{"id":626260,"date":"2026-04-24T20:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/626260\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T20:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:22:11","slug":"closed-work-permits-in-canada-akin-to-modern-slavery-advocates-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/626260\/","title":{"rendered":"Closed work permits in Canada akin to modern slavery, advocates say"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Canadian government expands<\/a> access to temporary foreign workers in some parts of the country, and as some provinces<\/a> push against the move, advocates for migrant rights say some permits, particularly \u2018closed\u2019 work permits, create conditions akin to modern slavery.<\/p>\n

Gabriel Allahdua, a\u00a0senior mobilization and education officer<\/a>\u00a0for the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers (RHFW), says closed work permits in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TWFP) binds workers to one employer leaving them vulnerable.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour housing is dependent on that person, your access to health care, your status, everything is tied to that person. Is that an employer? Is that a farmer? Or is that your master?\u201d Allahdua said, echoing sentiments from his\u00a0book<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The association believes closed work permits are full of inequalities. As a result, they filed a class action lawsuit\u00a0against the Canadian Federal Government in 2023<\/a>. The suit was then authorized in the Quebec court in 2024. The case is still before the courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a migrant worker comes to Canada on a closed work permit or tied work permit, how can you access those rights, those freedoms? So we [the association] believe that the closed work permit or the tied work permit it infringes or it violates those Charter rights,\u201d\u00a0Allahdua said.<\/p>\n

The RHFW says restricting workers to one employer where there is a risk for deportation can force workers to endure unsafe or abusive conditions that violate Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing life, liberty and the security of persons. They argue these conditions also violate Section 12, the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment, and Section 15, which guarantees equal treatment under the law. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The suit also challenges Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations<\/a> that allow for closed or employer specific work permits that RHFW alleges leave workers open to contemporary forms of slavery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But David Garson, an immigration lawyer with Garson Immigration Law, says the issue is largely one of oversight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is the governance, governance of the program itself and the government, the governance of the employers who bring people in,\u201d Garson said.\u00a0\u201cYou can have a closed work permit for an honourable employer.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he believes \u201canyone who steps foot on Canadian soil and is working here deserves protection under the Charter,\u201d he also thinks the solution is clamping down on employer conduct, not abolishing closed work permits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you can do is demand an employer behave honourably with regard to people they bring. And you have to enforce it and put teeth into it, and you have to punish employers that don\u2019t severely,\u201d Garson said. He adds Canadians won\u2019t stand for open work permits, which would allow temporary workers to take other jobs, and that you can\u2019t give them to everyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Equal treatment?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Allahdua says the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) an extension of the TFWP, was designed to admit only workers of colour and keep them tied to one employer, and therefore was discriminatory from the start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1966 the minister of Immigration, Jean Marcia, said in Parliament that the seasonal agriculture worker program would amount to enslavement\u00a0if it were implemented on Europeans,\u201d\u00a0Allahdua said, \u201cIt would amount to enslavement. But if it is implemented on people of color, then what is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Allahdua came from St. Lucia in the Caribbean to Canada through the SAWP, and said he found the experience to be akin to modern slavery, a sentiment echoed by a UN human rights expert<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cI live where I work, I work where I live. Was it different for a slave? Same thing, same blueprint. Let us go to the work, where we work from sunrise to sunset, working long hours thinking that,\u201d Allahdua said.<\/p>\n

Once Allahdua left the program in 2016, he joined with\u00a0Justicia for Migrant Rights<\/a>\u00a0(J4MW), a volunteer-run collective of migrant workers, researchers and volunteers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

J4MW is now leading a\u00a0$550 million\u00a0EI class action lawsuit <\/a>originally filed by former Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program workers Kevin Palmer and Andrel Peters in 2023. The class action extends to\u00a0any worker under SAWP<\/a>\u00a0since Jan.1st, 2008.<\/p>\n

This second lawsuit claims, similarly to the one on closed work permits, that the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program binds workers to one employer restricting the security of persons and violating Section 7 of the Charter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They also claim that denying racialized workers predominately from Mexico and the Caribbean from accessing EI constitutes discrimination, violating section 15. <\/p>\n

Chris Ramsaroop who\u2019s been with J4MW since it first started in 2001, says migrants deserve those benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that workers have been paying into the EI system and haven\u2019t had access to it. And the claim is, is our arguing that migrant workers are owed hundreds of millions of dollars that should be paid or at least be restored to them,\u201d Ramsaroop said, adding that many workers come from Jamaica, facing homelessness because of Hurricane Melissa and could\u00a0benefit from the EI.<\/p>\n

The EI lawsuit was certified in late February.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During Ramsaroop\u2019s time at J4MW he has seen many unfavorable conditions in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen really, really cramped conditions of housing. I\u2019ve talked to workers who\u2019ve worked, you know, multiple hours over several periods of day, just near exhaustion,\u201d Ramsaroop said. \u201cI\u2019ve talked to workers, you know, literally half an hour, an hour after one of their comrades died in the workplace accident.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite that the Canadian government says migrants have rights<\/a>\u00a0against unfair conditions and\u00a0overcrowding, Allahdua has experienced otherwise, echoing Ramsaroops sentiments.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe housing (was) overcrowded\u00a0in the bunkhouse where I lived. It was 62 of us, and eight of us were sharing one room with one washroom. So that is overcrowding,\u201d Allahdua said. \u201cNumber two, the kitchen, we had 16 burners, not 16 stoves, 16 burners for 62 of us. So when you do the ratio, you can see why it\u2019s a competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ramsaroop wants a different future for migrant workers and hopes that one day \u201cworkers have access to status [permenant residency] on arrival, that they\u2019re not indentured laborers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat workers have mobility across borders, and they have equal access to our labor laws and our social safety net.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Canadian government expands access to temporary foreign workers in some parts of the country, and as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,190900,44,20739,103480,103481],"class_list":["post-626260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cdnpoli","tag-news","tag-ottawa","tag-ottcity","tag-ottnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}