'This is the new slavery': Migrant farm workers underpaid, abused and injured

Harvesting cannabis in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley as a migrant labourer in 2023, Maria recalls being surprised when her boss invited her and two friends for dinner at his home in the nearby mountains.

It was an evening of dancing, drinking and lounging in a hot tub — rare luxuries for the then-28-year-old Mexican who says she lived in a cramped trailer on the farm where she worked.

Feeling intoxicated, she says she went to bed alone in a nearby bedroom.

Her next memory, she says, was of her boss on top of her, kissing her against her will and doing “many things to my body.”

“I wish I could have pushed him or hit him but I couldn’t,” says the woman, whose name is covered by a publication ban in a sexual assault case currently before the courts in B.C. “I wish I could have protected myself.”

Maria is among tens of thousands from around the world who come to Canada every year to harvest and process fruit, tobacco, vegetables and other crops, often living in makeshift housing and working long, physically demanding days in sweltering summer heat, mostly for minimum wage.

Last year, nearly 80,000 migrants worked in agricultural jobs under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, an increasingly controversial initiative designed in part to fill a labour gap left by Canadians who are unwilling or unable to do farm work.

The program gives foreign labourers access to Canadian jobs that can help them support their families better than they could at home while being a vital resource to this country’s food production system. A very small number will become permanent residents of Canada.

But the Temporary Foreign Worker program is exposing many migrant labourers to health risks, financial exploitation and physical abuse, the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) found. IJB reporters worked in collaboration with Simon Fraser University researchers who were to release a report on Dec. 1 on the experiences of B.C. migrant agricultural workers.

“This is the new slavery,” said a 37-year-old Jamaican father of two who came to B.C. this past summer on a Temporary Foreign Worker contract only to find what he called “deplorable” conditions, including no hot running water. “They’re all using us.”

As with many workers interviewed by reporters, the man’s real name has not been used for fear of repercussions from employers who control the labourers’ work permits in Canada.

Among the dozens of migrant workers interviewed by reporters in Ontario and B.C., many complained of a work-permit system that binds them to one employer in Canada, fails to enforce basic employment standards and exploits vulnerable people who often don’t know their rights.

Not being able to switch employers in Canada is a “shitty rule,” said a father of two from Grenada who has worked in Ontario and B.C. since 2018 under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, earning less than $18 an hour. “If we’re not being treated fairly on a job site … we should have the option to apply or look for another job while in Canada.”

A Senate committee report last year said “an overwhelming majority of migrant workers, migrant worker advocates, academics and economists told the committee that employer-specific work permits are the single most egregious condition of vulnerability.” It called on the government to phase out these types of permits.

“The employer-specific work permit inherently makes migrant workers more vulnerable to abuse at the hands of bad actors as well as imposing structural barriers to accessing rights and protections.”

In response, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald said in an email that temporary foreign workers “have the same employment standards, rights, and protections under federal, provincial, and territorial law as do Canadian citizens and permanent residents.”

Only six per cent of workers who came to Canada between 2005 and 2009 under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) program — part of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program — achieved permanent residence after a decade, according to Statistics Canada.

“All of it kind of boils down to, ‘You workers have no agency,’” says Navid Bayat, a staff lawyer at the Migrant Workers Centre in Kelowna, which advocates on behalf of workers in the area. “‘We control you. More than control, we kind of own you.’”

A 2023 report by the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur concluded that Canada’s temporary foreign worker programs are a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Among the report’s recommendations to the Canadian government were reforms that would end the use of employer-specific work permits and ensure migrant workers have “a clear pathway to permanent residency.”

Those suggestions run up against growing public concern in Canada about the flow of immigrants into the country. According to polling by Leger in June 2025, 62 per cent of Canadians surveyed thought that Canada was admitting too many immigrants. In a September survey by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies, 60 per cent of respondents disagreed that “Canada needs new immigrants.”

