Border and Rule by Harsha Walia

Author:Harsha Walia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2020-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Permanently Temporary:

Managed Migration in Canada

Under the temporary foreign worker program, the boss has all the power—over your money, house, status, everything. They have you tied to their will.

—OPT, quoted in UNIFOR, “Landmark Human Rights Ruling Highlights Systematic Abuse of Temporary Foreign Workers”

In 2015, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario awarded two hundred thousand dollars to two Mexican migrant workers—known publicly by their initials OPT and MPT—who had experienced sexual harassment and discrimination at the Presteve Foods fish processing plant. They were part of a group of thirty-nine migrant farmworkers from Mexico and Thailand who brought forward complaints of violence. The two workers recounted appalling details of assault and rape by Jose Pratas, the owner of Presteve Foods. OPT testified Pratas repeatedly “touched her legs and her vagina through her clothes” and “penetrated her with his penis.”1 MPT was similarly sexually assaulted and was subsequently terminated and deported for leaving the employer-provided accommodation. In his decision in favor of OPT and MPT, adjudicator Mark Hart emphasized their particular vulnerability as migrant workers. “As a temporary foreign worker in Canada, OPT was put in the position of being totally reliant upon her employer,” he wrote.2 The #MeToo movement has largely ignored this kind of gendered violence against migrant workers, even though violence is systemic and embedded in migrant worker programs.

Canada’s current Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) was created in 2002, though Canadian history of indentured migrant labor is longer. Two of the most significant programs within the TFWP are the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) and the Caregiver Program, tying farmworkers and domestic workers, respectively, to an employer. Since 2002, the number of migrant workers entering Canada has almost quadrupled. In 2019, as many as 98,335 migrant workers, approximately 18 percent of whom were women, entered under the TFWP.3 Although TFWP streams exist for higher-paid workers, the majority of TFWP arrivals are migrant workers in low-wage sectors. Successive governments have justified the TFWP as a response to short-term labor shortages, but, in reality, there are, as Nandita Sharma puts it, “shortages of cheapened and politically subjugated labour power.”4

Migrant workers in Canada do some of the most dangerous jobs that form the backbone of the economy. From the agricultural sector to resource extraction to construction work, migrant workers are forced to handle toxic pesticides, dig open-pit mines, and dangle from skyscrapers to maintain accumulation in a settler-colonial economy. While no official statistics are kept on migrant workers’ deaths, a number of fatalities have been recorded, including the deaths of three Mexican migrant farmworkers in the province of Ontario during the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic.5 Justice for Migrant Workers estimates that thirty-three migrant farmworkers have died over one decade in that province alone.6 On Ontario’s farms, the unrelenting deaths of Jamaican farmworkers have propelled the demand for mandatory inquests. In 2002, Ned Peart was crushed to death on a tobacco farm, Paul Roach and Ralston White collapsed in a giant tank filled with toxic fumes on an apple farm in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.