DRESDEN, Ont. — Providing an avenue to citizenship for foreign agricultural workers is an option worth exploring, says a senior researcher with the George Morris Centre.
“If we talk to people who have had workers to a large extent, they feel they’re excellent workers and if there was a way to bring them into Canada, they would like to,” Al Mussell said.
Close to 30,000 foreign workers arrive in Canada annually through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). They come for up to eight months, and many have been doing so for 10 years or more.
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Another 10,000 arrive through the agricultural and low-skilled streams of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP). They can work in Canada for up to four years before being required to return home.
Stan Raper of the United Food & Commercial Workers supports opening an avenue for citizenship for foreign agricultural workers.
The workers are tied to a single employer, he said. If issues do arise, many are afraid to complain for fear of losing their position and being sent home.
“It (the program) was designed for employers and by employers,” he said.
“They (foreign workers) are doing the jobs Canadians do not want to do. The agriculture industry has expanded to the point that they cannot do without them. I think there has to be a willingness on behalf of the industry to break the cycle. I don’t think anyone is trying. They’re trying to reinforce it.”
Mussell, on the other hand, sees current federal policy as a win for both farmers and the foreign workers they employ.
“These guys want to work.… I don’t agree with the idea it’s some form of indentured servitude,” he said.
“It’s probably like anything else. There are probably a few bad actors in the system, bad actors who are employers and bad actors who are workers.”
Mussell said the new constraints placed by the federal government on access to foreign workers should serve as a wake-up call for Canadian farmers. Producers need to focus on competing with other sectors to bring talented workers to their farms, he added.
“In the agricultural community, we tend to think of land and water as being our limiting factor in the scope of operations. I think we also need to think in terms of attracting a talented workforce,” Mussell said.
“This will require continual redesign and re-thinking of workplaces, investment in new technologies that require higher skill levels and productivity improvements in operations that can sustain increased wage-salary budgets in the future.”
The federal government announced changes to TFWP this spring. Mussell said there will be additional fees and greater requirements on behalf of employers to demonstrate that foreign workers are not taking jobs Canadians could fill.
