Canada’s transient international colleague scheme ‘inherently exploitative’: Amnesty | Labour Rights Information


Montreal, Canada – Canada has did not whip significant motion to deal with systemic abuses in a decades-old international colleague programme, subjecting 1000’s of labourers to an “inherently exploitative” machine, Amnesty World says.

In a 71-page file absolved on Thursday, the rights staff defined a large area of abuses connected to the Brief Overseas Colleague Program (TFWP), from salary robbery to over the top paintings hours, racist abuse and violence.

Most of the violations are homogeneous to the labourers’ “closed” paintings allows, which attach them to their employers and let fall them perceptible to exploitation, Amnesty stated. Employees most often don’t talk out because of an apprehension of reprisals.

“Exploitation, discrimination and abuse are integral features, not bugs, of the Temporary Foreign Worker program,” Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary normal of Amnesty World Canada’s English-speaking category, stated in a remark.

“Cosmetic changes are not enough. Our leaders must implement the reforms required to bring the program in line with Canada’s human rights obligations – and, ultimately, to respect the rights of workers.”

Introduced within the Seventies, Canada’s international colleague programmes have come underneath higher scrutiny in recent times as former and stream labourers denounced their remedy.

In 2022, a workforce from Jamaica wrote a letter likening situations on farms in Ontario, Canada’s maximum populous province, to “systematic slavery”.

A time next, a United International locations particular rapporteur stated the TFWP schemes “make migrant workers vulnerable to contemporary forms of slavery, as they cannot report abuses without fear of deportation”.

A migrant colleague so much trays of onions at a farm in Canada in 2020 [File: Shannon VanRaes/Reuters]

‘Like throwing away rubbish’

Tens of 1000’s of international staff come to Canada every time throughout the TFWP, which the federal government says targets to fill gaps within the labour marketplace.

They paintings in low-wage industries similar to agriculture – together with on farms or at food-processing vegetation – and as in-home caregivers, amongst alternative jobs.

In 2021, transient international staff accounted for 18 p.c of the body of workers in Canada’s agricultural sector and 10 p.c within the lodging and meals services and products sector, a find out about absolved overdue utmost time discovered.

Migrant staff – lots of whom had been coming to Canada for years and even many years – even have restricted pathways to everlasting residency within the nation.

“In its current design, the TFWP is inherently exploitative,” Amnesty World stated in Thursday’s file.

The crowd additionally stated the scheme is “inherently discriminatory, as it entrenches instances of discrimination and disproportionate impacts of human rights violations on racialized ‘lowskilled’ workers based on their race, gender, class and national origin”.

Francisco, a Mexican colleague who stated to Amnesty World the use of the pseudonym, stated: “The employer will get what he desires, but if [the worker] is now not helpful to him … He merely sends [the worker] again.

“And I feel that it is like throwing away rubbish and saying it’s no longer useful.”

Inspections and fines

The Canadian executive has up to now defended the “closed” paintings allows as a vital measure to safeguard it is aware of which employers are using international staff and the place they’re operating.

Closing time, amid a rising backlash over immigration and a housing extremity, the federal government additionally introduced plans to loose the choice of transient international staff in Canada, together with the ones in TFWP streams.

In the meantime, Work and Social Construction Canada, the rustic’s labour ministry, stated in mid-January that it had higher consequences for employers who fail to agree to the foundations.

The ministry stated it carried out 649 inspections between April and the top of September of utmost time, 11 p.c of which discovered employers to be non-compliant.

It additionally issued $1.46m (2.1m Canadian greenbacks) in fines and cancelled 20 employers from the TFWP.

“Workers in Canada deserve and expect to feel safe and protected in the workplace. That’s why we’re taking steps to further protect temporary foreign workers and hold bad actors accountable,” stated Steven MacKinnon, the Canadian minister of Work, Personnel Construction and Labour.

“Employers must follow the rules, and we will continue to take decisive action to protect workers’ rights and wellbeing while growing our economy.”

However Amnesty World stressed out in its file that TFWP abuses “cannot be attributed to a few unscrupulous employers, nor can they be understood as isolated incidents”.

Rather, the gang stated Canada bears accountability for the immigration insurance policies and regulations that experience left staff prone.

It instructed Canada to progress past “narrow, piecemeal measures” to build “systemic policy changes”, together with the abolition of “closed” paintings allows.

“This system should be urgently replaced with an open visa system that can fully protect racialized workers from labour exploitation and discrimination,” Amnesty stated.

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