When Conwade Bramwell, a 23-year-old Jamaican, was selected for Canada\u2019s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program at the peak of COVID in 2020, he quickly resigned from his full-time job as a hotel bartender.<\/p>\n
Bramwell had met several Canadians in Jamaica and looked forward to spending time in the country\u2014and building a chance for a better life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw Canadians as lovely people while growing up,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, quitting my job for an opportunity to go to Canada and work was like a no-brainer. \u2026 But it\u2019s never easy to leave your family and go somewhere else to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
His excitement was short-lived: The work proved punishing, abusive, and exploitative\u2014leaving him bitter toward the country he\u2019d once dreamed of visiting.<\/p>\n
Bramwell said the first encounter with his employer was far from what he expected. His boss was hostile, and the atmosphere among the workers was tense and fearful. The first day at the Ontario farm, Bramwell said he spent 10 hours of hard work handpicking peaches and plums from a ladder. He didn\u2019t get back to the cramped room he shared with three other workers until late, and crashed out immediately, only to start work again at 7 a.m.\u2014after which conditions got worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you moving so slowly? Even my dead granny can move faster than you,\u201d Bramwell recalled his employer commenting that morning. He added that his employer would force him and his coworkers to finish work earlier than they should, since the work was paid at an hourly rate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever there\u2019s a lot of work, he\u2019s always pushing and telling us to work faster,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will finish the work long before it should be finished and then we will be sitting in our house not having any work to do. [For example], my contract last year was for three months, but my employer made me finish the work for two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
As in the United States, agricultural work is unattractive to Canadians, leaving the country\u2019s agricultural sector, worth $87.7 billion<\/a> a year, heavily reliant on migrant farmworkers. The migrants are recruited under the federal government-run Temporary Foreign Worker Program, mainly the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program<\/a> (SAWP). The SAWP was established in 1966 and allows Canadian farms to employ migrant workers from 11 Caribbean countries and Mexico temporarily for periods of up to eight months.<\/p>\n Every year, more than 27,000 migrant farmworkers<\/a> come to Canada through the SAWP, and the workers accounted<\/a> for nearly 25 percent of the total workforce in agriculture in 2022 alone. But like Bramwell, many of these migrant farmworkers face physical and verbal abuse, hazardous exposure, limited access to healthcare services, and even death risk. Employers, according to Bramwell and other workers, pay little heed to working conditions.<\/p>\n Sometimes this can prove fatal. In August 2022, Garvin Yapp, a Jamaican farmworker, died after collapsing<\/a> at a farm in southern Ontario. The next year a young Jamaican farmworker working in Niagara-on-the-Lake died<\/a> of unknown causes while sleeping in his bunkhouse, which his colleagues blamed on lack of access to healthcare.<\/p>\n The situation was exacerbated during the COVID pandemic, with the migrants working in harsh conditions often without health insurance or adequate protective gear.<\/p>\n Bramwell said upon arrival in Canada, he and other migrant workers were told to sign a letter that exempted their employers and the Canadian government from any liability should they contract COVID.<\/p>\n A 2022 study<\/a> published in the International Journal for Equity in Health found at least nine deaths among migrant agricultural workers in Ontario between 2020 and 2021 alone. One of the risks the study identified was barriers to accessing healthcare.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have any benefits or\u00a0insurance,\u201d said Bramwell,\u00a0who worked for 10 hours each day for C$15.50 per hour.\u00a0\u201cWe don\u2019t have any sick days. We don\u2019t get any holidays. Every day is the same.\u201d<\/p>\n Migrant farmworkers are speaking up. Shortly before the death of Yapp, Bramwell and other Jamaican migrant farmworkers in the Niagara region wrote<\/a> an open letter to Jamaica\u2019s then-minister of labour and social security, Karl Samuda, in August 2022 concerning the poor treatment they received at two farms in Ontario.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wrote the letter because of the injustice [on the farm]. We are not being treated well,\u201d Bramwell said.<\/p>\n But after arriving in Canada and visiting the farms, Samuda said that he saw \u201cno evidence of mistreatment<\/a>.\u201d This quickly generated criticism from Jamaicans and migrant advocacy groups, forcing the minister to establish<\/a> a special fact-finding team to investigate the workers\u2019 working conditions on the farms. In 2022, some Jamaican farmworkers were pulled from four farms<\/a>, after it was discovered that they were being subjected to verbal abuse and poor living conditions.<\/p>\n In May 2023, Samuda resigned<\/a>, and Pearnel Charles Jr. was appointed as the new minister of labour and social security. Five months later, Charles arrived in Canada and visited about a dozen farms and met with 21 employers and employer representatives.<\/p>\n Accommodations are mostly provided by migrant farmworkers\u2019 employers. But the bunkhouses are often rat-infested, dirty, cramped, and lacking in basic facilities, Bramwell said.<\/p>\n Cherry Tomlinson Matthews, a Jamaican who was on the migrant-worker program in British Columbia from 2018 to 2021, said the rooms are often cramped and offer little privacy.