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Tens of thousands of migrant workers travel every year to Canada in the hope of providing a better life for their families. They are promised labour opportunities and working conditions that very often they cannot enjoy in their countries of origin. Yet, many find a different reality upon arrival: they are made to work long hours without rest, are underpaid, suffer physical and psychological abuse, and are often subjected to stereotypes and assumptions about their skills, behaviours or identities. Their visas are tied to one employer, making it difficult for them to leave their job and change employers, or report abuses and access effective remedies. This report investigates the human rights impact of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), a temporary migration scheme that allows employers to hire migrant workers, primarily in low-pay occupations. Amnesty International’s research finds that Canada’s migration policy has designed, regulated and implemented the TFWP in such a way as to inherently increase racialized workers’ risk of labour exploitation and other abuses, creating discriminatory outcomes and violating its international human rights obligations.

In June 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced impending new pilot programs for migrant care workers. While the announcement brings hope that “new pilot programs will provide home care workers with permanent residence on arrival in Canada,” this report identifies persistent problems with Canada’s migrant care worker programs and demonstrates why permanency upon arrival is a requisite for necessary program changes. Given the ongoing and structural issues of Canada’s migrant care worker programs, the newest pilot programs will also need other critical improvements to ensure dignified work and meaningful inclusion for much-needed care workers in Canada. --Website summary

The 2024 review of the Labour Relations Code, only the second in more than two decades, comes at a critical juncture for labour relations in British Columbia. It is imperative that this review bring a comprehensive package of reforms to markedly improve workers’ abilities to meaningfully exercise their statutory rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining in the current context of fissured workplaces and increasingly insecure work arrangements in many sectors of the BC economy. --Website summary

A detailed look at the experiences of migrant and immigrant women’s working conditions in low-wage essential sectors in Nova Scotia before, during, and following the most acute periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, this report draws on 27 in-depth, qualitative interviews.... --Website summary

The evidence presented in this report runs counter to arguments that card-check and anti-scab legislation give excessive power to workers over employers. Rather, card-check certification and a replacement worker ban are fundamental to upholding workers rights within Canada’s labour relations system. The right to join a union and the right to strike are two foundational aspects of Canadian labour relations. Testimonials from workers in this report make clear that mandatory votes suppress workers’ freedom to join a union without coercion from anti-union employers. --Website summary

Falling Short is the third community report released by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes Partnership. The report follows the publication of Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward Island in 2021 and Unfree Labour: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers in the Seafood Industry in New Brunswick in 2023. The report is based on desk research and worker interviews. Data was obtained from freedom of information requests to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and Nova Scotia’s regulatory bodies responsible for work safety, employment standards, and housing. 15 interviews with migrant workers in Nova Scotia employed under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) were also conducted. Fourteen of these workers were employed under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) stream of the TFWP, and one worker was employed under the low-wage stream of the TFWP. Falling Short found that in Nova Scotia, migrant workers frequently encounter a lack of regulatory implementation. Rules exist, but governments are failing to adequately enforce them to create a safe and dignified work environment for migrant workers. The report provides recommendations to both the federal and provincial governments aimed at improving the working and living conditions of the temporary migrant workforce in the province. --Website description

This report examines the ways governments, and specifically the Government of Alberta, interfere in public-sector collective bargaining through both legislative measures and non-legislative actions. It also explores how this growing interference may impact the 2024 bargaining round in Alberta.

The Progressive Labour Agenda is intended to provide Manitoba policy makers with a set of clear policy measures to improve the conditions of work for Manitobans while promoting overall well-being in our province. These policy measures respond directly to issues in labour and employment such as the proliferation of low-wage work, gaps in employment standards and health and safety enforcement, declining private sector union coverage, and inequities experienced by women and migrant workers, among other issues. The policy options outlined in the Progressive Labour Agenda cover three major themes: 1) ensure access to unions and fair collective bargaining; 2) modernize labour legislation to close gaps in employment standards and improve conditions for non-unionized workers; and 3) improve workplace health and safety. These are ideas that are well supported by public policy research and that are actionable at the provincial level. --Website description

We generally take for granted that everyone has the right to a say—and certainly a vote—in what our governments do. But in the workplaces that rule many of our waking hours, these democratic rights are largely absent. In a time of extreme inequality, deteriorating social cohesion and reduced trust in our institutions, why shouldn’t workers have more control over the firms they work in? Enabling employees to take more ownership and control in their working lives is a promising antidote. With advocacy from a broad coalition of supporters—including many business owners—the federal government has tabled legislation to create a new Employee Ownership Trust legal structure that makes it easier for business owners to sell firms to their employees. However, to tap the full potential of employee ownership, a much broader suite of policies is needed. This report examines what an ambitious public policy agenda would look like to unleash the promise of democratic employee ownership in Canada. --Website description

The Centre for Future Work has released new research regarding union coverage and wages across different racialized categories of Canadian workers. The report also contains a review of efforts by Canadian unions to improve their representation of Black and racialized workers, and recommendations for strengthening the union movement’s practices. The research confirms that racialized workers are under-represented in unions. New Statistics Canada data, which now disaggregates statistics on employment, wages, and union status according to a set of racialized categories, indicates that racialized workers are significantly less likely to be represented by a union or covered by a union contract. This lack of collective bargaining power contributes to racial gaps in job quality, wages, and employment benefits.... --Publisher's website, 2024-08-13

The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, Tomoya Obokata, visited Canada from 23 August to 6 September 2023. During his visit, he travelled to Ottawa, Moncton, Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver.

