Ottawa recently hosted a three-day consultation related to immigration resulting in a Canada-wide gathering of more than different 400 organizations that work with and serve refugees and migrants. The three-day consultation was designed to address a wide cross-sectoral coalition, with the intention of building public and political support for refugees and newcomers. It featured various themed workshop sessions on topics including immigration settlement, legal affairs, issues in immigration detention, limitations of existing immigration visa programs, and even how to counter organized criminal groups (including the Hells Angels) that have managed to embed themselves into the immigration ecosystem.
The three topics and discussions that seemed most important during the three-day consultation: how Canada’s temporary worker visa program has resulted in unintended impacts, how Canadian corporations are contributing to forced migration, and how Canada’s under-policed immigration ecosystem is being exploited by organized criminal groups. Looking through these discussions provides a new lens to view Canada from: through the eyes of migrants.
Migrant Workers Chained to Specific Employers or Sectors
It is reasonable to assume that employment standards across Canada have become standardized and regulated, and while this is true, there are some exclusions for some sectors including agriculture and fisheries. Some provinces have legislation that exempts agriculture and fishery workers from benefiting from minimum wage laws, such as if they are paid for their labour on a weight basis (per kilogram), or paid based on volume and not per hour. Additionally, agriculture and fishery workers tend to be excluded from overtime pay requirements regardless of the number of hours worked. So, for workers who decide to work longer daily and weekly work hours, this is considered a sector advantage for such workers because of the seasonal nature of their work.
These working conditions are not a reality for most Canadians; they almost exclusively impact temporary foreign workers (TFWs). The TFW program contains aspects to it that many Canadians would likely consider anti-freedom, but it does not affect Canadians. One of those aspects is a requirement stipulating that certain TFW visas are tied to a specific employer or specific sector, such as agriculture or fisheries, which has brought about unintended impacts.
Arguably, the most significant unintended impact of linking TFWs to specific employers or sectors is the resultant power imbalance between these employers and their TFWs. This imbalance results in the creation of conditions that also work against improving these imbalances and getting better workplaces or worker conditions for those low-income TFWs who are non-unionized and not in a position to access costly legal services. Additionally, a TFW’s ability to work and stay in Canada is dependent on their employer, and it has been reported that employers in the same sector have colluded to avoid a “hiring war” and “poaching” TFWs from each other.
Many of the challenges that plague the temporary foreign worker program can be traced back to 1966-1967 and are systemic and structural. During those years, TFWs from Jamaica started to mass protest worker conditions, and the “striking” trend began to catch on with Canadian workers at-large. A White Paper on Immigration published around the same time advocated for what would become Canada’s modern immigration policy, prioritizing skilled migrants and relegating low-skilled migrants to temporary work programs with no clear path to becoming Canadian. Then in 1967 Canada introduced the Public Service Staff Relations Act that granted collective bargaining rights to Canadians, but it excluded TFWs from those same labor rights.
As a result, there are several other issues with the TFW policies. For instance, should TFWs ever be fired by their employer, the current process requires that they are summarily deported, and it is unlikely that they would be able to return to Canada under the same program. For those who manage to last the duration of their sector’s work-season, they pay into the Employment Insurance (EI) program, but their visa requires them to leave during the off-season, which makes them ineligible to claim the EI they paid. Whether a TFW’s visa is renewed is generally dependent on whether an employer extends their work contract, which is often based on if they’ve been meeting production quotas and providing extended hours. Then those same TFWs could work a countless number of consecutive in-season years, but because they must leave Canada during the off-season, technicalities exclude them from pathways to permanent residency. That TFW labour rights are a long-term struggle may be attributed to the fact that TFWs are a non-voting bloc, and their issues are non-riding issues at every level of government.
Canadian Corporations and Forced Migration
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the most mineral-wealthy countries in the world, and yet it has been in a state of constant war for over two decades. The DRC is reported to have over 7 million internally displaced persons, and over 5 million of those are from the country’s Eastern minerally-rich areas. Around 80% of the displacement is caused by armed conflicts, often fuelled by war over the control of mineral-rich areas. The UN Refugee Agency expects the forced displacement to continue worsening in 2025 and beyond, and the total estimate of people in need of support in the DRC is around 27 million.
For corporations that are extracting minerals, the DRC is a major supplier of minerals used in high-tech production, which is what complicates things. The DRC is known for having weak institutions and its neighboring countries have contributed to the armed conflicts by supporting armed groups or intervening militarily for political, economic, or security reasons. An open secret about the natural resource extraction industry is that it often requires corporations to navigate lawless landscapes, including paying bribes (through subsidiaries or contractors) to government officials as well as criminal syndicates (a major problem in South America). Otherwise, corporations would be unable to get the necessary work permits and their workers would be threatened with death by militia groups.
Some of the corporations that are extracting mineral resources in Eastern areas of the DRC are Canadian corporations, whose involvement in the region is not without controversy. Some of those Canadian mines were reported to have resulted in forced evictions, initially “voluntary”, until criminal elements got involved, stripping people of their ancestral land with little to no compensation. On other occasions, where people were not left landless by the extraction of resources, it was not uncommon for land resources and bodies of water to become toxified and for the people to experience health defects (oxidative DNA damage) due to the extraction activities. Canadians should be mindful of extraction industry-induced migration because Canada is home to almost half of the world’s publicly listed mining and mineral exploration companies.
Organized Crime in the Immigration Ecosystem
A constant theme across the three-day workshop was how temporary workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by organized criminal elements. It was mentioned how, during the 2023 Consultation, many of the organizational leader participants shared how their work was targeted by organized criminal groups. A subsequent follow-up with all the member organizations ended up revealing that organized crime affects every region of Canada. Then, at the 2024 Consultation, issues raised by organizational leaders centered on how police responses to migrant-specific issues were often inadequate or nonexistent. It was also suggested that police stakeholders were often unfamiliar with many of the challenges faced by migrants and frontline workers, or that they would claim that such issues were outside their scope.
