Mexico seeks to overhaul Canada migrant farmworker program amid climate disasters
- Date
2021
- Authors
Anna Mehler Paperny
- Abstract
Cependant, le Mexique ne répond pas à une demande clé des experts : la fin des contrats de travail « fermés » qui lient les migrants à un seul employeur.
«Quand un travailleur agricole vient au Canada, la personne dépend totalement et complètement de l'employeur... S'il a un problème, si la personne le pousse à travailler plus que d'habitude, il n'a pas d'autre choix, » a déclaré Carlos Rojas, Coordinateur de l'Association pour la défense du personnel domestique et de ferme et président du groupe de défense Conseil Migrant .Rojas a critiqué les négociations entre le Mexique et le Canada pour exclure les travailleurs migrants eux-mêmes.
- Full text
By Anna Mehler Paperny
3 MIN READ
TORONTO, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Mexico is pushing for changes to Canada’s migrant farmworker program, a top Mexican official told Reuters on Tuesday, as migrants beset by natural disasters call for better pay, accessible care, labour mobility and employment insurance.
Mexico is renegotiating its Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program agreement with Ottawa. The agreement outlines Mexican migrant farmworkers’ rights and conditions of their employment in Canada. But this contract renewal is part of a larger rethink of the program that started last year, said Juan Gabriel Morales Morales, head of the consular section of Mexico’s embassy in Canada.
“Everything is on the table. ... It’s overhauling completely the operation of the program,” he said.
It comes as migrant farmworkers in British Columbia are facing the second atmospheric river in as many weeks here just months after record-setting heatwaves made bunkhouses unlivable and work treacherous or impossible here.
Among the key issues Mexico hopes to tackle are eligibility for employment insurance, restrictive criteria for which have left some who cannot work because of flooding without pay, advocates say.
Mexico is also seeking an end to “early repatriation,” which Morales Morales said forces workers to return home even when they still need health care in Canada or when a contract ends early but they could find work elsewhere.
Many of these problems have been magnified by the coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters, Morales Morales said.
Migrant farmworkers are key to Canada’s C$68.8 billion agricultural sector and account for about one-fifth of the country’s agricultural workforce, according to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
And some 60,000 migrant farmworkers - many from Central America and the Caribbean, although not all of them part of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program - come to Canada as part of an annual migration that ramps up in spring.
Canada’s employment ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mexico is not taking on one key demand from advocates, however: an end to the “closed” work contracts that tie migrants to one employer.
“When an agricultural worker comes to Canada, the person depends absolutely, completely on the employer. ... If you’re having a problem, if the person is pushing you to work more than normal, you don’t have an option,” said Carlos Rojas, president of advocacy group Conseil Migrant.
Rojas criticized Mexico-Canada negotiations for excluding migrant workers themselves. (Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny Editing by Marguerita Choy)
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- Geographical focuses
Canada, Ontario, Alberta, México, Manitoba, Quebec, British Columbia, Other provinces, Federal, Guatemala, Jamaica, Honduras, Other Caribbean States, El Salvador, Nova Scotia, Regional relevance, Regional relevance, National relevance, and Belize