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program itself is unpopular among many Canadians, according to September 2025 polling by the Angus Reid Institute . It found half of respondents view the program more negatively than positively, compared to 23 per cent who said the opposite.

Among respondents familiar with the program, more than half said “the government exploits temporary foreign workers.” And half said workers are “treated unfairly by employers.”

The federal Conservative Party has called for “permanently scrapping” the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. But it also acknowledges that “difficult-to-fill agricultural labour” would then require the creation of a separate, standalone program.

The recently released federal budget commits to reducing permanent residency levels in order to “bring immigration back to sustainable levels.” But it also carves out a caveat for migrant workers needed in sectors including agriculture.

“The government recognizes the role temporary foreign workers play in some sectors of the economy and in some parts of the country,” it says.

In a written statement to the IJB, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) spokesperson Mila Roy said mistreatment of temporary foreign workers “is not acceptable and will never be tolerated … Canada is focused on working with partners and stakeholders to continuously find ways to strengthen the (Temporary Foreign Worker) Program’s integrity and to enhance worker protections.”

Foreign agricultural workers have become deeply woven into the national food production tapestry. The nearly 80,000 temporary foreign workers employed in Canada’s agriculture sector in 2024 mark a significant jump from the 60,992 employed in 2021.

The cherries, cauliflower, blueberries, apples and wine that end up on Canadian dinner tables were gathered, in many cases, by foreign hands working Canadian soil.

But their experiences in Canada are increasingly fraught, according to federal data.

Federal ESDC staff inspected 1,435 temporary foreign worker program employers across all sectors in the 2024-25 fiscal year. Approximately 10 per cent of these employers were non-compliant with the program’s requirements.

The government banned 36 employers from the program, three times the number from the previous year, and financial penalties against non-compliant employers more than doubled, to $4.9 million.

The true scope of legal and ethical breaches is unknowable thanks to a culture of secrecy and vulnerability.

Maria is among the small minority of workers in the agricultural sector who have filed a formal complaint against their employer. It’s a decision that can swiftly terminate their job, housing, health care and future prospects of working in Canada.

“Workers are made vulnerable by the very design of the program,” said Anelyse Weiler, an associate professor in sociology at the University of Victoria who has researched sexual violence in the agricultural sector, including in the Okanagan and Southwestern Ontario.

“The fact that migrant workers have been made so vulnerable by Canada’s laws probably factors into their perpetrators’ decision-making calculations … It’s ripe for abuse.”

Randhir Toor, president of Desert Hills Estate Winery in the Okanagan, employed Maria in 2023. He was criminally charged in April with sexual assault based on her criminal complaint.

The charges, which have not been proven, remain before the courts in B.C.

Toor declined an interview but his Vancouver lawyer, Vincent Michaels, said in writing that his client “vigorously asserts his innocence and looks forward to the opportunity a trial will provide to fully defend himself.”

Toor’s companies have been found in violation of immigration legislation and requirements of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program over the past few years.

In 2022, his company, Toor Vineyards Ltd., pleaded guilty to seven charges under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act related to immigration fraud, and was fined $90,000.

“If I could take it back, I would, but I can’t,” Toor was quoted saying in media reports at the time, speaking to the judge. “I’m sorry, your honour, and I’m so sorry to my community.”

The judge is quoted as responding: “Mr. Toor, today’s the first day of the rest of your life and you’ve promised and assured me that you’re going to take some very positive steps in repaying the community and continuing on with your philanthropy.”

In January 2023, the federal government levied a $16,000 fine against Toor’s Desert Hill Estate Winery for breaches including failing to produce documentation showing the company met the conditions of employing a foreign national, and because the pay and working conditions were different from what was listed on the offer of employment.

That fine was not paid, according to the federal website listing non-compliant employers.

Last year, the federal government took the rare step of permanently banning Toor Vineyards from using the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, fining the company $118,000 for violations that include failing to “put enough effort” into ensuring the workplace was free of offences, including physical, sexual, psychological or financial abuse, as well as reprisals.

