Canada’s unions are marking International Migrants Day by continuing to call for equal rights and opportunities for migrant workers.
Migrant workers come to Canada in the hopes of securing a better future for themselves and their families. They contribute to our communities and economy, paying income taxes and rent, and purchasing goods and services, despite many being excluded from receiving the same rights and protections as other workers in Canada.
In addition to facing precarity and barriers to full participation and opportunities, migrants are increasingly and unfairly shouldering the blame for decades of policy failures that have led to the current housing and affordability crises, and the lack of good jobs that so many Canadians are experiencing.
“Migrant workers are simply not responsible for our strained public care systems, lack of affordable housing or job shortages, and yet they’re paying the price for government failures to address corporate greed and invest in people and infrastructure. Rather than perpetuate misplaced blame and anger, we need governments to invest ambitiously in affordable housing and well-funded public services”, said Larry Rousseau, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress.
In addition to being singled out and scapegoated for government policies for which they are blameless, most migrant workers cannot even access equal rights and protections due to a lack of permanent residence status. Workers in Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) streams are subject to closed work permits that tie them to their employer, preventing them from seeking fairer or safer job opportunities, specifically because of their immigration status.
“Those who benefit most from this system are not migrant workers, but recruiters, traffickers, and unscrupulous businesses and employers, who use the program as a constant stream of unfree, unjust labour,” said Rousseau.
These streams effectively trap workers in a system of exploitation, where employers have total control over jobs, wages and working conditions; a system rightly called “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery” by United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata.
The CLC continues to urge government to put an end to these labour and human rights violations and take immediate action to address government policy that serves the interests of employers, not workers. Government must replace closed, employer-specific work permits with open work permits, provide permanent residency opportunities for low-wage workers, and pathways to permanent residency for former low-wage workers who are undocumented, giving migrant workers access to government supports and the labour protections all workers deserve.
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