Migrant worker advocacy group calls for better protections at rally in front of local MP's office

Advocates for migrant workers gathered in front of Windsor—Tecumseh MP Irek Kusmierczyk's office to deliver a report card full of Fs.

Taneeta Doma is a lawyer with Justice for Migrant Workers (J4MW), the group behind the Sunday-evening protest. 

They organized it to highlight what she said were shortcomings of the open work permit for vulnerable workers that was supposed to make life better for temporary farm workers.

"[The program is] supposed to assist closed-work permit workers in Canada's temporary foreign worker program who want to leave their abusive conditions," she said.

Doma said the program is flawed, however, with it being a non-renewable, one-year permit, leaving workers without status and having to go back home or, in some cases, back to to the work they wanted to leave in the first place.

She said the federal government has tried to address some of J4MW and other groups' concerns around migrant workers' job conditions by launching programs like the Agri-Food Pilot, which aims to provide non-seasonal workers a pathway to permanent residency.

Doma says pilots like this are also flawed.

"They completely exclude seasonal workers, which is a large group in the temporary foreign worker program," she said.

"There's also other types of access issues such as the cost of the application. And the fact that there's the the permanent employment requirement that is very difficult for workers to get."

CBC News reached out to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the office of Irek Kusmierczyk, but did not hear back before publication.

Other groups across Canada shared similar concerns

Other groups have also raised concerns over the years regarding the program, including an Immigrants Working Centre in Quebec and the United Food and Commercial Workers of Canada (UFCWC).

Viviana Medina, who works with the Immigrant Workers' Centre, called the application "a cumbersome process," in 2020, a year after the program's launch.

"It is impossible for a worker who does not speak French or English to make this permit change request alone," she said, referring to the online application.

Between June 1, 2019, and May 31, 2020, Immigration Canada says it received 952 open work permit applications for vulnerable workers. Of that number, 853 were processed and 451 requests, or 53 per cent, were accepted.

Santiago Escobar, with the UFCWC, said in 2019 the program was a step in the "right direction," and was the least the government could do but also shared accessibility concerns.

"Without the assistance of our organization they wouldn't be able to put in their claims," he said then.