Gorilla Radio blog: Canadian Slave: "Foreign Workers" Charge Abuse and Systemic Injustice

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Canadian Slave: "Foreign Workers" Charge Abuse and Systemic Injustice

Temporary Foreign Workers are Victims of Systemic Racism and Government Politics

by Fil de Presse MNW

August 19, 2017

Amid the escalating anti-immigrant racism and fascism occurring in Quebec, Canada and other parts of the world, we denounce all the injustices and abuses committed through the temporary foreign worker program.

We are workers of the earth and the earth has no borders!

10 years of the hypocritical Festival of Cultures organized by the Municipality of Saint-Remi and the Guatemalan, Honduran and Mexican consulates.

A recent article that appeared in the New York Times on August 14th, 2017 entitled Foreign Farmworkers in Canada Fear Deportation if They Complain highlights systemic issues faced by temporary foreign workers, such as the dangerous conditions under which they live and work, as well as the lack of an adequately government response to complaints of fraud or abuse by employers.

According to Noe Arteaga, former temporary foreign worker at the company Savoura, this is nothing new for workers who have been coming to work in Canada for decades.

Arteaga considers the temporary foreign worker program as modern slavery. At the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) where Arteaga volunteers, they receive calls from workers reporting different forms of abuse on a daily basis.

One recent example is the case of 18 Guatemalan workers who were victims of fraud by the employment agency Les Progrès Inc.

They have made a complaint with Revenu Canada, Revenu Quebec, Labour Standards, *Equity*, Health and Safety *Commission (CNESST in french)*, *Human Rights* and Youth Rights *Commission (*CDPDJ in french) and Immigration Canada.

The temporary foreign worker program and its labour conditions are not on government's agendas as they renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), according to Vivian Media, an organizer at the IWC. For that matter, temporary foreign workers are not even consulted in the renegotiation of NAFTA.

With regards to the 18 Guatemalan temporary foreign workers, we continue to demand justice. We demand that the deportation order for the 18 Guatemalan workers be revoked. In order for the workers to see the complaints that they have made with various government institutions through, it's important for them to remain on Canadian soil.

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