During a caucus discussion focusing on ensuring the safety of workers, supporting migrants, and tackling intimidation and organized crime, organizational leaders discussed how their organizations were fighting an uphill battle. The problem was described as a public safety issue that has received limited attention from policing stakeholders. Organizational leaders discussed being aware of employers of TFWs that were connected to organized criminal groups. It was an open secret across provinces, and one of the organized criminal connections identified included the outlaw motorcycle group, the Hells Angels.
As the caucus discussion continued, multiple organizational leaders raised issue with how they were aware of instances where temporary workers had turned to different levels of policing and how they were turned away at each level. One incident that was referenced highlighted how victims had turned to the “GRC” (RCMP), who were contracted for policing responsibilities in a specific province, and how the RCMP had turned away those victims and suggested that they reach out to a different level of policing for support. All three levels of policing (municipal, provincial, federal) ended up offering similar responses for the victims, stating that their “matters” (kidnapping and pay extortion) were outside their scope and jurisdiction.
Another organizational leader added how they were aware of instances where some policing stakeholders had refused to accept serious complaints that were being made on behalf of victims and demanded that the victims needed to come forward before the complaints would get screened-in. There were even situations where minors from migrant families were being exploited, they were confiding in others about their victimization, but they were scared to turn to police for help if nothing would come from it apart from retribution from criminals. And there was consensus among organizational leaders that greater cooperation between policing stakeholders on migrant-specific issues would make a difference, based on their discussions with different policing leaders and how there was limited cooperation on crimes that targeted migrants.
One of the examples caught me off-guard. It related to the extent that organized criminal groups have managed to embed themselves into the immigration ecosystem. One TFW, upon landing in Western Canada, received a message over a chat app that gave them specific instructions about how they were to arrive to their “workplace” in Central Canada. They had to take a train to Central Canada and then a 1.5-hour Uber from the train station to a remote town. Upon arriving to their “workplace”, they were then told that the previously agreed upon payment arrangements had been changed by the employer. The terms of the “new agreement” were that they would be getting paid 20% of their salary in CAD and the other 80% of their pay would be paid in the currency of their home country, by someone who would visit their family in their home country to pay them.
What made the above example more troubling was that such agreements were not the exception to the rule in places where organized criminal groups had managed to embed themselves. Such employers were reported as also weaponizing the fact that they knew where an individual’s family was located and implied that harm would find their family if they ever complained about their working “arrangements”. There is also nothing stopping organized criminal groups in the worker’s home country from “taxing” the money that a worker earned in Canada.
For some of the migrant workers that have spoken on those “workplace” realities, there was a real fear that if police stakeholders ever showed up that there would be mass retribution against all workers’ families because of how difficult it would be to identify the “police collaborators”. Such “workplaces” often provided housing on the worksite, which was not unusual, but entire areas were often marked with “private property, no trespassing” signs, well outside of the private property lines. Additionally, these “workplace” premises were almost always surveilled by unknown persons in unmarked tinted cars.
Remoteness and distance have not stopped organizations that work with and serve migrant workers from meeting with those who end up in such remote areas. That said, many service workers have reported feeling discomfort and being under watch during their on-site visit with the migrant workers. One incident that was mentioned related to how there was a case where a temporary worker fled his “workplace” and hid in the forest, calling their assigned support worker, and waiting in the bushes until the support workers arrived.
The new normal for frontline organizations serving and working with migrant workers is that they are now having to contingency plan around the complex threats that organized criminal groups present. Many organizational leaders discussed how their organizations had established early warning systems and introduced enhanced safety measures related to out-of-city visits. Many organizational leaders also discussed how their organizations have been targets of intimidation by organized criminal elements, and how they now collect identifying information on suspicious persons and vehicles, and how local organizations now share the collected information among each other, because they have been unable to rely on policing stakeholders.
It was also discussed how they had been targeted by the organized criminal elements. As a result, they no longer take their personal car to out-of-town “workplace” visits. Instead, they only take Ubers or taxis, and their organization had a communication protocol in place that required calling police if nobody heard back from staff who went on out-of-town visits. It may sound extreme, but organized criminal groups were described as having become more emboldened by practically every organizational leader that spoke on the issue.
The Policing Response
Compared to the rest of the world, Canada does immigration better than practically every other country. Being better than others, however, is a low standard when being viewed as “better” overshadows bettering immigration-related gaps. Canada may be limited in what it can do about immigration-related exploitation that occurs outside of Canada, but we are in full control on how we respond to the exploitation of those who our current laws overlook and disregard.
Questions still remain, such as whether the turning away of migrant victims who have turned to police for help has ever had anything to do with the existence of high-level policing investigations and a need to preserve such investigations. Or what RCMP Commissioners testified about during Stage 2 of the Foreign Interference Commission: how there have been instances were serious criminal complaints were submitted to policing stakeholders that were disregarded. Such decisions were attributed to the low likelihood of securing a criminal conviction against organized criminal elements, and because there may have been other aspects to the criminal activities that the RCMP Commissioners could not speak on (possibly an undercover investigation).
From my experience with reporting a high-level policing investigation that went off the rails, policing stakeholders finding reasons not to act on serious criminal complaints, as migrants have also reported, may suggest that there is more at play. The organized criminal groups that have managed to embed themselves into the immigration ecosystem and exploit migrants may have transnational elements to their organized criminal activity, and this needs to be looked into further.