A Summer with the Migrant Workers Centre of British Columbia
This summer, I completed a fellowship with the Migrant Workers Centre of British Columbia (“MWC”) with the support of the IHRP. I worked alongside and learned directly from workers, advocates, organizers, and lawyers who opened my eyes to the challenges of seeking justice for migrant workers. I came away from this fellowship in awe of the resilience and love that migrant workers and those supporting them embody every day.
Two months into my work with MWC, I was offered the opportunity to join labour organizers on a trip to BC’s interior to meet migrant farm workers. At these farms, I learned valuable lessons about the law, most notably that the law is too important to be left solely to lawyers. Reflecting on this experience, I can’t separate what I learned about the law from the stories of the people I’ve met, from the land, or from the emotions and magic I experienced, nor would I want to.
Our trip aimed to give workers a much-needed day of respite, a rare luxury away from unrelenting farm labour these workers engage in seven days a week for over 12 hours a day. Agricultural workers in most of Canada are not entitled to overtime pay, regular days of rest, or holidays like other workers. It’s called “agricultural exceptionalism”. The fields where our food is grown seem out of the reach of workplace rights, human dignity, and Canada’s utopian vision of equality. Legislators seized by “economic” priorities ensure these workers remain unfree by expressly excluding them from employment standards protections and failing to enforce the measly protections that do exist.
Our goal was to build trust with these workers by sharing a good meal, enjoying live music, participating in a raffle, and connecting them with resources. In my role, I provided legal information and answered questions about workplace laws, immigration status, and entitlements like Employment Insurance and workers’ compensation. In truth, I had much more to learn from these workers about the law than I could offer in return. They live the consequences of the law every day, and they intimately understand its implications.
Ingrid Mendez, Executive Director of the MWC, opened the event with an impassioned invocation—“Indigenous peoples have been the caretakers of this land since time before memory. This land has also long-known violence. Colonization and the dispossession of land, the residential school system, the sixties scoop, and the many attempts to kill Indigenous languages and to disconnect the people from the land.”
Ingrid is a hero to many. She has long been on the front lines, tirelessly securing the well-being and dignity of migrants. Ingrid addresses the Latin American workers in Spanish, urging solidarity with Indigenous Peoples as good guests on unceded land. “The harms of colonization are both ancient and constant; our existence as migrants is predicated on those harms. As guests, we have a responsibility to know this history and recognize the hurt that colonization causes. Our struggles are linked, we must keep fighting.”
I scanned the faces of the workers as she spoke, wondering what they must be thinking. They spend six to eight months in BC, leaving their families behind, often fleeing colonial and imperial violence themselves. Under Canadian law, they have no sustaining status. The policies treat them as temporary, disposable, and “low-wage” labour that only exists to work. They’re good enough to work, but not good enough to stay. Much of this is in flagrant disregard for fundamental International Human Rights and Labour law.
All day, I wished I knew Spanish, so I wouldn’t have to rely solely on smiles, nods, puzzled looks, and occasional translations from other attendees to communicate. The language barrier was a humbling reminder that I, a summer student from Toronto, am a guest in this community. I felt encouraged to listen more than speak, to observe with intention.
The event took place on the grounds of the Boundary Museum and Archives. Before workers arrived, I ventured inside to explore the seemingly endless chain of small rooms housing archival photos, artifacts, and relics. The woman running the Museum approaches me unexpectedly. “The first migrant agricultural workers that came to this area were Sikhs from Punjab yunno!” She must have spotted my turban and my beard. – In moments like this, it’s refreshing to be recognized.
Her enthusiasm drew me in as she shared photographs and handwritten letters. “1907 is the first recorded history,” she said. “The Mehmal family settled here and eventually operated a farm. Their son quickly became famous around here, he spoke good English so he naturally became the broker between the Punjabi workers and their employers. He was also extremely handsome,” she’s quick to add, ”like a movie star”. I also speak both English and Punjabi, but those languages felt useless to me at our event, even though they would have been extremely valuable in this very place for the early migrant workers. Over 100 years later, the language flowing through these fields is Spanish rather than Punjabi, but the struggle is eerily similar. Back-breaking agricultural work done by racialized workers who are systematically stripped of their rights. The policy framework keeps them unfree, precarious, and vulnerable to abuse. While the overt language of Canada’s policies have changed, the racist, classist, and imperialist logics underlying them still remain.
