Document Details

2010-08-05

Karen Lloyd

Northcumberland News

NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY — Imagine leaving home for half a year, every year, just to put food on the table.

For 36-year-old Asael Hernandez, and an estimated 19,000 others from Mexico and the Caribbean, that is their reality in Canada, and they’re thankful for it; grateful for the privilege to do the jobs no one else will take.

“How many Canadians want to work for 10 hours a day in the sun picking strawberries?” asked Rachael Currie, an outreach worker with the New Canadians Centre in Cobourg.

But that’s what farming in Canada is all about: hard work for little pay, says Ms. Currie.

In fact, as family farms-turned-agribusinesses continue to compete with companies from every corner of the world to land their produce on Canadians’ dinner tables, the fruits of labour intensive agriculture in Canada would be virtually non-existent if not for migrant workers.

In Ontario, where the horticultural sector expanded by 90 per cent between 1994 and 2000, they are the linchpin of a $3.6 billion industry.

For the Burnham family, who runs a 400 acre farm between Cobourg and Port Hope, Canada’s migrant worker program means relatively inexpensive, reliable labour, and a decent way to stay in business.

In fact, foreign workers have become essential as fewer Canadians are willing to accept the wages and working conditions found in agriculture.

The Burnhams tried to employ Canadians but failed, and since 2000, they’ve employed a small number of Mexican workers, mostly for the work ethics they bring to the field.

“They like to work, because what else is there to do, really?” said Anne Burnham.

And most migrant workers will agree it’s true.

For them, even at minimum wage, with no overtime and the government skimming off about a third of their pay for taxes and other contributions, the opportunity to earn a Canadian income is a welcome strategy to supplement the wages and limited employment available in their home countries.

In other words if they don’t work, their families don’t eat.

“I’m here for lack of alternative resources in Mexico,” said Mr. Hernandez who’s been working fields in Northumberland County for the past eight years.

While his experience has been positive, and most farmers are pretty good, providing decent housing, attending to health and safety concerns and simply treating the workers with respect, there are increasing stories of abuse circulating across the country: a man who nearly lost a leg to an infection he was told to ignore; workers without proper facilities to wash clothes; others forced to escape their lodgings at night and walk an hour to phone their families; and greenhouse employees sleeping a metre away from massive boilers.

Those who speak up about conditions often risk getting fired and repatriated, according to a recent study on migrant workers in Canada.

While such stories of abuse in Northumberland County are rare, they are stories the New Canadian Centre is working to prevent.

“Our hope is that we can work collaboratively with farms in the area to address issues of isolation, lack of transportation, language barriers, and lack of information about their new communities in Canada in their native language,” said Ms. Currie.

“They are far from their families,” added settlement counsellor, Luz Ofelia Maya. “They are working, working, working and they don’t have the social connections.”

For anywhere between six weeks and eight months, these guest workers, primarily from Mexico and the Caribbean, plant, tend, harvest and/or package grapes, strawberries, tomatoes, tobacco and ginseng at 1,600 farms, greenhouses and food-processing plants across the country, including Northumberland County. They ride their bicycles into town, shop at the local grocery stores, and generally keep to themselves, often working six days a week.

For Mr. Fernandez, the most difficult part of the work is not the long hours or the hot days, it’s being away from his family for five months.

“I miss them a lot and I feel bad,” he said.

As for life in a foreign country, he said, it’s not bad.

“I don’t feel anything negative, or positive,” he said. “Most of the time no one talks to us.”

Currently, the New Canadians Centre is aware of seven farms in the area that employ about 30 foreign workers. But centre staff believe there are many more migrant workers in the area they don’t know about.

With a recent small private donation, the New Canadians Centre is now in a position to gather information on how many migrant workers are on which farms in the Northumberland area in order to speak directly with them and the farmers to see how the organization can offer support and to build social support for the workers during their time in Canada.

“Our goal is to build a safe, open and welcoming community for migrant workers during their time working in Canada,” Ms. Currie said. “They are such a part of the community, they grow our food, and they’re invisible.”

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  From Farm to Table (http://www.nccpeterborough.ca/?p=1871)
  

Agriculture and horticulture workers

Policy analysis

Public awareness

Ontario and México

English