Report details gov’t’s failure to protect C’bean farm workers during pandemic

Early in December, Canada’s Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released its report into the conditions that migrant agricultural workers face during this pandemic. The report was nothing short of jaw-dropping, validating what migrant farm workers from the Caribbean have been saying right from the start of the pandemic.

The OAG details the colossal failure of Canada to protect migrant workers and raised red flags that 77 per cent of inspections they conducted in 2020, rose significantly to 88 per cent in 2021. The auditor general commented that Canada’s “inspections provided little assurance that employers complied with the requirements to protect temporary foreign workers during quarantine”.

Additionally, the report expressed concerns “when conducting inspections of compliance with regularly mandated requirements –such as verifying basic living conditions like running water, occupancy level, and whether workers’ housing was free from serious health and safety risks – (that) Canada collected no information in almost all cases, but found employers compliant. These basic living conditions took on even greater importance in the pandemic context of social distancing and disinfection protocols.”

Why did it take a report, released at the end of the year, to conclude what we all knew from the beginning of the pandemic? If we had listened to the workers and undertook immediate steps, lives would not have been lost and workers may have been prevented from the risks of COVID-19. At the height of the first wave of the pandemic, I received a Whatsapp message from Jamaican farm worker Robert Boucher, who shared his concern that: “They neglect and wait until the entire bunkhouse caught the virus then they take you to be tested.” A finding that was echoed by the OAG report.

REALITY OF BUNKHOUSE LIVING

Why were no steps taken after the valiant efforts of an anonymous whistleblower who recorded the congregant housing that he faced? In a video seen by millions, we saw the reality of bunkhouse living: crowded, cramped and no possibility whatsoever for social distancing. The only privacy accorded to these workers is a flimsy cardboard.

At the first outbreak at Greenhill Produce near Chatham Ontario, several workers anonymously crafted open letters expressing the dire situation they faced at the beginning of the pandemic. In one letter, a worker wrote: “The work migrant workers do annually helps the host country, along with our home countries… With all this said, migrant workers would like the Canadian government to respect us as essential workers as our work and sacrifices not only help families from our home countries, but the host countries as well. Also, to ensure farm owners are providing acceptable and suitable facilities to accommodate migrant workers in and around Canada.”

Canada’s agricultural industrial complex continues to generate vast amounts of profits off of the sacrifices of workers from the global South. We will be forever indebted to the sacrifices of workers from Jamaica, the Caribbean and the far reaches of the global South. Canadians cannot continue to turn the other way as our government continues to demonstrate sheer negligence towards the hands that feed us.

Chris Ramsaroop is an organiser with the activist group Justice for Migrant Workers, an instructor in the Caribbean Studies Program at the University of Toronto and an instructor at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law.