Temporary Foreign Workers in Canadian Labour and Human Rights Tribunals: A Comparative Analysis

Due to their status, it is difficult for temporary foreign workers to report grievances related to instances of discrimination, exploitation, harassment, abuse, and health and safety violations. While the subject of temporary migrant work and legal action has been studied before, available research focuses on the impacts of high-profile cases at the Supreme Court. As such, there is limited research about the tribunals that handle the grievances of TFWs most often. This thesis fills that gap by presenting a comparative analysis of the fortunes of temporary foreign workers in human rights tribunals and labour tribunals in Ontario and Alberta. This analysis shows the nature and outcome of these hearings have important differences that depend on the tribunal type. More specifically, human rights tribunals seem to be better equipped to assess the grievances of TFWs despite there being a higher volume of TFWs using labour tribunals.