The Decibel - What it’s like for migrant workers on Canadian farms

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Canada’s agriculture industry is big business, contributing $32-billion to Canada’s GDP in 2024 and employing an estimated 223,000 people. What garners less attention is how heavily dependent the agriculture industry is on migrant labourers, with about 80,000 workers in the sector. The job is often gruelling and typically pays around minimum wage, but that money tends to go a lot farther in the workers’ home countries.Jason Kirby, a business reporter for The Globe and Mail, revisits his roots in an Ontario farming community and digs into the influence of foreign labour in Canada’s farms. He talks about why Canadian farmers have become so reliant on migrant labour, and what keeps foreign agricultural workers coming back year after year. Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The first time I came out was the 23rd of July in 1985, and I've been here from ever since, working with this family. Every year, Roy Campbell leaves his home in Jamaica to work at an apple and lavender farm in southwestern Ontario. This is where everything happened for me. I came 85, I married in 1986, and I've been with my wife from ever since. And all I achieve is from here. from here. I have a nice business back home, a grocery shop, and a bar that my wife and kids take care of when I'm here. So when I leave her and go back home, that's what I survive after. I don't have to do that anymore. In Canada, temporary foreign workers make up 35% of the workforce in agriculture. On vegetable and fruit farms, like where Roy works, more than half

come from abroad. Depending on their visa program, they might only be in Canada for the growing and harvesting season, usually around eight months. These workers are responsible for keeping food on our tables, and they fill a critical labor gap in Canada. But in recent years, Canada's dependence on this labor force has increasingly come under criticism because of what it means for Canadian jobs and how it leaves workers themselves vulnerable to exploitation. Jason Kirby, a business reporter for the globe, went to visit farms across Norfolk County

to find out what it's like for these workers and why the farmers depend on them so much. Today, he's on the show to talk about what he learned. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Hi, Jason. Thanks so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me on. So we've heard a lot about migrant workers in Canada, but what do we mean when we say that? Like, what programs are we talking about? Well, we're talking about temporary foreign worker program in the agricultural space.

There's also the seasonal agricultural worker program, but the temporary foreign worker program encompasses so many different industries from retail and companies in manufacturing to agriculture and farming. But yeah, originally, if you go back, agriculture was at the heart of Canada's temporary foreign worker program going back, you know, 50 years. That was where it all started. Yeah, and today we're going to really focus on the agricultural sector here, because you spent some time in Norfolk County, which is sometimes called Ontario's Garden because of the huge amount of farms there. And you spent some time with people while they were working, including someone named Roy Campbell.

Can you tell me about Roy? Yeah, Roy is from Jamaica. He's been coming up since the 1980s to the same small apple farm that's just north of Simco, Ontario in Norfolk County. and, you know, he's a fixture there. He basically, you know, keeps the place running. It's a small farm. They have about 10, I think, workers in addition to him that come up. And, you know, his job is basically working in that picking.

This work is often described as low skill, but, you know, when you watch these guys work, being able to work with the speed that they're going at, pulling apples off every second, knowing which type of apple to pick and then not knocking. any others off the trees. It's, you wouldn't call it low skill if you actually had to do it yourself. But yeah, he's, he's been coming up and it's really interesting because, you know, he has also seen this program very much change his life, you know, with what it's enabled his family, putting his kids through school and things like that. So, you know, here he is in his own words. No, a program like this, for us in Jamaica and the guys from Carbby, and this program

make a 100% difference in our life because it helped you school, the kids, them, like build home, help you to do a business, like everything this program are for us. Really interesting to hear what he has to say there. Like it said 100% change in his life. Yeah, he has a little grocery store down there that he's opened and a little bar

and his family runs that. Two of his sons have followed him into like the, agricultural, temporary agricultural worker program, one in the U.S. and one in Canada as well. And so, you know, he said like, yeah, if you knew, looked around and you saw how many nurses and lawyers and doctors in Jamaica are there because they were put through school by their parents taking part in this program and sending that money back. It's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year that flow into Jamaica. You mentioned Roy as a fixture because he's been coming since the 80s.

How old does he now? He's in his 60s. He's getting close to retirement age. You know, I asked him, how long are you going to continue doing this? And he was like, well, you know, he just likes to keep going. He didn't really say that when he was going to end. But he did say if that farm ever went away, that that was going to be it for him. When it comes to apple picking, I mean, it's not a, it's a very physical job.

