Are Canada’s migrant workers experiencing ‘contemporary forms of slavery’?

In today’s The Big Story podcast, a UN envoy said last week that the temporary foreign worker program was a breeding ground for just those conditions. And that’s amid a rapid recent expansion of the program, which used to focus heavily on agriculture but now funnels workers into the service and construction industries and the health care sector.

Ghada Alsharif is work and wealth reporter the Toronto Star. “These jobs come with such low wages, poor working conditions and little job security, which makes them less appealing to Canadians,” said Alsharif. “So instead of improving these jobs, companies are opting to bring in workers from abroad who have fewer options and are easily exploitable.”

Why has the program expanded so quickly? How much merit is there to the UN’s criticism? Are there really no Canadians to do all these jobs? Or is this a program exploited by employers to hire workers with few rights and hold wages down?

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