Toor’s lawyer said it would be “irresponsible” to comment on details that could become a factor in a case before the courts and “neither myself nor Mr. Toor will do so.”

To better understand the experiences of foreign labourers who leave behind children, spouses, language and culture to work in Canada for months or years — sometimes for decades — IJB reporters spent two months this summer in the picturesque fields of B.C. and southwestern Ontario.

They conducted interviews with agricultural labourers who came from South America, Mexico, Jamaica, Guatemala, Dominica and Grenada to work for more than 20 employers.

Some are deeply grateful to Canada for the ability to earn a living that puts children through school back home, covers monthly expenses for their families and helps pay for the medical care desperately needed by far-flung relatives.

Sitting in front of a series of modular housing units while eating his dinner in July, one Jamaican worker at a cherry farm in B.C. said he has been coming to Canada every year since 2014 to work on farms to support his wife and four children.

The work at his current place of employment is good. Pay arrives on time. He sends half of it straight home to Jamaica.

But despite the economic opportunity it provides, there is also a cycle of heartache in constantly leaving behind his growing children, who face unlikely odds of ever joining him in Canada, he says.

“It shook (my daughter) so much because I left her when she was a child, a baby,” he says. “When you’re packing up and leaving the next day … a child doesn’t understand.”

Many other workers spoke with reporters inside ramshackle housing or leaning on fence posts at the end of 12-hour days. Those conversations often featured feelings of betrayal over alleged mistreatment rooted in the uniquely vulnerable status migrant workers hold in Canada.

“Existing regulatory frameworks are insufficient to protect workers from exploitation,” says the new Simon Fraser report, Temporary Foreign Workers in British Columbia’s Agriculture Industry: Learning from Lived Experience.

“The closed work-permit system creates conditions where employers can operate with relative impunity despite legal protections on paper.”

Genevieve LeBaron, a professor of global supply chain governance at Simon Fraser University and one of the study’s authors, said the problems detailed in the experiences of workers demand a federal response.

“The government needs to ensure these workers are covered by legal protections and rights and then enforce these rights through a targeted, risk-based approach to inspection. They should reform the program to enable workers to change employers more easily and ensure they are protected against retaliation.”

Tyrell Mills arrived in Ontario in September 2023 as a migrant farm worker, hoping to earn enough money to support his family in Jamaica.

In the month that he spent at Triumph Produce Ltd. in Cobourg, Ont., he says he only received a cheque for $193 — which he says later bounced. One day, he said, he was paid $35 for eight hours of work.

Mills and other workers brought Triumph Produce before the Ontario Labour Relations Board in 2024. In May, the board’s vice-chair, Rishi Bandhu, found the workers “were not paid the minimum wage for the number of hours they worked.” The decision ordered the farm to pay the workers the outstanding balance.

In an interview, Jenny Trinh, owner of Triumph Produce, said she disagrees with the Labour Relations Board decision. She alleges Mills and the other Jamaican workers were paid according to the work they did, which she says was very little.

“They don’t go to work … they cut the product like junk … all the product (they cut) got rejected,” she said. “They put me out of the business … I had to sell the farm (for) cheap. I lost everything.”

Immigration and Citizenship Canada’s website shows that Triumph Produce was fined $105,000 after being found non-compliant with the regulations of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The penalty is based on findings that the company did not give inspectors requested documents, that it broke Canadian laws for hiring and recruiting employees, and that the pay, work or working conditions didn’t match the offer of employment.

Trinh said she fully complied with the federal inspections and provided all documents requested, but it did not satisfy the inspectors.

In its written statement, ESDC’s Roy said the program ensures workers are paid fair wages in accordance with provincial labour standards, amounts that are detailed in an agreement workers receive on the first day of work.

“Employers who fail to comply with wage or program requirements can face administrative monetary penalties and bans from using the program.”

