Foreign workers treatment now in spotlight
Quarantine plans for farm labour fall short
On Monday, the federal government’s COVID-19 ATM spat out 50 million dollar bills to help Canadian farmers deal with a rather pressing labour issue. Every year, roughly 45,000 temporary foreign workers arrive in Canada to do agricultural work. In theory, this year needn’t be any different. The feds have exempted such workers from the ban on foreigners entering the country. Canadians still need to eat.
In practice, of course, this year is very different — or so we hope. Temporary foreign workers are required to self- isolate for 14 days just like all other arrivals. Farmers are required to pay them during that period and, if they provide housing as a term of employment, to find accommodations suitable for self- isolation. Read: Not the cramped bunkhouses and dormitories that many temporary workers call home.
That’s a big ask, both financially and logistically. It is reasonable to expect the vast majority of employers will behave responsibly. But it only takes one bad actor, and a bit of bad luck, to let down the whole side. And like just about every idea this government has rolled out in Phase 1, this one seems quite inadequate — both in design and in dollars.
If all goes as it should at Canada’s airports, temporary foreign workers will be informed of their responsibilities. They should be made aware of their employers’ responsibilities as well. And there’s no particular epidemiological reason to worry about them more than anyone else landing on a Canadian runway from abroad — or domestically, for that matter. The vast majority of temporary foreign workers are from Mexico, Jamaica or Guatemala, which have reported 39, 25 and nine COVID-19 cases per million residents. Canada’s tally works out to 713 per million.
But the official advice to employers provides little comfort. It doesn’t prohibit putting people up in shared accommodations; it merely says residents must be able to keep two metres from each other at all times. We know the limitations of such measures from experience in seniors’ homes and homeless shelters. It’s not necessarily “the state’s duty” to quarantine arriving temporary foreign workers, as Bloc Québécois leader Yves- François Blanchet argued this week. But the state could certainly do far more than it is.
For one thing, the cities in which workers typically first arrive are much better suited to proper self-isolation — i.e., in a hotel or motel room — compared to the farm country they are eventually headed for. Sourcing 45,000 hotel rooms is a huge job even in cities — that’s roughly how many rooms there are in the entire Greater Toronto Area — but it will never be easier than right now. It would prevent any bad- actor employers from breaking the rules. It would be much more reassuring than a government cheque for what works out to less than $80 per worker per day of isolation.
The whole situation is completely bizarre, though — one of several long-standing, bizarre and sometimes embarrassing Canadian situations that COVID-19 has highlighted. Economically speaking, the idea of temporary foreign workers essentially amounts to cheating. It reaches peak absurdity when businesses like Tim Hortons outlets claim to need them — that is, when they’re being brought in to do work that Canadians are demonstrably willing to do. It’s just a skeevy way to artificially depress wages and the price of fast food. People seemed to sense that back in 2014, when the government tightened the rules.
In agriculture, however, the idea seems thoroughly entrenched. Perhaps it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind. But it’s the same absurdity: If you can identify a group of 45,000 people without whose labour we literally wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves — or so we are told — then on what possible grounds are we denying them a path to Canadian citizenship? In 2017, the Toronto Star profiled a 66- year- old Saint Lucian man who had busted his hump on Canadian farms for 37 years in a row, with his paycheques deducted for income tax, EI and CPP, but who had no claim to stay. The highly skilled and educated immigrants we compete to attract bring many important things to Canada’s table; they don’t bring anything more important than food. And food is something COVID- 19 has very much taught us not to take for granted. Who would have thought supermarket checkout clerks would achieve hero status?
The Liberal government is pilot-projecting reforms that would offer temporary agricultural workers a chance at permanent residency — but only those who work in Canada all year, which has the perverse effect of privileging greenhouse workers over those who toil in the fields. And it comes with a raft of other rules, like needing a high- school diploma, that make the whole effort seem grudging.
The risk, I suppose, is that if you make low- wage farm workers Canadian citizens, they won’t want to be lowwage farm workers anymore. They certainly won’t want their kids to be low- wage farm workers. A population of by- definition hardworking and industrious people would be let loose on the Canadian economy with their dreams and aspirations untethered. That’s no bad thing, you might say. But then groceries might have to cost a bit more. Somehow, these days, that supposed dilemma seems even more ridiculous and disreputable than usual.