Montreal, Canada – Canada has failed to take meaningful action to address systemic abuses in a decades-old foreign worker programme, subjecting thousands of labourers to an “inherently exploitative” system, Amnesty International says.

In a 71-page report released on Thursday, the rights group outlined a wide range of abuses linked to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), from wage theft to excessive work hours, racist abuse and violence.

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Many of the violations are related to the labourers’ “closed” work permits, which tie them to their employers and leave them open to exploitation, Amnesty said. Workers typically do not speak out due to a fear of reprisals.

“Exploitation, discrimination and abuse are integral features, not bugs, of the Temporary Foreign Worker program,” Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, said in a statement.

“Cosmetic changes are not enough. Our leaders must implement the reforms required to bring the program in line with Canada’s human rights obligations – and, ultimately, to respect the rights of workers.”

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Launched in the 1970s, Canada’s foreign worker programmes have come under increased scrutiny in recent years as former and current labourers denounced their treatment.

In 2022, a group of workers from Jamaica wrote a letter likening conditions on farms in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, to “systematic slavery”.

A year later, a United Nations special rapporteur said the TFWP schemes “make migrant workers vulnerable to contemporary forms of slavery, as they cannot report abuses without fear of deportation”.

‘Like throwing away rubbish’

Tens of thousands of foreign workers come to Canada each year through the TFWP, which the government says aims to fill gaps in the labour market.

They work in low-wage industries such as agriculture – including on farms or at food-processing plants – and as in-home caregivers, among other jobs.

In 2021, temporary foreign workers accounted for 18 percent of the workforce in Canada’s agricultural sector and 10 percent in the accommodation and food services sector, a study released late last year found.

Migrant workers – many of whom have been coming to Canada for years or even decades – also have limited pathways to permanent residency in the country.

“In its current design, the TFWP is inherently exploitative,” Amnesty International said in Thursday’s report.

The group also said the scheme is “inherently discriminatory, as it entrenches instances of discrimination and disproportionate impacts of human rights violations on racialized ‘lowskilled’ workers based on their race, gender, class and national origin”.

Francisco, a Mexican worker who spoke to Amnesty International using the pseudonym, said: “The employer gets what he wants, but when [the worker] is no longer useful to him … He simply sends [the worker] back.

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“And I feel that it is like throwing away rubbish and saying it’s no longer useful.”

Inspections and fines

The Canadian government has previously defended the “closed” work permits as a necessary measure to ensure it knows which employers are employing foreign workers and where they are working.

Last year, amid a growing backlash over immigration and a housing crisis, the government also announced plans to reduce the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada, including those in TFWP streams.

Meanwhile, Employment and Social Development Canada, the country’s labour ministry, said in mid-January that it had increased penalties for employers who fail to comply with the rules.

The ministry said it conducted 649 inspections between April and the end of September of last year, 11 percent of which found employers to be non-compliant.

It also issued $1.46m (2.1m Canadian dollars) in fines and banned 20 employers from the TFWP.

“Workers in Canada deserve and expect to feel safe and protected in the workplace. That’s why we’re taking steps to further protect temporary foreign workers and hold bad actors accountable,” said Steven MacKinnon, the Canadian minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour.

“Employers must follow the rules, and we will continue to take decisive action to protect workers’ rights and wellbeing while growing our economy.”

But Amnesty International stressed in its report that TFWP abuses “cannot be attributed to a few unscrupulous employers, nor can they be understood as isolated incidents”.

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Instead, the group said Canada bears responsibility for the immigration policies and laws that have left workers vulnerable.

It urged Canada to move beyond “narrow, piecemeal measures” to make “systemic policy changes”, including the abolition of “closed” work permits.

“This system should be urgently replaced with an open visa system that can fully protect racialized workers from labour exploitation and discrimination,” Amnesty said.