Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good day and welcome to Waterloo. Thank you for coming here and for examining this important issue. I am here today to present some reflections on my doctoral research, examining health, rights, and access to benefit issues among seasonal agricultural workers. Mine is the kin

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for phrasing my opinions exactly. We so often focus on the exploitation of these workers; it's true that they are ripe for our exploitation when they are either undocumented or when they're here under the temporary foreign worker programs, but what I tried to show today

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I've only examined the seasonal agricultural workers, which is a specific program. In the vast majority of cases, these workers do not want to prosecute or lay charges because their main concern is staying in the program. Most of these workers come from very impoveri

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That would be a huge improvement over the situation we have now, and it is one of the recommendations I outline in my brief. Giving these workers citizenship is ultimately the only way to promote equality, but in the interim or if you're not willing to consider that option, I thi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I mean they should be on a path where ultimately they become citizens. I recognize there are bureaucratic steps involved.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In some cases, they do, but the lure of the dollar is just that strong that they're willing to put up with those conditions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Technically, yes, they do.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They do.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Some can, but many do not because they do not have the information and support available to apply or they have not worked enough hours because they only worked for temporary periods. So many of them do pay--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I said many of them can get it, but many also are not getting it for the reasons I just mentioned.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, many of them do not have access to support to apply for these plans, or do not even know about them. Second, many of them did not work long enough in Canada in order to attain these benefits.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The problem is because some of them only come up a few--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, and this is one of the issues I discuss in more detail in my brief, because this was one of the main issues I examined. Workers do have rights to health care and to workers' compensation. The problem is that their ability to access these rights is very constrained, because t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is something like seven seasons. I don't know the exact number.