Event Details

Panel 4: Restructuring settlement and refuge : Situation of asylum seekers, temporary workers and Romas in Canada

Eugénie Dépatie-Pelletier, Forced work conditions in Canada? The socio-legal effects of employer-tied work permit for temporary foreign workers in « low-skill » occupations

Stephen Meili, Do human rights treaties help asylum seekers? Canadian refugee jurisprudence and practice since 1990.

Julianna Beaudoin, Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Paul St. Clair, Roma asylum seekers in Canada

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Forced work conditions in Canada? The socio-legal effects of employer-tied work permit for temporary foreign workers in « low-skill » occupations
Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

Abstract

The 2011 federal reforms of the temporary worker programs officially claimed to adress the issue of the protection of the rights of temporary foreign workers. However, the vast majority of the policy recommendations submitted in 2009 to CIC (and HRSDC) by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and immigration have not been integrated within the reform, in particular the replacement of employer-tied work permits by sector-specific ones, and the elimination of the obligation to live on the employers' premises. We will discuss to what extent, in this context, the current administrative framework may be considerer to prevent efficiently systemic rights violation of Canada's guestworkers and if it can be argued that work conditions are legally forced upon migrant workers/that they are denied the possibility of meaningful exercize in Canada of some human rights such as the freedom of association.