It's pretty strenuous. And I would think for a very strenuous job for someone in their 60s. But how common is Roy's story? Like, how common is it for people to be working for many, many years on farms in Canada? It's very common. You know, when I worked, I worked, I shouldn't say I worked. I did spend a little bit of time in the fields working, but I visited three farms while I was down there. And I did go out into the fields and work with the guys picking melons at one farm, picking peppers at another farm.

And nobody had been coming up for less than four or five years at a minimum, you know, and it's interesting. I'm 51. And I wasn't even the oldest guy out there in the pepper fields. picking. There's some guys even older than me, which really was humbling because it was very hard work and I was very sweaty and a real mess at the end of it. But these guys just, you know, even the guys who were older than me, just powered on right through is, it was quite impressive to see. Tell me about how you felt afterwards because. Soar. Yeah. Very sore. Very sweaty. I mean, it was also, this is work that I did when I was in high school. Yeah, I want to get into that because you actually worked on farms when

you were younger. What was your experience like when you were working on farms? So back at that time, it wasn't uncommon. It was very common. You know, in the late 80s or early 90s that you would see, you know, local kids working on the farms. You know, I worked in strawberry farms, cucumbers, potatoes, then graduated to tobacco, which is also a very big crop down there in Norfolk. But there was lots of other guys, you know, from school out there in the fields working alongside, you know, at two of the farms I worked at, there was Trinidadians at one and Mexicans at another. And so I worked alongside these guys at that time. Anyway, I discovered that it's not something that I would be able to do for any extended period of time. I managed to do one

really, really long row of peppers. And by the end of it, my back was extremely sore. And it was hot. And, you know, this is really hard work. And I think that that's one of the reasons why you don't see any Canadians out there in these fields doing this. Why did you want to go back now to see what it was like? Well, there's a couple of things. One, the whole temporary foreign worker program has really come in focus over the last couple of years. As a result of the rapid population growth in Canada, the pressures on housing and services

that have come with that population growth and the backlash against that we're now seeing. And then also at the same time in the United States, obviously, we're, seeing the Trump administration cracking down on undocumented workers doing raids, ice raids, and in the fields in California and Oregon and places like that, it's really becoming a real problem because workers are not showing up and, you know, crops are rotting in the fields. And so just kind of against that whole backdrop, we wanted to go and take a look at what these guys do here in Canada, just how much we depend on them for the food that we get on our plates. It all happens behind the scenes. We don't really, you know, especially living in the city,

you don't realize what's going on, what it takes to harvest these crops. And the sacrifices these guys make to do this. Yes, it's rewarding. They take a lot of money home with them. And it leads to a large change for their lives. But it also means being away from your family for eight months of the year. In one instance, somebody told me about, you know, when these guys go back, they're almost like strangers in their family. because most of their lives is spent away and then they're there for like three or four months and then they come back up again and do it all over again. Can we talk about money?

How much do these workers make? It's a minimum wage job basically. At the farms that I visited, you also see like Roy, for instance, doesn't make minimum wage because he's got kind of like a team leader responsibilities and other things. And so you see that for guys who've come back year after year to these farms. How much would that be per season for a person? Like, how much are they making? For instance, Roy would be making 25,000 basically roughly after deductions because they have to pay tax.

They pay employment insurance. They pay into the CPP pension program. You know, 25,000 doesn't sound like a lot up here, though when you compare it to what a agricultural worker in Jamaica would be earning more like 3.46 an hour, you know, versus the minimum wage here of $17 to $18. hour. That's why this money goes so much further back home. You mentioned they pay into CPP and those kind of things. Do they get that money back in the end? You can get the pension. You know, you have to go through hoops and fill in paperwork and everything when you actually, like Roy, would get to that age. And he probably will have a pretty decent pension.

Most are never able to claim back any of the employment insurance just because they don't work here long enough. The terms of the seasonal agricultural worker program are you're only here for eight months at a time. And, you know, like for the vast majority, they don't ever get a chance to qualify. So they're paying into these programs that they don't necessarily get to benefit from. We all do because they're contributing to it. They're paying that, you know, income tax into that system. So, you know, even though they're putting that money into it, there's no way for them to benefit from it. So this work sounds like a very physical, very demanding job, which is essentially minimum wage. How do the workers view their work?

They readily admit that it is hard work. It is hot. You know, several of them talked about the heat. You know, and they also talked about sacrifice because they're coming up here eight months of the year. They're not seeing their families for all of that time. But, you know, the flip side of that sacrifice is the opportunity that comes with those jobs and that money that they send back.

