Front Burner - Covert calls for help – a hotline for migrant workers

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

COVID-19 outbreaks have ripped through farms in Canada, particularly in southern Ontario, taking a grim toll on migrant workers. Three have already died. Desperate for help, workers have been calling a hotline staffed by the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change – usually in secret. Today, the two people who staff that hotline give us an inside look at this crisis, as it unfolded.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Josh Bloch. Good afternoon, Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. As you all know that for more than 50 years, migrant workers have been here.

It has never been a bit of a rose given the circumstances we have to undergo. To name a few, separation from family, improper accommodation, fear, intimidation, and bullying by employers, unjust and unfair deportation, little or no compensation for workers who are injured or end up dead on the job. This is the voice of a migrant worker on a peach farm in southern Ontario. And the long, dark list goes on, all in the name of migrant worker. Don't forget that we are the one that brave extreme heat and coal to put food on your table.

Most time in condition that are unbearable. Condition that most Canadian would never stand up to. We are also the ones who help to boost our economy, even in the face of this dreaded global pandemic. A time when we should be home with our family, we still take the chance of coming here to work. COVID-19 outbreaks have ripped through farms in Canada, especially in Ontario,

taking a devastating toll on migrant workers. Three have already died. Hundreds have been infected. Today we'll hear about the fears and hardships of temporary foreign workers during the pandemic with help from a hotline. This is FrontBurner. That WhatsApp message you heard at the top was sent to the staff at a hotline for migrant farm workers. My name is Kit Andres. I'm an organizer with Migrant Workers Alliance here in Niagara. And I staff the English language hotline for migrant farm workers. My name is Sonia Aviles. I am also an organizer based in the Niagara region.

My name is Sonia Aviles. I am also an organizer based in the Niagara region. I staff the line for Spanish-speaking workers, mostly Mexicans, but also workers from Central America. Since 1966, migrant farm workers have been coming to this country on seasonal contracts. In 2018, nearly 55,000 of them came to work in Canada, mostly in Ontario and Quebec. Many of these workers have been coming here to pick asparagus and grow peppers and harvest tobacco for years, even decades. They usually live in dorms, often pretty crowded, making minimum wage, working very long hours, even on the hottest summer days. And they send whatever savings they scrape together back home. Despite the risks, migrant workers like Antonio Hernandez say they're willing to work just to provide a better livelihood

for their families. I'm calm. God willing, everything will be fine. Kit and Sonia say that the workers often call the hotline in secret. A lot of workers wouldn't give me their names. They would give me a pseudonym.

They would say, you know, I work in this area. They wouldn't tell me even the town name, at least initially. And then over several conversations, building up trust, they started to open up more, would tell me their names, would tell me about their families back home. They're so used to being turned away when they ask for help that our hotline was really an opportunity for them. Even if they didn't want to report what was happening, they just wanted somebody to listen and to validate their experience and not carry that weight on their shoulders.

And I should note here, there's a reason they're calling in secret. You know, workers are told before they come to Canada, you know, to stay away from community groups, to stay away from unions. And so it is a risky thing for them to reach out because they can be terminated for it. This is Faye Faraday. She's a labour and human rights lawyer who's been working on migrant issues for about 30 years. And she teaches at Osgoode Law School at York University. They are tied to the employers for whom they are working. Their housing is tied to that employer. Under the terms of the program, workers can be dismissed for any reason. And

when they are dismissed, they are typically removed from the country within 24 to 48 hours. So, they are in a very precarious situation where they have to do what their employer says. They have to maintain good relationships with that employer because they rely on an employer to identify them by name to return the next year. And on top of that, Faye says there's often surveillance of some kind on the farms, which makes it even harder to call the hotline. Often a recruiter is present and keeps tabs of workers in the bunkhouses, or in some situations, a worker is given preferential treatment if they will report on fellow workers. We asked the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association for comment on this. A spokesperson told us he had never heard of this kind of surveillance on Ontario farms. And he said that farms are audited and that there

are avenues for workers to anonymously complain. At any rate, however high the risks may be, workers still call the hotline. A lot of them. The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change published a report earlier this month compiling complaints they received on behalf of more than 1,100 workers in a two-month period. There definitely was fear, and they did feel like speaking to us was a risk. They felt like it was a risk that they were willing to take because it's life or death. Now, before the COVID-19 pandemic started, Sonia and Kit say that people would mostly call the hotline for information, maybe about EI or about their rights in Canada. But as the virus started to spread across Canada,

Kit and Sonia noticed that workers were using the hotline differently from before. And they were calling a lot more often. I was getting five to 10 calls a day, you know, 40 to 50 cases a week. But before we get to that, I need to stress here just how integral these migrant workers are to Canada's whole farming system. They make up about 20% of all agricultural workers in the country. And they are the people who harvest your food. Without them, the apples don't get picked, the tomatoes rot on the vine. This local produce never makes it to your grocery store. At Scotland Farms, a lack of experienced farm workers led to the decision to harvest only a small portion of the crop.

