Thank you.
First I'd like to thank the committee for coming to British Columbia to give us an opportunity to reach the members of Parliament on this important issue.
I, too, only heard of your meeting on short notice and obviously was not able to get to you a written submission in time for translation.
My name is David Fairey. I'm a labour economist with extensive experience in labour policy research. I'm appearing today to share with you some of the key findings and policy recommendations that resulted from a recently concluded two-year study on the impact of recent B.C. provincial policy changes on immigrant and migrant farm workers. It was done by a group of academic and community researchers like me, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, under a community-university research alliance called the Economic Security Project.
The academic researchers on this project included Dr. Arlene Tigar McLaren and Dr. Gerardo Otero of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Mark Thompson of the University of British Columbia. Our study report will soon be published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The following questions guided this study: What implications do changing legislation, policies, and practices have for immigrant and migrant farm workers in British Columbia? What impact does this changing legal and policy context have on farm workers' experiences? And what alternative models of employment standards and enforcement procedures would be able to better address their needs for economic security, health and safety, and labour rights?
Of relevance to your investigation is our examination of the seasonal agricultural worker program, SAWP, for temporary migrant farm workers in the British Columbia context and our interviews with 25 Mexican migrant farm workers in British Columbia who were here under SAWP.
The B.C. labour policy background to this aspect of our study was the significant reduction in B.C. employment standards regulations for farm workers in 2003-04 and the B.C. government's decision to join the federal-provincial SAWP in 2004.
Recent changes in B.C. employment standards that have had a significant negative impact on the supply of farm workers from the local labour market and on the conditions of employment for both resident farm workers and temporary foreign workers brought to B.C. under SAWP--and now for farm workers being brought in under the low-skilled worker pilot project--involve the following: their exclusion from statutory holiday pay, annual paid vacation, and hours of work and overtime pay provisions under the regulation; a reduced minimum daily pay from four hours to two hours per day; the introduction of a $6 minimum hourly wage for those employed for the first time or those without experience; significantly reduced employment standards, branch-site inspections, and enforcement activity in the agricultural sector; and no increase in the minimum wage for seven years.
We're told that there's a labour market problem, that there's a shortage. Well, it's interesting that it was the farm owner community, the farmer owners, who were the strongest advocates for these reductions in the employment standards for farm workers. They then pressured the federal government and the provincial government for inclusion in the seasonal agricultural worker program. It's obvious that the employers and the provincial government have created labour market conditions that have contributed to the shortage by creating a labour market, a supply situation, that is untenable for local workers.
Historically, B.C. has drawn on specific groups from four non-white countries as a source of cheap labour for dangerous occupations with inferior employment and citizenship rights in Canada. Early in the 20th century, British Columbia farmers successfully petitioned the federal government to admit South Asians and Japanese to work in agriculture.
Canadian immigration policy continues this racialized pattern by allowing specific groups from the global south to enter Canada to fill jobs with poor pay and working conditions, which other populations are unwilling to fill. Their racialized and highly vulnerable status allows the employers to justify substandard working conditions. In entering Canada under strict conditions with inferior citizenship rights, immigrants and migrant workers are susceptible to highly exploitative wage work.
B.C. farmers in the Fraser Valley rely largely on immigrants from the Punjab to replenish their labour force. Today about 90% of these farm workers are Indo-Canadians. The majority are women, many in their fifties and sixties. Most migrated to Canada under the federal family reunification program, sponsored by their Canadian children or grandchildren. While most B.C. farm workers in the Fraser Valley are Indo-Canadian, this traditional source of labour was curtailed by Citizenship and Immigration in 2003 when it restricted the admission of parents and grandparents in its family reunification program. This measure contributed to the labour shortage that was emerging in B.C. agriculture.
Accustomed to paying seasonal harvest workers no more than minimum wage, and sometimes less, B.C. farmers had been facing a labour shortage in the early 2000s. The provincial government did not raise wages in agriculture to meet these shortages, nor did the federal government seek to increase the number of immigrants. And mechanization of farm work proceeded slowly. The horticulture industry, instead, extensively lobbied the federal program to negotiate with B.C. and Mexico a memorandum of understanding for the province to join the SAWP.
In 2004, B.C. joined the SAWP, which grants farm workers temporary employment visas in agriculture, with wages slightly above the provincial minimum. In the first year of the program, in 2004, there were 50 workers brought in under the SAWP. This year it is projected there will be 3,000 SAWP workers in British Columbia. As I said, the low-skilled program is also being extended to agricultural workers.
Canadian government officials and employers defend the SAWP program as necessary due to domestic labour shortages and an unstable workforce in agriculture.
The government requires a labour market opinion from employers applying to the SAWP to show that they have tried to hire local labour and that a supply is not available. In the case of migrant agricultural workers, the government does not address the way low wages and poor working conditions fail to attract local workers.
In addition, the government has not adequately acknowledged how the SAWP exposes workers to inadequate employment and safety protections, which renders them unable to exercise their rights as workers. In particular, the SAWP does not allow workers to freely choose their workplace or residential location, in contrast to citizens who have the formal right to circulate in the labour market. SAWP workers are only allowed to come to Canada if they work for a specific employer, live in their employers' designated premises for a specified period of time, and then return to their home country. In being bound to a single employer and having a temporary status, workers are unprotected from the threat of repatriation. Dismissal by an employer can mean that a SAWP worker will be sent home to Mexico without their anticipated earnings. The threat of repatriation is a powerful deterrent to workers' rights.
The temporary worker status also separates SAWP workers from their families, making them further vulnerable to employers' excessive demands. SAWP visas are different not only from conventional landed immigrant categories but also from other temporary migrant worker programs, in that they only allow the holder to stay in Canada for up to eight months.
There is more in my submission, but I think I should go essentially to the recommendations.
Could I just conclude with some of our recommendations?