On March 20th the Federal Government went back on its original decision to prevent all travel to Canada by non-residents, exempting temporary foreign workers in agriculture and several other industries deemed essential. This move was in response to a panic among many medium and large farms, primarily in horticulture, which depend on temporary foreign workers to harvest crops.



The nature of Canadian agriculture depends on these workers. Data reported by Stats Canada shows that in Ontario total employment in the agricultural industry was 76,900 workers (rounded to the nearest hundred). In the same year there were 21,900 temporary foreign workers in primary agriculture across a specific subset of the industry: primarily vegetable, fruit and non-edible agricultural products like flowers and tobacco. This means that greater than 1 in 4 workers in Ontario’s agriculture sector was temporary foreign labour in 2015. The number of workers in the program has grown since then.

The regulations for this program require that the employer prove that they could not find anyone to fill the job. However because of the physical, dangerous, and seasonal nature of the work many domestic workers do not to take these positions. Additionally, the industry standard wage for the positions being filled are below even a living wage. For the average worker in fruit and vegetable farming in Ontario the hourly rate is only $14.18 according to Stats Canada (January 1. 2020).



The Temporary Foreign Worker program is used to mask the systematic failure to improve labour conditions over time in the agricultural industry. Most temporary foreign workers work and live in crews which share large bunkhouses. They generally live on the farm and because their continued stay is conditional on their employer, this leads to a tremendous power imbalance, typical of any workplace but even more acute. These conditions were highlighted last year when a group of workers reached out to labour advocates to report squalid living conditions with 8 people to a bedroom and 20 workers in 1 small house. This poses a great risk to them as they return amidst the pandemic.



The agricultural industry is built on acute exploitation, where workers have to work long hours under hard conditions, with very little safety or job security guarantees, and make close to minimum wage. The argument for bringing in temporary foreign labour is that they cannot find Canadians to do the work. But the reason for that is the bosses offer low wages for labour under hard and dangerous conditions. It is typically treated as unskilled labour but it is in fact highly skilled. Some farmers before the exemption suggested that even if they were able to find domestic labour they would not be able to keep their businesses profitable due to inexperience on the job.



Canada has narrowly missed a food security crisis, but what needs to be understood is that it was a manufactured one. Our food system in Ontario is not stable and depends on the products of imperialism. Workers coming from elsewhere due to the conditions in their home countries. They arrive, work, and leave. Coming out of the covid-19 pandemic all agricultural workers need to change the way our food industry works. Strong fighting unions that can defend and unite all workers in agriculture are necessary and are only becoming more urgent.



In Struggle,