS, and No One is Illegal have also brought forward, we believe in the right to regularization. Many of these workers have been coming to this country for 30 to 40 years, yet the point system does not enable them any opportunity to gain status for Canada. We believe that the regularization process must be implemented to ensure that workers do have a chance, that their contributions are met here in Canada, and that they are provided with some dignity and respect.
As such, we have four recommendations: one, that permanent residency status be provided for workers currently employed under the auspices of the seasonal agricultural worker program; two, that permanent residence status be provided retroactively for workers previously employed under the seasonal agricultural worker program; three, that provisions for family reunification be included to allow families of migrant workers to apply for residency status; and four, that a process of citizenship be expedited for migrant workers who marry Canadian citizens.
In the spirit of recognizing past injustices, the crimes that we as a nation committed against the Chinese, the Japanese, and countless other communities, let us learn from the lessons of history and address the contemporary system's indentureship so that thousands of Mexican and Caribbean workers will be given the respect and dignity they deserve.
Thank you.