When Sheldon McKenzie suffered an ultimately fatal head injury on an Ontario farm in January 2015, his recovery should have been the main concern.

Instead, a liaison officer with the Jamaican consulate reportedly made great efforts to have McKenzie sent back to his native Jamaica as soon as possible. McKenzie was a migrant worker from Jamaica, one of thousands who come to Canada every year under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP).

Injured workers are bad for business and their experiences threaten the program’s reputation in the Caribbean and Latin America countries where workers are recruited. Evidence suggests many workers who are hurt or become ill while in Canada are simply sent back home.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the SAWP and its shameful legacy needs to be addressed: we are treating the migrant workers who grow and harvest our food like disposable, subhuman units of labour.

McKenzie died in a Windsor, Ont. hospital last September — he was 39 and leaves behind a wife and two teenage daughters. His Canadian relatives say he would likely never have received treatment here if not for the family’s advocacy. According to Marcia Barrett, McKenzie’s cousin and a Winnipeg resident, the Jamaican consulate liaison initially told the family McKenzie had suffered a stroke, not head trauma related to a workplace injury.

Barrett claims that same official told her McKenzie was available for so-called “medical repatriation,” and repeatedly checked with doctors to see if the injured worker, who had portions of his brain removed because of swelling and internal bleeding, was healthy enough to be flown to Kingston, Jamaica.

Under the SAWP, foreign consulate liaisons and farm employers work together to decide which workers stay in Canada, which ones should be sent home and which can return the following season.

Injured workers like McKenzie are of no further use to their bosses, or to Canada, and when their work permits expire, so do their health and Employment Insurance benefits. The SAWP exploits the labour of healthy workers and spits out those who become ill or injured while on the job in Canada.

“I was 100 per cent confident he’d be sent home if we were not there,” said Barrett. “Why would you tell the family about medical repatriation? Why are you asking when his bone flap will be in place? This man was there fishing around, asking when Sheldon could be moved.”

Barrett described her late cousin as “a very giving, happy, delightful young man.” She said the 12 years McKenzie spent travelling to Canada from Jamaica for work helped him raise a family, but they don’t excuse the way he was treated in the months following his accident.

“The program was a great income blessing to my family, but just because you’re working hard for something doesn’t mean you should be abused,” Barrett said.

MaryAnn Mihychuk, the federal minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour, said this week she found it “shocking” that Canada doesn’t track the fate of migrants workers who are injured here, and is vowing to review the SAWP.

According to a study by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, nearly 800 migrant workers were fired and sent home for medical reasons between 2001 and 2011. We don’t know how many of these workers died because our government, in its indifference to the workers’ lives, has failed to keep count. In fact, migrant advocate Chris Ramsaroop fears that prior to 2001, Canada did not even properly record the number of farm workers who were sent home due to illness or injury.

“There’s never been an inquest into the death of a migrant worker,” Ramsaroop informed me in a phone interview. “We need to know what happened, not only in Sheldon’s case, but in the case of every farmworker who has died.”

Ramsaroop also pointed out that most of the workers in the SAWP are black and brown men from the global south.

“This is a legacy of both slavery and indentureship. It’s no coincidence that the same black and brown people that underwent slavery and indentureship are also going through this today.”

In her review, Mihychuk will have plenty to consider: workers currently lack permanent immigration status, full health coverage, and access to Employment Insurance (even though EI payments are deducted from their wages).

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Hopefully she starts from the principle that migrant workers deserve the same protections as any Canadian labourer.