The rest of the crop will be mowed down because there wasn't enough labor to pick and package the crop. And so in March, just days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada would be closing its borders, the government made an exception for temporary foreign workers, including agricultural workers. But to try and make it safer, the federal government put in some rules. Foreign workers had to quarantine for 14 days when they entered Canada, and strict physical distancing had to be maintained in quarantine. The government eventually offered employers $1,500 per employee in quarantine to cover wages and make sure their facilities could be adapted for physical distancing.

But Kit and Sonia say that on the ground, the stories they were hearing didn't suggest that workers themselves had much reason to feel safe. And just a disclaimer that FrontBurner can't independently verify these accounts, and they don't represent the experience of all migrant workers. They're living in sheds. When they arrived to start their quarantine, there was dirt and debris visible on the floor. It had not even been swept. They were not given clean bedding. You know,

when workers arrived, they heard that their employers had certain responsibilities to provide clean, healthy living conditions, especially during a pandemic. And when they arrived to dirty bunkhouses with dirt visible on the floor, no cleaning supplies provided. They were feeling like they made a huge mistake in coming up to Canada this year. Here's what Sonia heard from a call that came into the hotline about Scotland Group Farm in Vitoria, Ontario. It's a very large-scale farm, and this season there are more than 200 Mexican migrant farm workers there. I heard from a worker who said there are up to 40 of us sharing one shower. There's no way for us to social distance, and if one worker is potentially sick, the virus spreads like fire because there's no way for us to social distance, and we need to clean ourselves after work, and we need, you know,

to shower. We asked Scott Biddle about this. He's the owner of Scotland Group. And he told us that, quote, that is absolutely untrue. He said that the health department inspects all their facilities and that they follow and exceed all regulations for sanitation and housing. Here's another story Sonia heard from another farm. When they arrived to the house, it smelled like dog pee. The smell was so terrible. And they had to reach out to somebody in the community to bring cleaning supplies so they could clean the house and sleep. Sonia, it sounds like it also was a particularly difficult time when the workers were under that 14-day mandated quarantine. Tell me a little bit about how workers were able to even get food if they

couldn't leave the property. We've heard from some workers saying that they're just been given a bag of tortillas and a carton of eggs for nearly 20 workers by the employers, right? And at one point, you know, in the farms where people were not allowed to even have visitors or people delivering stuff, workers were going hungry. So we had some people here in Niagara dropping off donations to some of the farms. And again, one worker made the comment that if if he didn't have a way to communicate with the outside world, he the employer will probably let them starve. Sonia, I understand that the two of you were actually dropping off these basics yourselves. Correct. We did do some drop-offs for workers, you know, in some of the houses. And not just food, right? We're talking also about soap and toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

Exactly. The cleaning supplies was a big demand, even like toilet paper, you know, which is a basic necessity to have that. So, you know, how were employers expect that workers will be cleaning themselves and not exposing them to a virus if they didn't have soap to wash their hands. So it was a big worry with workers. The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association spokesperson told us that the farms they represent, which is most farms in Ontario, follow strict COVID protocols. Some workers also allege that they faced racism on the farms. One Jamaican worker named Delroy sent Kit a voice message about the racism that he and other Caribbean workers

face from the bosses on the farm where he works. The boss tries to control us because we are Black. You are Black, you come here to work, and that's what they treat you like. Nothing more, nothing less. Faye Faraday, that lawyer we heard from earlier, says it's not like the federal government wasn't being informed about what was going on. Migrant worker organizations were writing letters to the federal government as early as March, setting out key concerns around housing and setting out key concerns around what needed to be done to ensure that workers were kept safe. And from the beginning, migrant workers and advocates were saying, you have to have random on-site inspections. You can't just give people money and assume that this is going to happen.

Those inspections were not happening. Inspections, initially, there was no plan for inspections. Inspections were not happening. Inspections, initially, there was no plan for inspections. After a period of time, there were revised guidelines saying that there would be inspections. But those were done virtually, as opposed to on site. This is a lot to take in, so let's just recap for a moment the allegations we've heard so far. Cramped, dirty housing. Workers who say they weren't provided basics like toilet paper or soap or cleaning products. Workers afraid to speak out about these conditions. And a lack of inspections from the federal government.