This report provides an assessment of Canada’s progress in meeting the goals for gender equality set out in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Adopted unanimously by 189 countries including Canada in 1995, the Beijing Declaration is the most progressive global blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights. The report examines Canada’s progress over the last 30 years in areas ranging from reproductive health to women’s economic standing and the status of marginalized women in Canada. The report was produced by the Beijing +30 Network which represents more than 70 women’s rights and equality-seeking organizations, trade unions and independent experts representing millions of members from across the country.

The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out 35 years of women’s economic gains in two short months. At the height of the lockdown, women were working 27 per cent fewer hours, in the aggregate, than in February 2020. In total, 2.8 million women lost their job or were working less than half of their regular hours because of the March 2020 economic lockdowns. This report examines what’s happened to women in the workforce since. It finds mixed reviews: many women in higher-paying jobs are now doing better than before the pandemic. However, women in low-paying, pandemic-vulnerable jobs and in the care economy are still having a rough time of things. The COVID-19 crisis illustrated both the shortcomings of existing policies and institutions and what’s possible with strong public leadership. The imperative now is to apply the lessons of COVID-19 in service of a more resilient and inclusive labour market and gender-just future. Institutional reforms and greater awareness of the damaging impacts of gender disparities may yet create opportunities for systemic change. --Website description

The Centre for Future Work has released new research regarding union coverage and wages across different racialized categories of Canadian workers. The report also contains a review of efforts by Canadian unions to improve their representation of Black and racialized workers, and recommendations for strengthening the union movement’s practices.

In 2026, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement will be up for review—and the possibility of political shakeups means that governments should start preparing now. This report assesses the functioning of CUSMA to date and suggests ways to expand on the rights-based and worker-centred novelties in the agreement that improved upon the original NAFTA. Though national elections will transform governments in all three countries between now and the 2026 review, the worker-centred trade policy of the current U.S. administration will likely live on. For political, geoeconomic and national security reasons, a bipartisan consensus has emerged on the need to renew North America’s manufacturing base and better protect workers from subsidized—financially or through weaker labour and environmental standards—foreign competition. This report examines how Canada could prepare, and goals to strive towards, starting today.

In this report, we, the research team, are going to consider the policies that come together to create an exploitative and precarious labour conditions for migrant care workers, who are predominantly financially challenged racialized women. We have conducted a systematic narrative synthesis analysis of the policies that are relevant to migrant care workers. In our consideration of these myriad policies, we will present a narrative that emerges in the coordinated design of these policies. The narrative that has emerged presented a journey to precariousness through a heightened likelihood of human rights violations that is facilitated by a network of policies and practices. We identify policies and practices that obscure care workers and the conditions of their labour, as well as the discriminatory impact of various policies and practices that support devaluing and delegitimizing the identities and labour of care workers. Finally, we consider the ways in which multiple policies and practices come together to create significant authorities with the capacity to surveil, restrict, and punish workers.... Executive summary

...The growth of the gig economy presents a number of opportunities for workers, with a potential for added flexibility and freedom in how, where, and when they choose to work. However, gig workers can also face a number of challenges, putting many of them in difficult working conditions and precarious economic positions. Recognizing these challenges, the Prime Minister mandated the Minister of Labour to improve labour protections for gig workers, including those who work through digital platforms. --From introduction

This report calls on the provincial government to work with school divisions, unions, and the ministry of education to equalize wages for educational support staff across the province. Pay disparities are not present for teachers across the province. The Manitoba government, which controls all significant funding sources in our school system, must play an active role in ensuring that these wage gaps are eliminated and ensure that rural school divisions operations are no longer subsidized by substandard wages paid to a predominately female workforce. Equal pay for equal work and work of equal value should be a priority for the new Manitoba government. --Website summary

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 triggered the introduction of public health measures that would close large sectors of the economy and send millions of workers home. In two short months, the unemployment rate reached 14.1 per cent—the highest level since 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression. In all, 2.7 million workers lost their job outright, while another 2.2 million lost all or half of their working hours. Many more would be affected in the months ahead as the economy recovered in fits and starts. Canada, like countries around the world, quickly responded with a raft of income security tools and strategies to cope with the economic fallout. Programs such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and its successor programs. There are few sources of information that document people’s experiences while on CERB. This research project has been designed to help fill this gap. Working with Abacus Data, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives conducted focus groups and an online survey of 1,500 Canadians to help better understand the program’s impact on recipients and to explore the role CERB played in shaping their decisions with respect to skills, education or training and the pursuit of new work opportunities during this period. The focus groupswere hosted in mid-September 2022 and the survey was fielded between Nov. 18 and 25, 2022. The focus groups surfaced and explored key issues for CERB recipients, information which, in turn, informed the content and design of our larger survey. CERB and other emergency benefit programs have ended, but there is still much to learn about the experience and its impact given current economic stresses and the pressing imperative to ensure public programs are recession ready. The introduction of emergency pandemic benefits offers a unique opportunity to examine important questions about Canada’s current income security safety net and how it works (or does not) to support individuals in their efforts to achieve greater economic security and enhanced well-being. --Website description

This brief addresses the specific discussion questions posed in the Ministry’s Paper and highlights several other priority areas for reform that are essential for ensuring that app-based workers have access to the full range of rights and protections afforded to other workers in our province, including the right to collectively bargain.