- Date
2016
- Titre du journal
Toronto Star
- Texte complet
Anthony Brown is illiterate, permanently injured, and lives on a farm in rural Jamaica. But according to Ontario’s worker compensation board, he could still reasonably be expected to land a full-time sales job in Canada.
Which is why the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board has cut the former migrant worker off long-term benefits, after the father of three was thrown off the back of a flatbed truck at a Niagara-area fruit picking operation, sustaining traumatic injuries.
It’s a decision his lawyers call “farcical” since Brown no longer has the legal right to be in Ontario, has worked his entire life growing yams and plantains, has received no job retraining, and is disabled.
“It just is laughable,” said Maryth Yachnin of the Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario, a Toronto-based legal clinic. “Even if he were here, he wouldn’t be able to do a customer service job given the severity of his injuries and his lack of education. He just isn’t employable.”
In a statement to the Star, the WSIB said it was unable to comment on individual cases but that it has “a long history of treating migrant workers with care, compassion and respect.
“The WSIB is planning outreach and engagement activities with the migrant worker and farming community to identify how we can continue to improve the services we provide to migrant workers,” it said.
“Migrant workers who are injured on the job in Ontario are entitled to the same benefits and services as any worker in an Ontario workplace covered by the WSIB,” the statement added.
If the WSIB deems injured workers capable of finding a suitable job in Ontario, their benefits are cut accordingly. Critics say that system is flawed, generally, and is especially absurd for migrant workers like Brown who are usually sent back home after an injury — but are treated by the board as if they still live in Ontario.
In a sworn affidavit sent to the board this summer, Brown said he “didn’t understand” the ruling.
“I don’t have the money to travel to Ontario and I don’t think I could legally work there,” he said.
“This is the position they take on all migrant workers cases,” Yachnin added.
When Brown arrived in Ontario in 2006, he says picking fruit, planting trees, and clearing brush as a migrant worker in verdant Niagara-on-the-Lake held the promise of extra money for his family, despite the 50- to 60-hour weeks and a dorm stuffed with 16 workers. Brown had worked the land since he was a child. Back home, his parents were unable to pay for schooling past Grade 4; his affidavit says he cannot read or write much more than his own name.
A few months into the job, he was thrown off the back of a work truck, smashing his head, back, neck and arm. The WSIB accepted Brown’s claim and awarded him a one-time payment of around $20,000 given the severity of his injuries. But it has now cut him off ongoing loss-of-earning benefits, which injured workers are entitled to if their disabilities prevent them from returning to their pre-accident wages. After almost a decade of legal to and fro, the board maintains Brown has recovered enough to get a full-time customer service job in Ontario.
Except Brown no longer lives in Ontario. As a migrant worker, his visa was tied to being a farm labourer in Niagara-on-the-Lake — a job multiple doctors have said he will never perform again. So Brown returned home, with no prospect of ever working in Canada again.
Now 49, Brown can’t lift more than 10 lbs., according to an independent medical evaluation. He is physically unable to farm his own land or find any kind of suitable work given his injuries and his location in a remote part of the country, his lawyers argue. They say he also cannot access the kind of ongoing health care he’d be entitled to as an injured worker in Ontario because public services are limited in rural Jamaica.
Yachnin says Brown’s compensation to date is not a fair exchange for never being able to work again, and getting little support for rehabilitation in Jamaica.
“Practically speaking, this man is completely changed from the way he was before his injury. His life is completely changed and yet he has no financial support from the WSIB, even though they agree he has injuries,” Yachnin said. “That’s troubling because it suggests a lack of regard for the actual fact of his injuries. Would they have that lack of regard for a Canadian worker?”
Injured worker advocates say the system is fundamentally discriminatory. The Star has previously profiled a complaint made to the Ontario Human Rights tribunal arguing injured migrant workers are not getting the health care they are entitled to because of their immigration status.
A Canadian Medical Association Journal study shows that between 2001 and 2011, over 780 migrant farm workers in Ontario were sent home for “medical or surgical reasons.”
In its statement, the board said workers who are repatriated “may still be entitled to further treatment or assessments” but added that a migrant worker’s immigration status “is a factor unrelated to the worker’s accident.”
This summer IAVGO launched a charter challenge to the WSIB’ policies on behalf of a migrant worker in a similar situation to Brown, although the case is not expected to be heard for a couple of years. The legal notice filed by the clinic argues that the worker’s constitutional right to equality has been violated, since the only reason he could not access loss-of-earning benefits and health care was that he was a migrant.
“As racialized persons working in largely white communities, (migrant workers) face racial discrimination on the job and in the communities where they work and live,” the notice says.
At the very least, advocates say they want the board to treat migrant workers in line with their actual circumstances: for example, judging their ability to get a new job and access health care based on conditions in their own country, rather than in Canada — where they are unlikely to ever live or work again.
“We think the board should actually help them to find jobs in their home countries,” Yachnin said. “The board is not providing them with meaningful health care because the board doesn’t want to deal with logistics.”
On a fuzzy phone line from his yam farm in Jamaica, Brown — who feels he has been stripped of his identity as a producer and provider — says such measures would go some way to softening his sense of disposability.
“They don’t treat you good,” he said. “As soon as you get hurt, they are not looking after you.”
- Liens
- Secteurs économiques
Agriculture and horticulture workers
- Groupes cibles
Sensibilisation du public
- Pertinence géographique
Ontario
- Langues
Anglais