Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams.
Speaker: On the podcast today, Syed Husan of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change joins me to discuss the recent visit to Canada of Tomoya Obotaka, UN Rapporteur on Slavery. The UN Special Rapporteur on Slavery played an official visit to Canada in late August to assess the government's efforts to prevent and address contemporary forms of slavery.
Speaker: Tomoyo Obotkata filed his report on September 6th after spending two weeks in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, and two other Canadian cities. Among a number of groups he identified as vulnerable to slavery, he highlighted migrant workers, particularly those brought in through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. Obotoka said he was deeply disturbed by the accounts of exploitation and abuse shared with him by migrant workers.
Speaker: To comment on this report and the conditions faced by migrant workers in Canada, I'm joined by Syed Husan, Executive Director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. Hello, Husan. Hi, thank you for having me. It's really good to have you on the show. What was your reaction to the report by the UN Special Rapporteur?
Speaker: So Tomoya Obokata is now another person in a long line of experts, which includes, obviously, migrants themselves who've been saying repeatedly that the temporary immigration streams in this country are ones that create exploitation and abuse, and that permanent resident status is the only solution that can ensure that this injustice and unfairness end. So he's just one more voice saying the same thing, and we hope that this time it will be heard.
Speaker: What aspects of the temporary foreign workers program did he highlight specifically as making migrant workers vulnerable to slavery? So he talked about the temporary immigration streams, one of which is the temporary foreign worker program, but he also commented on international students and undocumented people.
Speaker: In the temporary foreign worker program, the key issues are that migrant workers don't have power. So migrant workers are tied to the employers. They're not allowed to work anywhere else without jumping through a whole bunch of hoops. So imagine for a moment if a migrant worker is facing abuse or exploitation, their employer can, first of all,
Speaker: kick them out of the house because they live in employer controlled housing. They're not allowed to work anywhere else so now they're starving. Access to employment insurance is very difficult so they probably don't have it. Employers have a bunch of tricks to force workers to leave the country and employers have a bunch of tricks to ban workers and blacklist them.
Speaker: so that they don't return to the country. Now, as a result of this power imbalance, it's very difficult for migrants to protect themselves. So this opens up the door to all forms of exploitation and abuse. Similarly, the lack of permanent resident status also means no access to universal health care, no access to education, no access to family unity.
Speaker: So the entire lives of migrants are controlled by employers and institutions, and all of it hinges on the fact that they are temporary and not permanent, which is why he focused on permanent residence status as the solution. The federal government says that temporary foreign workers can quit their jobs and they can remain in Canada legally until the expiration of their visas. Is that the case?
Speaker: I mean, theoretically, yes, that is the case.
Speaker: without any income, and without any employment insurance, it's very difficult. But also, we see this all the time. Employers will take a worker who's complained, and they'll drive them to the airport, hand them a ticket, and ask them to board the plane. And unless the worker has access to support connections, knows someone, they just leave. But what happens if they stay? Well, if they stay, then they're starving. At least if they go back home, then they have access to food, et cetera.
Speaker: If they also stay, sometimes it becomes very difficult for them to reach. So for example, one of the sub streams of the temporary foreign worker program is the seasonal agricultural workers program. Now, in this program, you're invited year upon year, and you can be blacklisted. So employers will let the government know that this is a so -called problem person.
Speaker: So at the end of the day, there's a fundamental power imbalance. Those are not my words. Those are the former employment minister, Carla Qualtras' words, when she was asked to comment on the temporary foreign worker program. So because of this fundamental power imbalance, rights that exist on paper are simply not actually accessible to anyone.
Speaker: In his report, the rapporteur said he spoke directly with migrant workers, and they told him about long hours with no overtime, no access to healthcare, terrible living conditions, amongst many other issues. Why aren't these abuses being identified by inspectors?
Speaker: So there are no actual inspections in Canada. There are no proactive inspections. There are only inspections that result after complaints. Now, migrant workers live basically under two sets of jurisdiction, federal authorities and provincial authorities. Provincial authorities are
Speaker: employment standards that exist in every province. Now, in most provinces, there's actually no proactive enforcement of any workplace, migrant or not. They might do some, you know, a few hundred or a few thousand year upon year. But for example, in Ontario, there's almost none. So there's actually no inspections that take place. It's what Canada has is what's called a complaints based system. So it is possible for your boss to exploit you, to underpay you,
Speaker: but you have the right to go and make a complaint about it. Similarly, it's possible for your landlord to jack up your rent, but you have the possibility to go access justice through some sort of landlord tenancy protection or tribunal process. So this isn't the only way to have systems, but Canada has a complaint -based system, but a complaint -based system relies on equality between all parties.
Speaker: In the case of migrant workers, because there is no equality, because there's so much such a power imbalance, complaints are even fewer than there are otherwise. Now, even when complaints are made, for example, there are no unannounced inspections in the system, so employers are informed sometimes a month in advance that the inspector will be coming.
Speaker: they select the workers they will interview and give the names of those workers. And so obviously, the employers can control what workers will say, they have a lot of time to clean up their act. So Mr. Obokata also explained this in his end of mission press conference, the report will come next year. So it's impossible for inspections to function when they're not unannounced and when they're not proactive.
Speaker: One of the contemporary forms of slavery mentioned by the Rapporteur is debt bondage. How do temporary migrant workers end up in that situation? So whether it's temporary foreign workers or international students, many people pay recruiters to come work in Canada. So there's something called a recruiter chain, right? So an employer in Canada or a university in Canada works with a recruiter, say, in the capital city or in their own city in Toronto, in Vancouver, whatever.
