'I did not expect to be a slave': Amnesty International report exposes abuse of migrant workers
Human rights group says Canada’s system sets up foreign workers for multiple forms of ‘labour exploitation’
This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
"I did not expect to be a slave here."
Bénédicte Carole Zé came to Canada in 2016 to work on a poultry farm after paying $10,000 in recruitment fees for a job here. But once she arrived, she says she was forced to work 70- to 80-hour weeks for an employer who she alleges sexually abused her, controlled her banking and did not let her leave the house or have a cellphone, while threatening her with deportation if she complained.
"I lived two years under slavery," Zé, now a permanent resident and an advocate for migrant justice, said in French at a media conference in Montreal Thursday morning.
"An animal had more value than me. I had no rights."
The Cameroonian woman's story is just one of many accounts of exploitation and abuse in a new Amnesty International report into the experiences of labourers in the temporary foreign worker program (TFWP).
Neither Zé's recruiter, who illegally charged her for the job, nor her employer were identified in the Amnesty report. Zé and other women filed sexual harassment complaints against her employer who "was only sanctioned with a fine for non-compliance … and is allowed to hire migrant workers again," according to Amnesty.
"I did not come here injured," Gabrielle, a worker from Jamaica, told Amnesty. She was identified under a pseudonym.
She says she suffered a severe injury after falling off a ladder while working on apple trees on a B.C. farm.
"Canada has destroyed me," said Gabrielle, who alleged that her supervisors would utter racial slurs and threaten to send her "back to the tree you came from" to make her and others work faster.
Amnesty's report, published Thursday morning, integrates research and interviews with 44 migrant workers from 14 countries living or working in Quebec and Ontario.
It documents what the human rights organization calls the "labour exploitation" of migrant workers, which it says ranges from wage theft and unsafe working conditions to abuse and race- and gender-based violence.
Julia Sande, Amnesty International Canada's human rights law and policy campaigner, says the stories she heard from migrant workers were "harrowing."
"They got here, and were shocked and horrified at what they found," Sande, who was also a researcher for the report, told CBC News.
Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general for Amnesty International Canada, said Canada is "relying heavily" on the labour of migrant workers to provide essential services, which she called a "temporary fix to a permanent problem."
"These industries which put food on our table and which keep us healthy ... cannot operate on the backs of exploited Black and brown migrant workers," she told reporters Thursday morning.
Sande said that "pretty much every worker" that Amnesty interviewed had recounted multiple human rights abuses.
"I remember someone talking about passing out and saying, 'All I needed was a glass of water and they treated me like not a human being who was deserving of that.'"
Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the department that oversees the TFWP, wrote in a statement to CBC that "ensuring the health and safety of temporary foreign workers remains our key priority."
ESDC says it has "recently strengthened" rules on penalties for non-compliant employers. In the first six months of the 2024-25 fiscal year, it said the department issued $2.1 million in penalties, more than double the amount issued for the same period the year before.
'Inherently exploitative'
Amnesty calls the TFWP "inherently exploitative" and "discriminatory" because it gives employers too much power over foreign employees, the organization says, while also predominantly targeting racialized workers from the Global South.
The organization argues in its report that the widespread abuse of foreign workers violates Canada's commitments to international law, including a UN covenant to maintain safe and fair working conditions.
It recommended the program be overhauled to address what it called systemic discrimination, while also calling to grant migrants permits to work for any employer, as opposed to the current model, which ties each foreign worker to a specific employer in a single sector.
The 71-page report is only the latest in a series of inquiries critical of the TFWP.
A July 2024 UN report called the program a "breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery," following UN special rapporteur Tomoya Obokata's visit the year before. At the time, Obokata also recommended ending the use of closed work permits.
Last year, Senate and House committees also issued similar recommendations to phase out employer-specific permits.
In a statement to CBC, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said it is "continuously taking steps to strengthen its temporary foreign worker programs," including requiring employers to provide private health insurance and prohibiting charging recruitment fees to foreign workers.
IRCC also pointed to a 24/7 tip line where people can report abuse of temporary foreign workers.
It did not answer whether the government is considering discontinuing the use of closed work permits.
"As the issues raised in the report are part of current litigation, we are unable to comment at this time," it said.
Sande is disappointed in the lack of action from authorities, despite the repeated warnings.
"This just simply cannot go on any longer," she said. "[The government] cannot know about this and ... continue violating their international human rights obligations."
Nivyabandi said the urgency to revise these policies is immediate.
"It needs to change today," she said Thursday. "It has been ongoing for decades.… It has been documented over and over. There's no reason why we continue to have closed permits."
Increase in vulnerable foreign workers
According to IRCC, more than 2,700 open work permits were granted to vulnerable foreign workers in the first eight months of 2024 — the most in any year so far.
The federal government has made some changes to the TFWP amid heightened scrutiny around immigration. In August, ESDC announced that it would cease to process applications from employers in metropolitan areas with high unemployment. And six weeks ago, in an effort to reduce fraud, IRCC removed the permanent residence incentive for foreign workers in the program.
Nivyabandi asks Canadians to reflect on the toll these labour conditions take on the people who produce the nation's goods and services.
"Whenever you are eating your vegetables … think about the person who is watering consistently in greenhouses without having time to have a break, without being able to rest — and think about what that cost means."
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