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“Not one of these changes is to protect migrant workers,” Syed Hussan of the Migrant Rights Network said in an interview. “This is all about having more control over more workers, this is not for us.”

The discussion papers were prepared for consultation by Employment and Social Development Canada, which is jointly responsible for the temporary foreign worker program with the federal Immigration Department. The papers cover changes proposed for different areas of the new Foreign Labour Program for Agriculture and Fish Processing Stream.

The proposals would cover 106,000 migrant worker positions reported in 2023 for about 7,400 employers, the ministry said.

According to the proposals, employers would be required to pay foreign workers the median wage in the regional job market — as posted on Job Bank, Canada’s national employment service — rather than the current prevailing wage that generally reflects the provincial minimum wage. 

Currently, seasonal agricultural workers recruited through agreements have pay deductions for housing at various rates from $1.08 per day for Mexican workers and $6.29 per workday for the participating Caribbean countries. The new plan would allow housing deductions ranging from five per cent to 30 per cent of a foreign worker’s gross monthly before-tax income, depending on the type of employer-provided accommodation being provided (e.g., apartment versus bunkhouse setting) and the amenities available. It could amount to a substantially higher deduction. 

A stream-specific work permit would also be launched along with a refillable labour market impact assessment — a document for employers to prove there are no Canadians to fill the job — to free migrant workers from being restricted to working for only the sponsored employer, allowing them to change jobs within the sector.

The proposal said the work permit in the new stream — valid for multiple-entry up to two years — could reduce the administrative burdens and costs for workers by removing the need to get a new work permit to change jobs within the stream or if they are unexpectedly out of work.

It said this would also give employers the flexibility to more easily employ workers across occupations in the sector to address peaks in labour demand; two employers with consecutive seasonal work periods could share one worker between them to save costs associated with the recruitment and transportation of workers.

The new stream is meant to “offer greater labour mobility to temporary foreign workers, and flexibility for employers, while ensuring that foreign workers are only hired in jobs where there is a demonstrated labour market need,” said the proposal.

Employers could hire migrant workers already in Canada with a valid work permit and wouldn’t need to recruit additional workers from abroad, helping Ottawa’s plan to reduce the number of temporary residents in the country, it added. 

According to Hussan, Employment and Social Development Canada shared the documents in March with the Migrant Rights Network to provide feedback from its members by the June deadline.

In response, the advocacy organization conducted surveys and focus groups among members in the last three months for migrant workers’ input. Hussan said the community was overwhelmingly against the proposed changes.

“This is a public relations strategy by the Canadian government to respond to the fact that the United Nations has clearly named Canada as a breeding ground for exploitation and contemporary forms of slavery because of the systemic power discrepancies between the employers and the workers,” said Hussan.

A report by the UN’s special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery earlier this year denounced Canada’s temporary foreign worker program as “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery,” stressing that granting migrant workers permanent resident status is necessary to end ongoing exploitation.

Hussan said the so-called stream-specific work permits won’t address the root of the problem — the imbalance of power between workers and employers — because employers routinely freeze out anyone who asserts their rights.

“They’re just changing the name, calling it stream-specific work permits rather than employer-specific work permits,” said Hussan. “What they’re saying is we’ve gotten rid of this thing that everyone criticized. But in effect, the work permits are still going to be employer-controlled.”

Migrant Rights Network’s survey found 93 per cent of the 322 respondents said tied permits would make it harder to assert rights; 83.6 per cent reported wages are already insufficient to support themselves and families, with workers paying a median $880 per trip in travel costs despite employer obligations; and 37.5 per cent complained that employers were discouraging health-care access, with 7.2 per cent having been denied care more than 10 times.

Sixty-five per cent of survey respondents demanded zero housing deductions and 79 per cent wanted health-care access not to be tied to their employers. 

“They’re pressuring us from every side, how are we supposed to survive?” said a 42-year-old worker from Jamaica, one of 192 participants in focus groups, quoted in the Migrant Rights Network report.

“We thought they erased the shackles of slavery when we started getting pay, but now we see the pay is just a token and the shackles are the permit and the laws and housing.”