Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for inviting me to provide information this afternoon.
I am Tomoya Obokata, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery.
As you are well aware, I visited Canada officially between August 23 and September 6 to investigate issues relating to my mandate.
I began my mission in Ottawa and visited other locations, including Moncton, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. During my visit, I met over 200 stakeholders, including federal, provincial and territorial government officials; lawmakers; trade unions; civil society organizations; the business community; national, provincial and territorial human rights institutions; and workers as well as victims of contemporary forms of slavery.
In relation to the treatment of migrant workers, I expressed concern over the low wage and the agricultural streams of the temporary foreign worker program, as workers are at a higher risk of labour exploitation, which may amount to forced labour or servitude.
In this regard, I received first-hand information from a wide variety of stakeholders, including close to 100 workers I met across Canada, with regard to appalling working conditions, which include excessive working hours, physically dangerous tasks, low wages, no overtime pay, and being denied access to health care facilities, as well as sexual harassment, intimidation and violence at the hands of their employers and their families.
For sectors where employers provide housing, like agriculture, I also received reports of unsanitary and unsafe living conditions, lack of privacy and of gender-sensitive housing arrangements, and arbitrary restrictions on energy use or freedom of movement.
One of the factors facilitating labour exploitation seems to be the closed nature of the temporary foreign worker program. Many workers told me that they did not report instances of abuse and exploitation due to a fear of unemployment and deportation if they left their employers.
Now, I appreciate that workers can quit their jobs and stay in Canada until their individual visa has expired, but the problem is that they are not allowed to work until they find new employers who are willing to conduct labour market impact assessments, and I understand that this can take a long time. Unemployment among them, in the meantime, inevitably increases the risk of labour and sexual exploitation.
I am aware of open permits for vulnerable workers, but again, this is a temporary solution, and the process is so bureaucratic, with a high evidentiary requirement, that many workers do not take advantage of this opportunity—
