Over the past 25 years, more and more Canadian employers in a variety of industries have turned to migrant labour on work permits to fill employment needs. About 22,000 migrant workers came to Canada in 2000, expanding to over 112,000 in 2009. In 2022, roughly 120,000 migrant worker permits were issued.1
With such growth in the country's Temporary Foreign Worker Program, workers experience frequent exploitation or abuse. Such exploitation is not exclusive to a single sector. Abused immigrant worker stories include nannies from the Philippines stuck in their employers’ homes and on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week; Peruvian migrant farm workers killed while being transported from work; seasonal farm labourers from Mexico poisoned from pesticides; Filipino workers at a Denny's restaurant who failed to receive overtime pay.
Often they are duped by recruitment agencies hiding under the label of “Immigration Consultants” that charge $10,000 placement fees. In one example, Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, an inexperienced truck driver, drove through a rural stop sign in 2018, smashing into a bus and killing 16 hockey players from Humboldt, Saskatchewan.2
Academics and industry specialists across the country continue to research and document the facts and figures of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and highlight a disturbing issue: the shift to short-term disposable workers in place of stable and supported immigration.3
The case discussed here involved 40 skilled tunnel construction workers from