Nearly half of the 36 respondents surveyed by Simon Fraser researchers in the Okanagan this summer said they experienced issues with wages and working conditions, from paycheque discrepancies to delayed payments.

A 39-year-old migrant worker from Jamaica said he faced routine wage theft while harvesting buckets of cherries near Kelowna.

“They cheated and we know it,” he said, alleging the employer shortchanged him and his colleagues on the number of buckets of cherries they picked. “(It’s) a lot of money.”

Most said they were too fearful to complain because of potential retaliation from employers who hold their ability to work in Canada through employer-specific — or “closed” — permits.

That power imbalance with employers creates a “climate where workers felt compelled to accept potential wage discrepancies rather than risk their employment security,” researchers concluded.

Many of the workers interviewed detailed tragic incidents they’ve experienced or seen involving unsafe working conditions. From heavy farm machinery to chemical exposure, they say protective equipment and proper training required under labour laws are often ignored.

More than half of survey participants in B.C. reported workplace safety and hazard concerns that included “physical hazards, chemical exposures, and environmental challenges, often exacerbated by inadequate training and inconsistent safety protocols across employers in the region,” Simon Fraser University researchers concluded.

After 18 years of farm work in Canada, Luís, a 52-year-old from Mexico, suddenly lost his employment — and livelihood — last year after a devastating workplace accident in B.C.

Waking up at 4 a.m. for what he called 14-hour shifts, seven days a week, he was in an apple orchard in October 2024 removing netting from the fruit trees and using heavy machinery.

Luís’s hands got caught in the equipment, causing serious injury to his left arm that required several surgeries.

“The orthopedic surgeon told me that it was the first time that he had seen broken bones, nerve damage, skin damage and muscle damage all in one injury,” he said in an interview.

With little understanding of his rights under provincial workers’ compensation legislation — and unable to navigate the process alone — he found himself in a foreign country unable to work or earn an income, with no clear way out.

Lorena Ordoñez, the intake manager at the Migrant Workers Centre in Kelowna , helped him report the incident to the provincial workplace safety agency, WorkSafeBC, which triggered health-care support.

“Temporary foreign workers harvest our food, build our communities, pay taxes, buy goods here, contribute to employment insurance that at times they will never benefit from, they sustain our economy in countless unseen ways,” said Ordoñez.

“Yet when they are injured or no longer useful, they are cast aside, invisible and unprotected within a complex system that was never built to safeguard them. As a society, we don’t owe them charity. We owe them justice and dignity.”

Luís continues his recovery in physiotherapy and rehabilitation, and may require further surgeries. In the meantime, he sends what he can from his WorkSafeBC cheques to his wife and two daughters in Mexico.

Jesús Chauteco says that when he regained consciousness after flipping over an ATV vehicle on the B.C. farm where he was working in July 2024, he wasn’t sure where he was.

Bloodied and confused, the 44-year-old Mexican labourer says he knew he was hurt.

“​​We weren’t wearing helmets or anything,” said Chauteco. “My friend was shocked because I was bleeding profusely.”

The fall had broken his nose, but Chauteco couldn’t be sure because his employer didn’t take him to the hospital for more than two weeks, he alleges.

“He told us that if he took me to the hospital … he’d have a lot of problems and there would be a lot of paperwork,” he said. “I kept telling him it hurt a lot.”

Monette Farms, which employed Chauteco, described the incident to WorkSafe B.C. by saying  “his nose was scratched,” and that he later reported “a minor discomfort on his nose,” according to documents filed before the regulator.

In its statement, Monette Farms said it provided first aid right after the ATV accident and that it offered to take him to the hospital that day, but he refused.

“We categorically reject any suggestion that Monette Farms refused necessary medical care in order to avoid ‘paperwork’ or scrutiny,” reads a statement from Ben Nesbitt, the company’s chief human resources officer.