The distance of time seemed to collapse at that moment, the two worlds of the 1910s and 2024 flowed together, forming an arc of Canadian labour and migration law history. I began reflecting on what it must have been like to be a broker, with so many vulnerable workers relying on you for representation and basic rights enforcement within a flawed system. I thought about how the organizers I’m here with at the event embody the spirit and strength Mehmal must have had.
As the event began, a worker approached my legal info booth. He’s been coming to Canada for nine years under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (“SAWP”). His seemingly innocuous question, on reflection, exposes the magnitude of Canada’s migrant worker exploitation. “Why can’t I access EI while my friends who are Permanent Residents get it when they’re out of work or injured?”. He’s frustrated because like all SAWP workers, he’s required to pay into a system he can never access. During periods of unemployment between seasonal contracts, SAWP workers aren’t considered Canadian residents and are sent home without pay. Although injuries among SAWP workers are common, rather than receiving healthcare or compensation, employers often simply send them back without an official hearing; this is Canada’s private system of deportation. Since the program’s inception, Canada has amassed hundreds of millions in EI deductions from SAWP works – could there be a more bitter harvest? We exchange disappointed looks, taking in how violently extractive the system is. The only glimmer of hope I can offer is news of lawyers pursuing a class action to hold Canada accountable.
On the long ride back to Vancouver in Juan’s passenger seat, I reflect on my many conversations with workers. Juan, an organizer from a Vancouver non-profit, is a first point of contact for injured farm workers. We talked about how difficult this work can be and the personal toll of vicarious trauma. I share the story of a worker I represented earlier that summer whose employer’s abuse led to severe mental health issues, self-harming behaviours, and violence toward me. “We have to take care of ourselves and each other,” he tells me, “doing this alone is unsustainable.”
Juan regularly writes Open Work Permit applications, documenting workers’ exploitation and abuse to help them escape the confinement of their closed work permit. Closed work permits tie a worker’s right to live and work in Canada to a specific employer, stripping them of their most fundamental right at work, the right to quit. Canada’s closed work permit system has expanded dramatically, becoming the dominant model in low-wage, high-risk sectors. Workers bound by tied work face horrific financial, psychological, physical, and sexual abuses under the constant threat of deportation. Open Work Permits, granted at the government’s discretion for cases of abuse that meet their threshold, are flawed but remain one of the few avenues for workers to escape exploitation.
One of the cars in our group broke down near Osoyoos, BC, so we took the opportunity to stretch our legs and wander down to the lake. The blinding sun somehow beats down stronger in this part of the land, as if it were closer to the earth. I think of the workers being paid a piece-rate to pick fruit in these conditions. Pushing their bodies to the limit while being denied basic protections like minimum wages and overtime pay.
Another eminent organizer, Byron Cruz, pulls me aside as we walk. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you” he says, “I’m glad you came on this trip with us.” He tells me about the many well-intentioned but disconnected lawyers he’s met throughout his long career and the various ways legal systems prevent justice and care for workers. “Us lawyer-types have massive egos,” I say, “that’s why we fail.” I half-joked, but hearing myself, I realized how everything I’ve experienced this summer connects to harms caused by the legal profession. I’m humbled by Byron’s honesty, passion, and teachings. He’s worked at the intersections of healthcare, law, and the labour movement serving workers for decades. This conversation felt like an intervention, and I know I will continue to reflect on his words throughout my career.
I often feel overwhelmed by the prospect of one day being in the privileged position to practice law. Will I do enough to reduce and prevent harm? Will I lose touch with the reasons I came to law school? How can I reconcile my duties to the clients I represent with the interests of the communities I hope to serve? I feel supported by all the relationships I’ve made this summer and I don’t want to let these folks down.
We finally reach the lake, knocking off our shoes to dip our feet in the cool water. Ingrid leans over to me. “You know the Elders say that when you see a body of water you should always dip your feet in it, the waves can heal us and carry all our worries away.” I can’t think of a better place for a car to have broken down.
Recent developments offer glimmers of hope: Migrant workers at a notorious BC factory farm unionized for the first time in over 20 years, decades of advocacy reformed Canada’s live-in care worker program to grant permanent status on arrival, and a Quebec class action challenging tied work permits was granted certification in September. While these are hard-fought and discreet wins for subsets of migrant workers, they give me hope for a future where there is dignity in all forms of labour.
The work must be done. Until the ground tills and sews itself, the cattle milk themselves, and the crops pick and box themselves, human beings are integral to our food systems. But in a country where government officials actively downplay the violence of the existing regime and cite high food prices as a reason to deny people basic dignity and fundamental protections at work, we must push back.