And this is all before COVID outbreaks even happened on the farms. And then the outbreaks came. So in the case of Scotland Farm, we've heard from some of the workers that many of them were presenting symptoms of the virus. But when they were asking some of the supervisors to get the medications or do something about it, they said, oh, it's just a regular cold because of working conditions. You know, it happens every year. It was to the point to where workers weren't able to wake up from the bed because they were so weak, vomiting and sick that initially one of the workers had to call the ambulance to somebody else, not the employer,

the supervisors, but somebody else outside of the farm property, because they were being ignored. You know, some of the workers were telling us the employers only care about their production and us doing the work. They don't care about our health. So we were hearing a lot of workers worried and also workers being mixed with those who have tested positive being mixed with workers who were negative, with workers sharing the same kitchen and bathroom. Here's a story Kit heard from another farm, Ontario Plants Propagation. Towards the end of May, there were 10 workers who tested positive and the workers who got testing were sent back to work instead of into isolation.

One of the workers who contacted us said, you know, they have the guys going to get tested and then having them still come back to work and working with everybody else, mixing up. And this worker in particular decided, I'm not going to risk my health and safety. I'm going to stay home. He called in sick. And he said, I'm not going back until the company can show that they're putting in proper safety precautions. And he was made to go back to work. Steve Vandercoy, the president of Ontario Plans Propagation, told us in an email that they have followed the explicit instructions of public health authorities and have now been able to limit the spread of the virus.

But that, quote, it is understandable that some individuals may have felt anxious during this period or concerned by the presence of previously ill colleagues who have been cleared by health authorities to return to work. It's probably important to remember that in this same period, the grocery stores where we buy our food were installing plexiglass shields at the cash registers. They were labeling the floors to keep people two meters away from each other. They were giving masks and hand sanitizer to their staff and giving them paid sick days, at least for a while. But on the other end of the food supply chain, the part you don't see,

many of the people who harvest your food were reportedly not being given these same protections. Here's the same worker again who got Kit to send his voicemail message to the Prime Minister's office. We are in the dark as to how this situation has been handled and what will be the outcome if there is further development and how our family will be the outcome if there is further development and all our family will be taken care of. I am sure that a Canadian will never suffer the same fate as we do. Why are we called essential workers? There must be some level of importance that we are doing. So if we are seen as important to maintain the life of your food chain and also to boost your economy, then we think it's time for you to take a look in the right direction.

By late May, there were hundreds of COVID-19 infections on the farms. Faye Faraday says she was dismayed that the federal government still wasn't taking action. Those facilities should be shut down until the conditions are safe for workers to continue working. But there should have been interventions long before workers got sick in the way that they did. The fact that COVID has spread so quickly and so pervasively through the

migrant worker population is due to the fact that safe housing has not been provided, that there has not been attention to the underlying conditions that people knew absolutely predictably would facilitate these outbreaks. And when the news of them began to crop up, there was still not any action. Then on May 30th, the first death. Bonifacio Eugenio Romero was working at Woodside Greenhouses Pepper Farm in Kingsville, Ontario. He was 31 years old. Steve Lowry, who is responsible for temporary foreign workers at Woodside Greenhouses pepper farm in Kingsville, Ontario. He was 31 years old. Steve Lowry, who is responsible for temporary foreign workers at Woodside Greenhouses, told CBC at the time that the company was devastated

and that they did daily wellness checks and took other precautions to take care of their workers' health. Sonia helped organize a virtual vigil for Bonifacio. Where we encourage people to light a candle, and we got many responses for farm workers and we were able to send this to his wife, pictures of people lighting candles in the memory of him. Six days later, another Mexican worker, Rogelio Munoz Santos, died at another farm nearby, Greenhill Produce. He was 24 years old. He had reportedly come to Canada to try and get his

family out of debt. Greenhill Produce has not been giving interviews on this, but the company previously released a statement saying that they were working closely with public health authorities and that they were providing their workers with adequate supplies. I didn't have contact with Rogelio directly, but I know somebody who's been in contact with his wife, and his wife is devastated because she was left alone with children. And so I know there has been a GoFundMe page set up to help, you know, with some of the costs associated with her being alone now with the children. And now what the biggest thing to me is what will happen with those families there what will happen

with the families who were left uh the kids without their father uh you know the wife without the husband the mom and dad without their son it's just heartbreaking it's it's quite traumatizing and it really hits hits home and it gets me emotional when I talk about this. I imagine it sent just shockwaves through the whole community. Exactly, exactly. Workers, you know, certainly lots of fear, right? Like even after the cases of these two workers dying, the biggest worries of workers is the coming here to work, to provide for their families, and dying alone here without their family members. I was hearing this from some of the workers who were from Scotland who was hospitalized.

