$500-million lawsuit takes aim at crucial Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

OTTAWA — Disgruntled foreign farm workers are seeking $500 million in damages from the federal government because they can’t collect Employment Insurance and are “tied” to the individual farms that bring them to Canada.

Plaintiffs in the proposed class action lawsuit complain that they are ineligible for EI, despite paying into the system, and — more controversially — they allege that Canada’s farm-specific work permits are “motivated by overtly racist policy objectives” underlying the 58-year-old Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), according to the recent statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court on behalf of all program participants over the last 15 years.

Farm workers allowed into the country prior to the program’s 1966 introduction were free to work where they wanted because those workers were European, according to the claim filed by the two primary claimants’ lawyers at Goldblatt Associates.  “With the advent of the SAWP, Black and Indo Caribbean farmworkers were finally admitted to Canada, but were subjected to restrictive conditions of employment, including tied employment (and forced residency at their employer’s premises).”

Beyond the racism charge, the damage figure is largely based on $472 million in EI contributions collected from the involved workers and their employers since 2008.

Ken Forth, a southwestern Ontario broccoli producer and Chair of the Labour Section of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association, dismissed the latest bout of bad press triggered by critics of the SAWP.

“It’s a really good program. There’s nothing sinister going on. The majority are good people on all sides that make this thing work,” Forth told Farmers Forum.

Forth conceded that foreign farm workers can’t get EI once they return to their home countries at the end of the season, though there are circumstances where they can and do collect while still in Canada. He raised the example of a worker who suddenly comes down with a sickness or health condition that prevents them from working during the season.