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If Canadian consumers ‘knew the work, they’d value the workers’

Paul Forbs is from Trelawny, a town on the north side of Jamaica. He’s been working in Canada for 20 years. “You’d think that they (Canadians) would respect that we leave Jamaica, we come here, we work in order for them to have food in the store.
workers

Paul Forbs is from Trelawny, a town on the north side of Jamaica. He’s been working in Canada for 20 years. 

“You’d think that they (Canadians) would respect that we leave Jamaica, we come here, we work in order for them to have food in the store.” 

Forbs has worked on two farms in his career. Right now he’s with Pfenning’s Organic Farm in New Hamburg. He feels both his farm bosses have treated him well, but he knows Canadians don’t understand the work that goes into their food.

“They go home, make their supper and they don’t know the work that went in to that food. They don’t value the process, so they don’t value you. If they knew the work, they’d value the workers.” 

The global COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the value of agricultural workers. Canada’s farmers were terrified their temporary migrant farm workers might not have been able to come this year.

Now that they’re here, farmers say they’re doing everything they can to keep them healthy. 

Jenn Pfenning isn’t taking a salary this year because of the cost of making COVID-19 safety adjustments to her farm. 

The Pfennings have spent several hundred dollars on thermometers alone. They’ve bought extra tents to create more outdoor lunch spaces so their crews can eat separately. They’ve supplied sanitizer, gloves and masks, and developed extensive protocols to mitigate the most likely points of spread including carpools and packing lines. 

Still, Pfenning has nightmares that one of her workers will get sick.

“My greatest fear is that one of my workers will suppress symptoms because as much as I try to be a respectful and caring employer, they still have fear because of the system,” says Pfenning. “I know for a fact of many instances [on other farms] where workers go to employers with concerns and have been ignored.”

“The system is set up to make it difficult to be anything but exploitive,” says Pfenning. 

This is because every aspect of their temporary workers’ lives is mediated through their employer. Pfenning says that workers come to Canada via direct working permits with one employer. If they want to change employers, they must first find a potential employer with an open Labour Market Impact Assessment, which is the precursor step to applying for temporary offshore labour, proving the farmer can’t find the required labour locally. The process can take up to six weeks.

Pfenning is not the only one concerned for the safety of migrant agricultural workers. The Migrant Worker Alliance for Change has released a report detailing migrant workers’ concerns suffering abuse during the pandemic. 

The alliance says its report comes from communications with 180 workers on behalf of 1,162 workers between March and May 2020, and includes many stories of mistreatment, unacceptable housing conditions, and inadequate food during the quarantine period.

One migrant worker reported that on a peach and grape farm in Niagara, one loaf of bread and a carton of eggs was expected to feed a group of 16 workers for two days. On another vineyard in Niagara a worker reported that two small bags of tortillas and a carton of eggs was provided for 20 workers.

The workers cite an inability to assert their rights because of their lack of permanent resident status, and are continually threatened with deportation or calls to the police if they speak up.

Additionally, the report detailed: 

Lack of access to information about health care or inadequate access to health-care services while being isolated on the farms.

Farmers withholding or deducting wages.

Inability to refuse to come to Canada because there were no other options to earn money, and exclusion from the federal income support program.

Workers complained they could not leave the farm for any reason, even buying phone credit or sending money to their families; they also asserted farmers were using the quarantine as an excuse to further clamp down on workers’ freedoms.

Workers report that racism, especially anti-Black racism, has increased during the pandemic, both from their employers and the community.

Workload has intensified greatly as fewer workers have come and the season had a late start.

For Forbs one of the main issues is that temporary migrant agricultural workers are required to pay into Canada’s Employment Insurance program, but are not eligible to collect any of it. “We’re here for six or seven months, and they say we’re not entitled to it,” says Forbs. “I think you should be able to get something from what you’ve paid for those six or seven months.” 

The 1,162 migrant worker voices in the report make up approximately 2.3 per cent of the over 50,000 temporary migrant agricultural workers who come to Canada every year. 

Bill George is chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, representing 300,500 farming families in the province. He says farmers are doing everything they can to keep their workers safe. “We’re working side by side with them. We’re doing everything we can,” he says.

George says most farmers are working with public health units to develop best practices, health protocols available to workers in their own languages, supply their workers with grocery deliveries or designating shoppers, and checking on the health of crews daily.

“We don’t like being painted in a bad light,” says George. “We feel we are good employers. If there is an individual who is not complying with the laws of the land, we don’t support them, but they are few and far between.”

George says that farmers’ temporary worker housing is inspected both at scheduled times and randomly by the federal government through Employment and Social Development Canada, as well as Ontario’s Ministry of Labour and local regional health units. 

He says that if Employment and Social Development Canada receives a tip about mistreatment at a farm, George says the farm in question will go through an integrity audit which includes an audit of the farm’s housing, working conditions, and pay roll. 

Migrant Worker Alliance for Social Change report says although a tip line may be set up, workers may not be able to access it because they have limited access to Canadian phone plans and internet connections.

Pfennings says the instances of mistreatment are probably much higher in reality.

She doesn’t believe that most farmers are racist or wanting to be exploitative. But the system set up to bring over migrant agriculture workers is inherently racist. 

“It’s history,” says Pfenning. “We need to take responsibility for what we can do, and work toward resolving those inequalities.”

Canada brings over 50,000 migrant workers each year, and 20,000 in Ontario alone. Some of the workers have been coming for over 30 years.

Pfenning and George both cite a chronic problem of local labour shortage in the agricultural industry. Canadians won’t fill the jobs. There’s a stigma against farming; it’s not seen as a viable way to make a living.

“We have cheap food policy in this country. The system is set up to suppress the price of food,” says Pfenning. “Our society does not value the things that make food grow.”