They were so worried of passing away here in Canada and not seeing their families again. I can't imagine. So it is quite frustrating when you hear, you know, workers calling out for help. On Sunday, after we spoke to Sonia and Kit, news broke of a third death. And it was at Scotland Group Farm, home to one of the biggest COVID-19 outbreaks on a farm in Ontario. 217 cases as of Monday afternoon. The man who died, Juan Lopez Chaparro, was a 55-year-old father of four, also from Mexico. According to the advocacy group, the Migrant Rights Network, he had been coming to Canada for 10 years. Scott Biddle, the owner of Scotland Group, told FrontBurner that they were very upset by the death,

and that, quote, told FrontBurner that they were very upset by the death, and that, quote, we have taken every precautionary measure to stop or prevent the COVID-19 virus from the very beginning. We followed every protocol put in place. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Last week, the Mexican government announced that they were putting a pause on sending more workers to Canada after the first two deaths. Then on Sunday, Mexico announced that they were resuming sending farm workers.

In a press release, they said that Canada had committed to increasing inspections on the farm, and that Canada would provide more support for workers and Mexican officials to report unsafe conditions. But Faye Faraday is one of many advocates who wants to see more done. A lot more. She wants to see the whole system overhauled. For the workers who are coming to Canada to do work, they need to have legal status in Canada on arrival. Without having permanent status in Canada,

there is no way for them to enforce their rights. That doesn't mean that everybody wants to come and live in Canada, but without permanent status, they're not able to enforce their rights and they will continue to be exploited. That is the starting point. And there has to be a deep commitment to decent work. You know, the refrain that people pull out all the time that, well, this is work that Canadians won't do, is the laziest form of racism. And we must stop perpetuating that myth. The reason that local workers will not do this work is because the work has been designed as work that has very few rights, no ability to unionize, and no ability to enforce security. So if you create sacrifice zones

where workers have no rights, any worker who can leave will leave. Another pushback that some people make is that if labor prices go up, then the price of food goes up and people will not be able to afford higher priced produce. What's your response to that?

My response is that the agricultural industry is very deeply subsidized by the government already. It's subsidized in all respects except for the wages of the workers who are doing the work. the wages of the workers who are doing the work. And if the country adopts a low-priced food policy, it can't then push that down onto the people with the least capacity to resist it, who are migrant workers, and say that that's okay. I've been doing this for 30 years and there has not been meaningful change. If we see this and choose to turn away, then we know what our real values are. And that should turn all of our stomachs. Kit, is there one story for you that really sticks out in terms of all the calls that you have fielded over the years. So one call I got from a Jamaican seasonal worker named Delroy. So this is the same Delroy you heard from earlier.

He's been coming up for almost 25 years. He has five children back home. He's also taking care of his elderly mother. In previous seasons, he's asked his country's liaison office for a transfer because the treatment on his farm is so bad. He just said, I can't take this anymore. I can't breathe on this farm. I've tried to get away from this farm for so many years, and still my request for transfer is being refused.

Many of the stories that we heard are not limited to COVID. They're not specific to the quarantine period. They're based on decades of temporary immigration status and feeling like they're trapped, like they have no choices, no control over their own lives. And this worker, Delroy, called me in tears, saying, these people, my bosses, are so cruel. I'm tired of them. They have no heart for Black people. They have no heart for Black people. They use us like slaves. And that's a sentiment that I've been hearing from many Black Caribbean workers who are saying, this is just slavery with a stipend. That's what sticks with me the most, is that workers know what they're facing is not fair and it's not right.

And they're not being given any tools to speak up, no protections to refuse unsafe work. One worker told me, this is slavery. They just replaced the chains with fine print. The Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada told us that as of 2019, temporary workers with employer-specific work permits can apply for an open work permit if they're in an abusive situation, and that their employer won't be notified until after they are approved. We also requested comment from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food, but they have not responded to our requests. On Monday, after an announcement by Doug Ford's government in Ontario, almost all of the province has moved into phase two of its reopening, except Windsor-Essex, where many of the big farms are. And Ford laid the blame at the feet of the area's farmers.

Ford said that the farmers just aren't cooperating. They aren't sending out the people to get tested. Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkins said that the local health units had thus far refused to test the full temporary foreign worker population. And Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott asked farmers to allow the mobile assessment units to come onto their properties. That's all for today. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening.

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