You know, and almost everyone I spoke to talked about buying land with the money that they've got from up here and building a house or building a business and starting a, starting a coffee farm in Mexico, things like that. And they have this work ethic that you frankly just, I don't think you see in modern Canada when it comes to that kind of work. We don't see Canadians out in the fields willing to do that kind of work. You know, for minimum wage, ultimately that's the thing here. This is even I tend to think, even if you pay 25 or offered $30.

an hour, you still wouldn't get a lot of Canadians willing to do it. And it's interesting because the farmers themselves, you know, they tell me, yeah, you know, this is minimum wage work. We know, we hear that it's, you know, accusations that it's just cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor, but it's not necessarily that these workers are cheap to the farms. They're not. They actually could cost more. It's that they're reliable and dependable because they're there. Because when it comes to a harvest, you don't have a say of when. the fruit or the vegetables are going to come out. When they're ready, they have to come out. It doesn't matter whether it's working seven days a week because there is no overtime in agriculture.

So you're going to have to be working seven days a week. So, you know, I spoke with one fourth generation farmer Nathan Sebulak from near Delhai, and this is what he had to say. Hiring somebody locally at minimum wage would cost us less money. It's not about the cost of the labor. I mean, it is to offer competitive pricing with the commodities. that we grow, but it's about having a dedicated workforce that a lot of what we do is dependent on the weather and the environment that we're in, when the crop's ready, jobs need to get done on at certain times, and it's about having a workforce that's willing and dedicated to be able to help get the task done.

How reliant is Canada on foreign labor to meet the needs in the agricultural sector? Oh, it's hugely reliant on it. You know, primary agriculture in Canada, I think that it's about a $32 billion a year industry. There's about 250 some odd thousand workers employed in it. About 50% when it comes to vegetables and fruit harvests are temporary foreign workers. Every farmer basically said, if it wasn't for this program, we wouldn't be able to do this crop. You mentioned that when you were working in the 80s, that there were more local workers. Why has it changed so much?

Why are we now relying so much more on migrant workers versus back in the 80s when there wasn't the same amount of people that were coming from overseas? It's a great question. I mean, part of it is labor standards have changed. The idea of, you know, I'll tell you, when I was working in the fields and at the end of the harvest, when it came time to go to school, there basically was this unspoken understanding that the schools would just let us keep working in the fields for a couple of more weeks, two or three weeks to finish harvest so that the crops could get out of the fields or the tobacco. I did that. And can you just imagine a high school saying, sure, yeah, you know, you can miss the first two or three weeks of school so you can

finish up the tobacco harvest. Also, one of the things is we do see now a later harvest. And I think climate change has extended the, you know, that's great for farms that want to get more yield out of their fields, but it also means that you're now pushing into October and November some crops. I mean, one of the, one of the challenges is if you're going to work in this kind of temporary job that's seasonal, what are you going to do the rest of, what are you going to the rest of the year. You know, and you also need to be able to own a car to get out to these farms to work. And all of those costs for Canadians have risen and outpaced the minimum wage increases. So it just makes it kind of uneconomical for, I think, a lot of domestic

Canadian workers to do this kind of job. That's so interesting. I mean, but that makes me think about the pay then. Why not pay people more if you want to attract more local workers? Yeah, yeah. That totally is an option. And then I guess you would just go, and turn that around and say, okay, that's fine. How much more do we want to pay for that food that we get from the grocery store? We're still in the midst of a cost of living crisis where we've seen inflation, particularly food inflation skyrocket. It's still running it, you know, quite hot.

So, yeah, you can you could say let's pay everybody, you know, $30 an hour to do this job or $40 an hour and lure domestic Canadian workers. But, you know, that's going to go into the costs. and that's going to drive up food prices. And so this is a tradeoff. Do you want to pay higher prices for your food so that, you know, you can have a Canadian workforce do these jobs? I think a lot of people would say I'd rather not pay more for my groceries.

What about the skill issue? What do we lose by not fostering the skill of how to harvest food among Canadian workers? Is there a risk that we lose some of this knowledge down the line? There can be. I mean, I think this is a concern that, farms in general have been having because there's a generational trend of, you know, the children of farmers deciding that they don't want to do this work and they leave the farm. And you do lose those skills. I do think that, you know, going back to Roy, for instance, his boss basically

said, I don't know what he knows. You know, he knows this better than I do. And all of them kind of said this. You know, like these guys have been doing some of these jobs for 15, 20 years as technology has changed. They've adapted. Their skills have adapted. You know, they've become specialized. So be one farm, you know, they have a lot of ginsing. And, you know, there's a certain skill set involved with preparing and maintaining that crop and coming at harvest time that even farmers themselves who don't do the work themselves don't necessarily know. They rely on those workers. And to the extent that they keep coming back, those skills are maintained. But there is certainly a risk. If you all of a sudden had a situation where the door was slammed on

this program, I think that a lot of farms would struggle because they basically have outsourced that knowledge to these workers who've been coming back to the same farms in many cases for years and years and years. And they're the ones who hold those skills and understandings. Yeah, on that point, I mean, why not give them more permanent status? This is something that is argued by an advocacy group called the Migrant Rights Network, you know, to this like kind of this pathway to permanent residency. I mean, if they're so essential, why not give them more permanence in Canada? Yeah.