<\/p>\n At the time she was selected for the program, Matthews\u2019s daughter was just 2 years old, and so the decision to move to Canada was difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very hard for me to leave her at that tender age and come work here. However, I made a sacrifice and I went,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But\u00a0four weeks after she arrived in Canada, she started experiencing unusual fatigue. \u201cI overworked and fainted that year [2018], and when a nurse checked me, she said that the chlorine they use in the factory is affecting me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Three years later, Matthews fainted again.<\/p>\n \u201cThat happened on the fifth of July 2021. I was unconscious. When I woke up, I heard people talking around me, but I could not respond. The paramedics came in and they said I had a brain shock because I fell so heavily on the concrete I hit my head,\u201d she said. \u201cThey want us to work like slaves.\u201d<\/p>\n For decades, migrant farmworkers in Canada have been pushing for permanent residency, which would offer them some form of protection from abuse and exploitation.<\/p>\n When farmworkers are subjected to abuse, they rarely assert their rights or seek healthcare services when sick for fear of losing their jobs or being deported.\u00a0Those who spoke up immediately faced the consequences. For example, two migrant farmworkers were sent back<\/a> to Jamaica in 2017 for complaining about problems with their paychecks.<\/p>\n Bramwell\u2019s\u00a0experience is all too familiar. He worked under the SAWP for three years and was not invited for this year\u2019s farming season. He said this might be connected\u00a0with the role he played in the open letter written by farmworkers to Samuda in August 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel [my contract was not renewed] because I wrote the letter,\u201d he said. Now, he is back home in Jamaica doing farm work.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you complain about something to your employer, you have that fear that you can\u2019t come back the next year [season],\u201d said Leonel Nava, a 49-year-old Mexican father of two who has been working in Canada since 2014 and currently works on\u00a0a cherry farm in British Columbia.<\/p>\n Under the SAWP, employers determine whether farmworkers\u2019 contracts are renewed or not, which indirectly discourages workers from speaking up for fear of being victimized or repatriated.<\/p>\n This hasn\u2019t stopped all migrants. Inspired by the letter written by Jamaican farmworkers, Mexican migrant farmworkers in Canada wrote a letter to their own government<\/a> to raise concerns about the poor working conditions.<\/p>\n Syed Hussan, a Canadian citizen and executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change<\/a> (MWAC), described these tactics as \u201cblacklisting.\u201d Hussan\u2019s organization helps to advocate for the rights of migrants and farmworkers.<\/p>\n \u201cEmployers can determine who comes and works in the future,\u201d Hussan said. \u201cAnd so, when workers speak up about their rights, they are blacklisted. And what being blacklisted means is that they can never come back. Every day, we hear about injuries, every month we hear about deaths. So, the people who grow our food, the people who keep us alive, are living in conditions of massive exploitation and abuse leading to death because of Canadian federal immigration laws,\u201d Hussan said.<\/p>\n Ontario\u2019s Agriculture Employees Protection Act bans unionization, Hussan said, making it difficult for migrant farmworkers to gain access to fundamental labor rights. But with MWAC, which is similar to a union, migrant agricultural workers from across the country meet virtually once a month, where they form a united front to\u00a0decide what their demands and issues are. Hussan advocates for a full and permanent immigration status for migrant farmworkers, noting that over 65 percent of them in the seasonal agricultural workers program are excluded from all permanent residency programs.<\/p>\n \u201cA permanent resident status would solve most of the problems, because, at the end of the day, the problem is that workers can\u2019t speak up,\u201d Hussan said. \u201cPermanent residency is a mechanism through which all other rights are accessed.\u201d He added that this status can also allow workers\u2019 family members to visit them.<\/p>\n In September 2023, thousands of migrants and farmworkers protested<\/a> across Canada, demanding regularization and equal status for all. In September 2024, more than 2,000 migrants and farmworkers marched<\/a> across Toronto demanding equal rights for all.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be recognized and better appreciated because we do the dirty work,\u201d Matthews said, adding that she regrets her decision to go to Canada. \u201cMigrant farmworkers are not lazy. We are willing to work. And if we are willing to work in your country, you should be willing to grant us permanent residency status to feel safe and to have access to healthcare services.\u201d<\/p>\n Nava, however, said he has made good friends.<\/p>\n \u201cI am going to continue with this job because I like the town,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have been living here for a long time, and every year we have friends. I feel part of Canada. I\u2019m giving my best to Canada, and I spend more time here than my home in Mexico.\u201d But he, too, would like permanent residency if possible.<\/p>\n Bramwell is now working on a farm in Manchester, Jamaica. He said he hopes the needs of migrant farmworkers will be prioritized and that Canadians will join in mounting pressure on the government to provide permanent resident status to agricultural workers.<\/p>\n \u201cMigrant farmworkers are important,\u201d he said. \u201cIf Canadians put pressure on the government, there can be a change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Conwade Bramwell, a 23-year-old Jamaican, was selected for Canada\u2019s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program at the peak of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2879,17,1937,3406,54639],"class_list":["post-171097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-agriculture","tag-canada","tag-homepage_regional_americas","tag-law","tag-migration-and-immigration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}