Bénédicte (above), a woman from Cameroon, suffered racist psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of her employer as soon as she arrived in Canada in 2016 with a two-year closed work permit to work on a farm. She was made to work 70–80-hour weeks performing tasks including domestic work, was substantially underpaid, and was constantly controlled. Her employer deceived her, promising to bring her children to Canada, to continue exploiting her. She eventually fell sick and was diagnosed with severe anaemia. When she finally left the farm in July 2018, her employer cancelled her work permit, leaving her with an irregular migration status. “I did not expect to be a slave here,” she told Amnesty International.

People who come to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Work Program (TFWP) carry out essential work—they help to keep Canada’s food, caregiving, construction, and hospitality sectors (just to name a few) going.

Instead of being treated the same as Canadians doing the same work, people who come to Canada under the Program are tied to a single employer who controls their immigration status, labour conditions, and sometimes their housing and transportation.

This puts them at increased risk of exploitation and other rights abuses. It also prevents them from changing employers when they do experience abuse.  

Migrant workers, who are predominantly racialized, are profoundly dehumanized through the TFWP. Separated from their families for long periods, their labour is extracted, and they are disposed of at the will of their employer. Many workers face termination and swift deportation when they fall sick, suffer injuries, or develop occupational illnesses, or if they speak out and try to assert their rights. 

Canada’s TFWP has been criticized by many, including migrant worker groups, civil society, unions and academics. The UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery has said it serves as a “breeding ground” for contemporary forms of slavery because it institutionalizes power imbalances that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights.

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Migrant workers in Canada told Amnesty International they face many abuses including:

• Wage theft of thousands of dollars

• Long work hours for days on end without adequate breaks 

• Being hired for one job but then forced to do another, like being forced to do domestic work when they were hired for agricultural work

• Serious injuries due to unsafe working conditions such as inadequate protective equipment when working with dangerous chemicals or machinery and being forced to operate heavy machinery without training

• Inadequate housing, including accommodations without potable water or an indoor toilet 

• Racist psychological abuse, physical assaults, and racist and gender-based sexual assaults and harassment

A door wide open to abuse and exploitation

In response to years of criticism, the government recently announced restrictions on the processing of certain applications under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. It proposed introducing sectoral permits for some workers in the food sector. According to the government, this change would allow workers to change employers within a sector.

However, these are not solutions. Everyone should have the freedom to change jobs and employers.  

Join us in calling on Canada to abolish closed work permits, and instead grant open work permits to all Program participants.