Speaker: that recruiter then hires a sub -recruiter potentially in Mexico City. And then that recruiter hires another person in a rural area part of the country.
Speaker: they are the ones who are actually recruiting the workers. The worker pays them, and then they pay every recruiter all the way up the chain. Now, to pay this, workers have to take out large loans because it's approximately one to two years of salary in local currency. It's different for Thailand versus Mexico, but that's the average recruiter fees. Workers pay that,
Speaker: They arrive in Canada and now they're just paying back those debts. In some cases, the recruiter may have a person in Canada who every month the workers withdraw their money and pay them, or they took a loan from someone else to pay the recruiter. Now they're paying that person back. This creates an additional disincentive to raise your voice and make complaints because
Speaker: If you leave the country, you're forced to leave the country, you'll still have the debt hanging over you. There is some laws that have been passed over the last 10 years really pushed for by the migrant movement in Ontario. It'll come into force in January, but it exists in Manitoba, BC and PEI. But all of these recruiter legislations exclude certain people, but also are complaints based.
Speaker: and require enormous amount of evidence. And there's no joint inside reliability with the employer itself. What that means is the employer is not held accountable for the fact that they are the ones who control the recruiter chain, which means that getting money back from bad recruiters for workers is almost impossible. So the situation is that there's simply not good laws that stop recruiter exploitation. Even when there are laws, they don't work.
Speaker: I wanted to ask you how important are migrant workers to the Canadian economy? There are 1 .2 million temporary permits that were issued in Canada in 2022. The number is going to be much higher in 2023. Depending on how you count, there are anywhere between 1 in 15 or 1 in 23 people in the country without permanent resident status.
Speaker: in major cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, et cetera, that number is much higher. Some projections put it at as high as one in 10. So every 10th person on the street walking around is somebody who faces potential labor exploitation, potential exclusion from healthcare. But also, most of these people are working in low wage jobs, which are the brick and mortar of the economy, which are the essentials of our communities.
Speaker: But these are also our neighbors and our friends and our loved ones and our colleagues and our coworkers. So the scale of the crisis is that Canada is effectively turning into a temp agency, but the majority of people here are on a temporary basis. As our members say, you tweet us like chewing them. You bring us in, you chew us, you spit us out, and you get another one. So this revolving door immigration system means the entire country
Speaker: and many, many major industries could not function without migrants. But neither could we as people, because these are our friends and our loved ones, as I said. What solution does Mr. Obakata propose for the problems that he identified? I mean, Mr. Obakata's solution is actually the same one that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in December 2021, which is permanent resident status.
Speaker: You can't have a fair society without equality. You can't have equality if, as I said, one in 10 people or one in 15 people have a different immigration status. Fair society means that everyone must have the same immigration status in the country because that is the mechanism through which you access all other rights.
Speaker: So many of us mis -conceptualize permanent residences, whether you live in Canada or not. The fact is temporary and undocumented workers live here and sometimes live here for decades. It's not about whether you live here. It's about what kind of rights are you able to access, what kind of services, what kind of power you have. And so Mr. Obakata, just like Prime Minister Trudeau, just like most migrants in the country,
Speaker: clearly articulated that the solution is equality, which means the same immigration status, which means permanent resident status for all. And what happened to that promise by Mr. Trudeau?
Speaker: I mean, 20 months since that promise has been made, we've simply not seen the action. But this week, the parliament has returned, and we are calling on the prime minister to keep his promise, to begin by regularizing all undocumented people immediately. This is a cabinet proposal, so it does not have to go through legislation.
Speaker: As far as we know, all the documents and all the research is complete. It just needs to go to cabinet. They need to make a decision and they need to launch the program. And if Prime Minister Trudeau wanted, it could happen as early as tomorrow. So it's now in the Prime Minister's hand seat. Look, he has to make a choice. The only reason there are millions of people in this country without permanent resident status is because it is profitable for the richest few to have an exploitable workforce.
Speaker: For example, the agricultural industry in Canada, Canada is the world's fifth largest agri -food exporter. The majority of food that's grown by farm workers in this country is for export. Same with flowers, same with wine. This is a multi -billion dollar industry, and the profits, just the profits of the agri -food industry, actually are much higher than the GDP of Jamaica, which is one of the countries where migrant workers come from.
Speaker: This is a fundamental, again, power imbalance. And so there are these very few voices who want to keep migrants exploitable. And Prime Minister Trudeau has to choose. He can choose the side of the super rich or he can keep his promise and stand with working people and ensure permanent resident status for everyone.
Speaker: Now, as you say, there's a proposal for a regularization program. It's ready to be presented to cabinet. What can people listening do to put pressure on the government to make that happen?
Speaker: I mean the first thing that I would say is go to statusforall .ca or our website migrantrights .ca and send an email from there. And when you put in your information, an email is generated and sent to all of the ministers and your MP.
Speaker: and do it every day. Ask three friends to do it. If thousands of people are right now speaking up and telling the ministers that they have to keep their promise, they have to do the right thing, then change is possible. But when you send that email, you also get added to our mailing list, and then we can send you more information about upcoming activities where you are and provide you more materials and analysis around how to take action.
Speaker: Really good to talk to you today, Husan. Thank you so much for having me. I've been speaking with Syed Husan, Executive Director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, and that website again is statusforall .ca.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org -slash -redeye.
