Canada’s migrant farm worker program was founded on ‘racist’ policies, new lawsuit alleges.
The Toronto Star has reported on our new proposed class action on behalf of migrant farm workers.
The lawsuit challenges several aspects of the migrant farm workers program. In particular, the lawsuit alleges that the imposition of employer-specific work permits, contractual termination clauses that allow employers to terminate employment with the effect that the worker is sent back to their country of origin, and the requirement that migrant farm workers must reside at their place of employment violate the security of the person and equality rights guarantees in sections 7 and 15 of the Charter.
The lawsuit also challenges the exclusion of migrant farm workers from accessing regular and sickness benefits under the Employment Insurance Act despite requiring them to pay Employment Insurance premiums.
The Star notes that the proposed class action “uses historical records to argue that employer-specific work permits — which remain in place today — were imposed on Black and Indo Caribbean farmworkers because of their race and that it was ‘motivated by overtly racist policy objectives.'”
European farmworkers who immigrated to Canada prior to the SAWP were not subject to the threat of deportation, the lawsuit states. By contrast, they were afforded pathways to permanent residency and citizenship.
“Tied employment … was imposed as a means to obtain the labour of racialized workers while subjecting such workers to more coercive conditions of employment,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit highlights some of the policy debates that preceded the SAWP, showing how Canadian government officials were trying to address their need for immigrant labour while guarding against “a substantial increase in negro immigration to Canada” and the “racial problems” they feared would accompany it.
Jean Marchand, Canada’s minister of manpower and immigration in Lester Pearson’s government, stressed in 1966 that any program that brought in workers from the Caribbean would need “strictly controlled conditions” to avoid “large-scale social problems,” according to the lawsuit.
Tied employment was the result.
The lawsuit argues that the racial discrimination by the Canadian government was “intentional” and the purpose behind imposing tied employment was “rooted in racist stereotypes.”
The Star spoke to Louis Century about the lawsuit:
“The wrongdoing we challenge in this case has been ongoing for more than half-a-century,” said Louis Century, one of the lawyers working on the case for Goldblatt Partners, which has partnered with Koskie Minsky and Martinez Law. “These coercive conditions that were imposed in the 1960s for overtly racist reasons continue to be imposed more than 60 years later.”
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The freedom to leave a job is “the most important measure of self protection that any worker has,” Century said. Tied employment denies that freedom to migrant workers, he added, because they are deported if they exercise it.
Kevin Palmer, one of the representative plaintiffs, told the Star that he paid into Canada’s Employment Insurance fund for 6 years, but when his employer laid off a number of workers, he was sent back to Jamaica and was ineligible to collect EI benefits.
The lawsuit claims migrant farmworkers paid more than $472 million in EI premiums to the federal government since 2008, and that Canada collected the money knowing it was impossible for migrant workers to access the benefit.
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Century said it’s “unconscionable” that any worker would pay premiums for a benefit they can’t access.
“But for these workers of all workers, who make up the most vulnerable workers in Canadian society, and who are subjected to heightened vulnerability because of their race and their nationality, to then be structurally excluded from EI is a grave historical injustice that has to be remedied.”