Recommendations for the New Agriculture and Fish Processing Stream
Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) are currently seeking feedback on proposed features of the new Agriculture and Fish Processing Stream for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). Six discussion papers outline proposed changes for both employers and migrant workers under the new stream. We believe that the proposed features fail to address the underlying problems with the TFWP and may, in fact, negatively impact migrant workers.
CMWR NS is a member of the Migrant Rights Network (MRN), which made a submission based on feedback from migrant workers across the country. We contributed to that submission and wrote an additional submission focused on what we heard from migrant workers in Nova Scotia. Our recommendations aim to ensure migrant workers’ ability to exercise their rights and enhance their safety in the workplace. These recommendations come from the lived experiences and knowledge of migrant workers, with whom we engaged both formally and informally about the proposed changes.
Our key recommendations are the following:
Strong housing standards coupled with strict enforcement are required to ensure migrant workers live in dignified and safe housing.
Proposed market-based wages and deductions threaten to put migrant workers in a precarious economic position.
Healthcare measures are inadequate for addressing ongoing issues of medical inaccessibility for migrant workers.
Program-specific work permits are not a substitute for closed permits—permanent residency should be granted upon arrival for all workers.
We hope that the government will take this opportunity to support migrant workers and Canadian citizens by implementing recommendations outlined in this submission, as well as those in our MRN submission.
