With Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking to Twitter to welcome immigrants to his country, Canada has gained a reputation for being friendly to new arrivals. But now the nation’s guest farmworker program has come under scrutiny for human rights abuses and treatment that is anything but hospitable.
The program, which recruits workers from Mexico and 11 Caribbean countries to labor on farms for eight months a year, brought in more than 34,000 people in 2016 alone. “But critics say the program is poorly supervised, leaving workers vulnerable to exploitation by employers, often denied the Canadian labor benefits they are entitled to, and at risk of deportation if they complain about employment conditions,” says The New York Times.
Erika Zavala, a 32-year-old single mother and a guest worker from Mexico, works on an organic carrot farm in British Columbia. She says “she weeds on her hands and knees for 10 hours a day, earning about $8 an hour. The trailer she shares with another Mexican woman has no hot water. In past years, she has slept in a decrepit, mice-infested Airstream with a door that could be locked only from outside,” according to the Times.
But Zavala is afraid that if she complains, she will lose her job. And going to the Mexican consulate isn’t helpful either, since Mexican officials are afraid that Canada will simply look to other countries for workers.
Felix Martinez, a former Mexican consular liaison officer, confirmed that officials are loath to mention the abuses to Canadian authorities. Martinez said he “had seen foreign workers exposed to toxic pesticides, housed in metal shacks, and forced to use a stream as their only source of drinking water. Most workers, he said, keep silent rather than risk being sent back to the poverty of their homelands,” says the Times.