And it's certainly an argument that you hear put forth. And, you know, unions have been very strongly in support of this as well. I mean, part of it is that the temporary foreign worker program isn't supposed to be an immigration program. You know, it's there to solve a specific shortage of labor and address that on that front. But when you do see some of these guys who've been coming up for, you know, 10, 20 years, some of them do want to come up and move here permanently. I talk to a couple of workers who want to, and they're in the process, but it's something

like 1% of seasonal agricultural workers who, you know, have come up in for like five years are able to make any sort of transition to permanent residency. There's not really a path for them to do that. Some of them did say, and I asked one Mexican gentleman whether he'd like to, and he said he does. He would like to leave Mexico, especially because organized crime there is targeted some of his extended family. He doesn't feel safe there. And on the other side, he looks at like the cost of living in Canada and how could I afford to live here? Because you have to understand they, you know, under these programs, you know, their accommodation is mostly paid for.

Their utilities are mostly paid for. Their flight up here is mostly paid for, you know, under the seasonal agricultural worker program. And so when you think of all the extra costs that they'd have as well, for this one guy, he was just like, I'd love to, but I don't know what I would do. I don't know how I could survive in this country because it's so much more expensive. So I think it's unfortunate one of the farmers I spoke with, you know, I was talking about this guy who's been coming up for 15 years. And he said, if anybody deserves to be able to make that transition and bring his family up

to Canada, it's this guy. He's paid his dues in a major way. And his case is just kind of crawling through the system at a very slow pace at a time where we're now basically closing the door on those kind of transitions as well from temporary foreign workers to permanent residency. We're seeing the Canadian government is kind of like tightening the rules that are going to make that transition even harder. Jason, you met a number of workers who speak positively about their experience. But we also do hear some criticism of how migrant workers are treated in Canada. There was the UN report that described Canada's temporary foreign worker program as, quote, a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery. And the advocacy group, Migrant Rights Network, which fights for rights of migrant workers, has called out the practice of people being tied to one employer as being problematic.

What's your sense of how common these grievances are? Well, it's interesting. I spoke to a couple of people. I spoke with a priest at a church there who does. a lot of outreach programs for the workers down in Simcoe and southwestern Ontario. And I also spoke with the head of the Jamaica Liaison Service. So basically a department within the Jamaican government that oversees the standards of the farms. Here they do kind of random spot checks on different farms.

I think there's like 600 farms in Canada that have Jamaican workers on them. They go out to all of them and they inspect the living standards, the hygiene, the working standards and everything. She said that they're happy with about 98% of what they see. But I kept hearing this from everybody that there's this 2% potentially to 3% on the farms. And it may be higher in other industries. So I'm just talking about within the farming sector where there are potential abuses happening. You know, in the case of the Jamaican liaison office, they have the power and they do enforce this

to basically just seize the work. from a farm and they will find somewhere else for them to work out the season. And they do this. It happens, you know, a small handful of times a year. And basically that farm is pretty screwed at that point because, you know, they're also not going to be able to easily access any of the other temporary foreign worker programs. You're shut out of that. Your labor force is gone.

Right. Yeah. Just lastly here, Jason, I want to ask you about the perception here in Canada about migrant workers because I think it's fair to say that a lot of the stories we do see are often negative stories about migrant work here in Canada. I'm just curious, like, what are we getting wrong about this type of work and the people that do it? Well, I think the big thing is that we just don't have an appreciation for the work that these guys are doing. It's largely unseen for most Canadians who live in cities and towns. And I think that there is that sense of a frustration amongst

some of the workers that, you know, when I was speaking to Roy, He was like, I don't know why Canadians don't want to come out to work in the fields. Like, where do you think your fruits come from? Where do you think your apples come from? You know, to him, you know, the work he does is integral to our food security in Canada and where we get our meals from. And I do think that in some ways, some of these guys do feel underappreciated that way by Canadians because it just, they don't understand this disconnect that we seem to have between this is how we get our food in Canada. Yeah. Jason, it's great having you on the show. Thanks so much.

Thank you very much. That was Jason Kirby, a business reporter for the globe. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.

Thank you.