WorkSafeBC later inspected the farm and issued 12 orders against the operation, including failing to ensure its workers wore appropriate personal protective equipment when using the ATVs and failing to provide sufficient training.

“Monette Farms has cooperated with WorkSafeBC, taken the inspection findings seriously, and implemented corrective measures, including strengthened training, formalized ATV procedures and reinforced PPE requirements,” reads Nesbitt’s statement.

Earlier this year, WorkSafeBC dismissed a claim from Chauteco that alleged a Monette Farms supervisor had retaliated against him after the injury by reducing his work hours, isolating him from other workers and generally treating him poorly.

Nesbitt said the company “firmly” rejects any suggestion Chauteco was punished, isolated or not rehired because he caused trouble.

Doctors eventually scheduled a surgery for Chauteco’s broken nose for March 2025, but he was sent back to Mexico when his contract ended and hasn’t been called back to the B.C. farm for work since.

He says his nose remains broken a year-and-a-half later. The search for work in Mexico has been undermined by his injuries, he says. The IJB has reviewed a letter Chauteco received in August from a trucking company he applied to, which said his breathing problems mean “he is not suitable for the requested position.”

He says that, at one point, he was selling candy on the street to support his family.

“I left for a better life for them, but now I’ve lost everything,” he said.

Walk the fields of Canada’s agricultural farmland and you’ll inevitably see signs warning of chemical and pesticide spraying. While Canadians rarely consider the impacts of standard chemical treatments on our food, agricultural labourers see it — and breathe it  — up close.

A quarter of respondents in the Simon Fraser survey reported experiencing chemical exposure as a result of poor training and a lack of protective equipment.

“Some stuff started coming up on my skin, like a rash. I never had this before, from the back of my neck and down to my hands,” said a Grenadan farm worker in the Okanagan. “I didn’t want to speak up or anything because I didn’t want to lose my work.”

A Mexican labourer in the same area worked for years in a greenhouse, which he says meant concentrated and lengthy exposure to chemicals he didn’t understand.

“I believe that the farm didn’t know how to take care of us, they didn’t know because they allowed me to do that work without any prior training,” says the 44-year-old father of three. “So when I started working there, my skin, my face, everything was good. I came healthy.”

Today, he lives with burning and discoloration of his skin and increasing fears of the potential long-term health consequences, he says.

“What happens if I get sick at some point, like cancer or something, what happens to me and my family?”

ESDC’s written statement says workers under the program have the same protections as all Canadians when it comes to pesticide and chemical exposure and that employers are required to provide free protective equipment, training and supervision.

Much like migrant workers in B.C., those in Ontario frequently raised pesticide exposure as one of their most serious workplace concerns.

In April 2024, a 43-year-old Jamaican farm worker, Aaron, says he emerged from a greenhouse in Leamington, Ont., where he worked, feeling like he was drunk.

“I couldn’t walk straight,” he recalls.

Aaron came to Canada from Jamaica in 2011 to participate in the seasonal worker program, eventually ending up at an Ontario farm in 2023 where he says he suffered a stroke and temporary paralysis from chemical exposure and long hours in the heat.

“I couldn’t move at all,” he said about the six weeks he spent in a hospital bed.

Working in the greenhouses often means long hours spent inside confined spaces with limited fresh air. Aaron said he would work in greenhouses shortly after they were sprayed with pesticides, and often had a hard time breathing upon entering.

“I wasn’t getting any fresh air. I worked from sometimes six in the morning, sometimes to nine in the night.”

Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act of Ontario , farm employers are required to provide training on pesticide risks and safe handling, provide personal protection equipment (PPE), inform employees of treated areas and report health concerns caused by exposure.

Aaron says his employers didn’t provide safety training or personal protection equipment.

He says he still feels the effects of his stroke, and he’s not sure if it’s permanent. While his vision and motor function came back, his speech is still slurred, making it hard to understand him.

