Good afternoon. As you introduced me, I am the co-founder and coordinator of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, and also of Migrant Rights Network. Together, we aim to represent all of the self-organized migrant and refugee groups in the country.
Today, on behalf of our groups, we want to make one primary recommendation, and that is that all low-wage temporary foreign workers must be able to come to the country with full, permanent resident status on arrival, with their families.
In addition, we call for permanent residency status for migrant and documented workers already in the country, open or sectoral work permits, and full access to health care, education, national housing standards, recruiter regulation, employment insurance, pensions and the ability for workers to negotiate their own contracts.
I'm going to walk you through the life of an average worker, so you get a sense of what we're talking about.
Most workers, outside of the seasonal agricultural worker program, SAWP, come to the country having paid a recruiter between one and two years' salary, in home country terms, which is anywhere between $2,000 and $10,000. It's important to note that these recruiters are Canadian. This is not a foreign issue.
In order to pay this money, the workers have to take on loans, as do their families, which means that when they arrive, they are already under economic duress. This makes it very difficult for them to assert very basic rights. In many cases, the jobs promised either do not exist, or, if they do, are not as promised. This is why we ask Canada to create model regulations for its provinces that specifically allow for licensing of recruiters and registering of employers, and that hold them jointly and financially liable for all recruiter fees.
Now, all of these workers are on employer-specific permits; that is, they are tied to their employers. Changing jobs requires finding a new employer, who may need to apply for a labour market impact assessment, at a cost of $1,000. Then the workers may need to apply for a work permit. This entire process, from job search to starting the job, can be anywhere between three to six months, or up to a year. During this time, workers are not allowed to work, and generally cannot access employment insurance. With high debts from having to keep two households, temporary foreign workers tied to employers by work permits are essentially indentured. This is a system of indentured servitude.
The seasonal agricultural worker program contract allows employers to defer days off to a more opportune time. We have many farm-worker members across the country who, in peak season, work three straight months without a single day off. The subcontract and the TFW contract are supposed to ensure that workers are paid hourly, but we know that in at least a quarter of all cases, workers are doing piecework. They are being paid on the basis of the baskets of fruits or vegetables they pick. As a result, many workers are making below minimum wage.
In our experience, an average farm worker, at the end of a two-year period, has had $20,000 in unpaid wages stolen from them. For a domestic worker, that's almost $10,000. This is why we insist that migrant workers must have a seat at the table when these contracts are being designed, because as currently imagined, they are essentially exploitative.
Current labour laws, which are largely provincial, exclude agricultural workers from minimum wage, overtime pay and unionization. Domestic workers live in employers' homes. There's no clear start or end time to the work. As a result, our members are sometimes working 10 to 12 hours a day. At other times, they are working only four to five hours a day, but are being paid in a 10- to 12-hour period for only seven hours. When they are working four to five hours, they cannot have their needs met.
Most temporary foreign workers live in employer-provided housing, without privacy, with curfews and unable to control what they eat. Workers in agriculture are housed with pesticides. Domestic workers are sleeping on living-room floors, without having a separate room. I just recently spoke to a domestic worker who told me that her employers only allow her to shower in the gymnasium in their condo. For a week, when there was no water in the gym, she did not shower. This is not an unlikely story. These are common things. This is why we insist on a national housing standard for all employer-provided housing, rather than the disparate system that currently exists.
When workers are injured on their jobs, particularly in agriculture, they face de facto medical repatriation. You are injured here, but you are sent home to die. Therefore, we call for an end to unilateral removal of migrant workers, particularly due to medical repatriation. We call for full universal access to health care, without the three-month wait period.
When workers leave or they're between jobs, they're often unable to get basic employment insurance or pensions. We're calling on Canada to ensure that particularly seasonal agricultural workers and other workers get access to pensions, parental benefits, EI and supports after injuries, even after they have left the country. We need portable benefits, benefits that can travel between countries.
Recently, we've seen a tremendous increase in funding in ESDC and CBSA to do labour enforcement. Let me be perfectly clear: the ESDC is completely incapable, as it's currently designed, to deal with worker rights violations. There are no complaints. There are no forms. There's no training for the officers. We believe that there must be proactive enforcement, but the current system, including what they're doing in B.C., is the wrong direction, and we need to go back to the beginning and start over.
By and large, however, the fundamental issue is permanent resident status on arrival.
After years of organizing, the Liberal government recently announced regulations to create an open work permit for workers facing abuse. What's most important about this is that there's finally an acceptance from the government that temporary immigration and tied work permits create the conditions of risk and abuse. That's great, but we don't need a system where certain workers have to apply for the work permits and then get them after they've been abused. We need just open work permits for everyone.
As it's currently designed, we've identified 13 major gaps in the regulation, and we have not seen the timeline for dealing with them. This includes discretion for officers to decide what is abuse, while they've received no training on labour violations. We insist that this program not be discretionary and that the permits should be minimum one year, be renewable, give access to health care, be processed in an expedited manner, and not include sex workers and seasonal agricultural workers.
The immigration minister also announced just last Saturday a new caregiver program with sectoral permits and allowing for family members to accompany workers. This is welcome news, provided it is not accompanied by regressive measures. We have a media announcement and no details. We will be watching closely to see the devil in said details, but we call for such permits, sectoral and open work permits, and family reunification, so workers come to the country with their families, and for it to cover all temporary foreign workers, not just caregivers.
An interim program has also been announced for the tens of thousands of workers who were left out by the Conservative government's discriminatory caregiver program launched in 2014.
