Shane Martinez, Martinez Law

Chris Ramsaroop, Justicia for Migrant Workers

Legal Exceptionalism in the Human Trafficking of Migrant Farmworkers

Human trafficking is something that features prominently and repeatedly in modern Canadian media. This presentation looks at how migrant farmworkers are subjected to differential treatment by the Canadian government, police, and immigration authorities, in their efforts to purportedly address human trafficking. The presenters conclude that the Canadian government's political and socioeconomic policies contribute to the forced migration of many from the global south. They also conclude that Canada’s selective design and enforcement human trafficking laws is highly politicized, and that the type of working conditions often associated with human trafficking are readily accepted for migrant farmworkers within government-run programs. Despite this reality, migrant farmworkers find themselves in a position of potential power during this time of economic crisis. Solidarity from the legal community and activist groups stands to potentially enable migrant farmworkers to leverage their labour power as the lifeblood of Canadian agricultural system and bring about meaningful change.

Ilija Dimeski, Dimeski Law

Controlling the Migrant Body: Employment, Health and Safety, and Human Rights Law and Agricultural Food Production in Ontario

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and further fueled employers’ ability to control migrant farmworkers – through both body and mind. A review of recent cases in the employment, health and safety, and human rights law context demonstrate employers’ practices of exerting power and control on the migrant workforce through three means: 1) fear, 2) legal exemptions prescribed by law, and 3) “othering”. First, fear has been used through the pandemic to prevent migrant farmworkers from leaving the farm and ostracizing the defiant ones by treating them as “trouble makers”, essentially treating workers as being at risk into a risk. Second, statutory exemptions under the Employment Standards Act, 2000 are used to instill a sense of belief that employers cannot be held accountable. Third, employers’ efforts of pinning workers from one ethnic background against another have been used to distract and take attention away from the employers’ wrongdoings. This presentation seeks to expose these employer strategies, as well as highlight some of the effective means that workers have utilized to combat such tactics and achieve legal victory.

Sarah Khan, Justicia for Migrant Workers

Farm Worker Housing: A Form of Environmental Racism

Racialized farm workers from the Global South were the only group for whom an exception was made from border controls during the Covid-19 pandemic, so that they can harvest Canada’s crops and allow food production to continue as Canadians quarantined themselves. Their political, social, civic and economic disenfranchisement exacerbated their legal powerlessness during the pandemic. This presentation will show how the current farm worker housing crisis is a form of environmental racism. A racialized community with vulnerable and precarious status is segregated into isolated, oppressive living housing, exempt from any legal rights for housing, all in the service of food production.

Taneeta Doma, Migrant Farmworker Clinic

Small Solutions for Systemic Issues: The Wage Earner Protection Program and Open Work Permits for Vulnerable Workers

Despite the broad, oppressive nature of virtually every aspect of migrant agricultural workers’ experiences in Canada, they are continually offered, and expected to accept, small-scale solutions. This presentation will use the Wage Earner Protection Program and Open Work Permits for Vulnerable Workers as examples of how these piecemeal solutions fail to substantively create safe and dignified working and living conditions for migrant agricultural workers.

Vasanthi Venkatesh, University of Windsor Faculty of Law

Labour Migration and Food Systems: Immigration Law and Political Economy of Canadian Agricultural Production

Immigration has had an intimate role with food production starting with the first Department of Immigration housed within the Ministry of Agriculture. This presentation will show how immigration law and policy along with trade laws create the conditions for unfree migrant labour to become the “lynchpin” in several Canadian food systems. It will also show how the pandemic created the perfect conditions to further entrench the institutionalisation of migrant labour from the Global South in law and policy.