He continues to work as a welder in Canada under a one-year work permit for vulnerable workers, set up by the government to allow workers to escape abusive situations. When it expires, he will have to reapply to remain in Canada.

At the end of every 12-hour shift picking B.C. cherries with no days off, Alejandro returned to cramped housing he shared with 11 other men.

The 29-year-old Guatemalan, who paid $120 a month for his accommodations, slept in one of a dozen beds and bunk beds in a large main room with no walls or privacy.

The two bathrooms had no running hot water when reporters visited this summer.

Without internet access, Alejandro was forced to buy phone data to communicate with family, another $50 monthly from his tight budget.

“There’s been situations where our workers have said that they have to sleep on a couch because there were no beds for them,” says Migrant Workers Centre manager Ordoñez.

The ESDC statement says accommodations under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program are a “multi-jurisdictional responsibility, with provinces and territories generally having responsibility for setting accommodation standards.” Federal staff regularly inspect employment sites to “ensure that employers are adhering to program conditions, including those related to employer-provided accommodations.”

But one-third of respondents in the Simon Fraser survey reported dissatisfaction with the housing provided by their employer. The grievances included overcrowding, overheating in the summer months and dilapidated conditions.

It is an echo of what migrant workers in Ontario describe.

Juan, a 42-year-old migrant worker from Mexico, remembers arriving in southwestern Ontario in 2017 and being escorted to his housing, which, contrary to what his employment contract detailed, had no plates, utensils, a washing machine or a dryer, he says. Three workers shared one small room.

“I was defeated,” he said.

His experiences in Canada have varied widely based on the attitudes of his employers, he says.

Working the fields of B.C. this past summer, “(They) treat us with respect and appreciation,” he said. “Each (worker) has their own room. There are two fridges, internet, TV, and the employer pays for Netflix. They also purchased chickens for us so we don’t have to purchase eggs.”

Sexual harassment, abuse and violence are systemic in the agriculture sector, typically rooted in power imbalances that most commonly target women, multiple research studies have found.

“In any employment relationship, there is an imbalanced relationship of power between bosses and workers,” says Weiler, the University of Victoria researcher. “However, Canada’s migrant farm worker program ratchets up that typical asymmetry in a uniquely lopsided way … The threat and fear of potentially losing your job, getting repatriated and having zero course for appeal is a powerful motivator to keep your head down and stay silent.”

Two years have passed since Maria made the choice to file a formal complaint against her former boss alleging sexual assault.

In retrospect, she says, it all began as an adventure, travelling far from home to spend six months in B.C. working in the fields with friends.

“A friend from university told me many stories about what they do in farms in Canada. He told me, ‘You should come.’”

She started by picking cherries and apples in the Okanagan and eventually found her way to working on a cannabis farm, where she met Toor.

The work was hard enough, she says: 12-hour days of heavy lifting, bending and harvesting and delays getting paid were typical.

Then came flirtatious comments from Toor, along with promises of immigration help, she says. She says Toor told her, “I can make everything work for you and get you your papers to work legally here.”

Toor’s lawyer declined to comment on those allegations.

When Toor invited her to dinner, Maria says, she initially declined. But when two of her friends working on the farm agreed to join, she said she would go.

The party turned into a night of terror, she said.

She would later go to the hospital and call the police to give a statement. A workers’ rights advocate helped her find a place to stay. She never returned to Toor’s farm.

Maria now lives and works in Mexico City and continues to co-operate with Canadian prosecutors in their case against Toor. She says she is resolved to see the criminal case through, even if it means having to return to B.C. to testify in court.

“It’s something I have to do,” she says. “I need justice. I knew I could lose everything that I had. I thought they will take me from the country, and I won’t have money. I was destroyed inside …

“I had a lot of expectations about Canada. I was disillusioned.”

The Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health is a collaborative investigative newsroom supported by Postmedia that partners with academics, researchers and journalists while training the next generation of investigative reporters.