Two years into a pandemic, not much has changed for migrant workers

Jordan I want you to think back to the first summer of this never-ending pandemic and try to recall headlines about the plight of Canada’s migrant farmworkers. Those headlines if anything, undersold the problem in Windsor, Essex County, Ontario COVID-19 is wreaking havoc for farmers and migrant workers alike. They didn’t bring COVID with them, but were infected in Canada. And some say that was avoidable. The world of seasonal laborers who arrived in this country to pick fruits and vegetables and harvest crops for extremely profitable Canadian agricultural companies. Is a secretive one. It’s not very often, the public gets a glimpse of just what it takes to get the produce we eat onto store shelves or out to other countries that buy our exports. Occasionally, though, someone goes behind the veil, you may, for instance, have heard of small labor disruptions in that summer and fall of 2020 as workers refused unsafe conditions, but you probably had no idea just what qualifies as unsafe, or what the government was doing about it. But you should know. So today, our guest will tell you.

Jordan I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is the big story. Hilary Beaumont is a freelance investigative journalist. She’s written for many publications, she detailed exactly what was happening on one farm for the Narwhal. Hey, Hilary.

Hilary Beaumont Hey, Jordan, how’s it going?

Jordan It’s going all right. Why don’t you start by telling me about the lakeside farm just in general? Where is it? Who runs it? What do they grow? And I guess most importantly, for this conversation, who works there?

Hilary Beaumont Right. So Lakeside is a huge agricultural company based in Leamington, Ontario. And Leamington is about a four-hour drive south of Toronto. If you drive through that region, you’ll see cornfields and vineyards and orchards, and just hundreds of greenhouses, the size of Amazon warehouses, and many of those grow vegetables that are headed for export about 70% of the produce is exported to the US or internationally. And these farms market themselves as kind of family operations, but they rely on 1000s of migrant workers from the Caribbean and Mexico to function and they are in Canada on temporary visas that make them especially vulnerable. And so Lakeside is just one of these farms. And they’re not a small company. They have operations in Michigan and Texas and are expanding into North Carolina to and in Leamington. They grow tomatoes in a giant greenhouse. And right next to the greenhouses, a row of bunk houses where more than 100 migrant workers live.

Jordan And you’ve spoken to a number of these workers who work and as you mentioned live on the farm. Maybe just describe for me what they tell you about their working and living conditions, what’s their day to day life, like according to them.

Hilary Beaumont So I spoke to more than 30 workers for this story at various different companies including Lakeside. And Lakeside workers told me you know, day to day they wake up in the bunkhouse, they kind of walk a few steps over to the greenhouse where they work every day. And they told me that the working conditions at this company were pretty terrible.The company at one point expose them to a chemical that made their skin peel off. So Lakeside had actually dusted the greenhouses in a layer of lime powder, which is supposed to suppress bacteria on the tomato plants. But workers said that the powder kind of filled the air and got on their skin and in their eyes and burned their skin in their eyes.

And the labels on the packaging actually said that this chemical can cause cancer. And this is why one of the workers told me that the company cares about the plants and not the workers because they use this chemical to try to help the plants but it ended up harming the workers. And these conditions were so bad that the workers actually ended up going on strike, which is extremely risky because their visas are tied directly to the company. So if they complain, they fear that the company will, you know, fire them or not renew their contracts and then their visas are shot too.And there was actually one worker who told me that he thought his contract wasn’t renewed because he spoke up during the strike.

Jordan You went there. What did you see? And what else did you hear besides the lime powder?

Hilary Beaumont Right, so we actually did get access into one of the lakeside worker bunk houses, which is extremely rare. It’s very difficult to go inside a bunkhouse without the company’s permission, but we did find an opportunity that met all of our legal and moral requirements. So we went inside this bunkhouse. And immediately you kind of notice that these workers sleep on bunk beds in dorms. So there are about 24 workers in each bunkhouse and eight people per room, all sleeping on bunk beds, and there’s virtually no private space available at all. So workers kind of drape, like blankets and towels over their bunk beds to try to regain some privacy. And they all share one big kitchen area and one small bathroom that has three bathroom stalls, and three shower stalls. And so these are the conditions that existed before the pandemic. And workers shared with me that they felt that they were at risk of COVID because they were all living so close to one another. In Canada, employers are responsible for providing this housing and so they’re also responsible for keeping these workers safe.

Jordan And did anything change after COVID appeared in 2020? Like how meaningfully Were any of the living conditions altered?

Hilary Beaumont Right. So I think as your listeners would know, that since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 3000 farmworkers have caught COVID and eight have died.

Jordan Wow.

Hilary Beaumont And so one of those outbreaks did happen at Lakeside. Not at the bunkhouse that we were at but another one a few steps away. And workers kind of explained to me that at the beginning of the pandemic, Lakeside told them not to leave the property and hired private security to patrol the farm entrance. While Canadian workers could come and go as they pleased. And one worker said that this was unfair because he wasn’t under any government quarantine orders and no one in his house had COVID. So workers felt like they couldn’t complain to the company because they feared they wouldn’t renew their visas or contracts. Another issue at Lakeside was that when workers first came to Canada in the pandemic, of course, they had to quarantine crossing the border. And according to government rules, companies have to provide their quarantine accommodations, right? And Lakeside converted a warehouse into quarantine accommodations. And they actually, for beds, they set up wooden pallets within mattresses on top spaced six feet apart. And that was supposed to be the quarantine accommodations for these workers. So if you’re imagining like not only do you come to a farm, and there’s a COVID outbreak, but then you have to quarantine in these conditions. And then on top of that you’re experiencing this lime powder, you know, burning your eyes and skin. And like there’s no wonder that there was a worker strike here.

Jordan In your piece, you went through a number of government documents that support the stuff you’ve just told us. What did they reveal in those docs?

Hilary Beaumont Like I mentioned, employers are the ones that are responsible for providing housing and quarantine accommodations, and then the federal government is supposed to inspect those. So I requested hundreds of pages of inspection reports from the federal government. And those confirmed the quarantine conditions that Lakeside workers were describing and also showed that the government was well aware of those conditions, but didn’t take any action. Also separately, the Ontario Ministry of Labor’s responsible for inspecting workplaces, so I requested data from them on COVID outbreaks and complaints, and also got my hands on ministry inspection reports on Lakeside. And all of that told me that after the outbreak workers had complained that Lakeside wasn’t following pandemic protocols. And the reports also confirmed the complaints about the lime powder and workers having to go to the doctor. And it also showed that workers first complained to the ministry in August but ministry inspectors didn’t actually come to the property until December. It just showed that this inspection system isn’t really working.

Jordan What about lakeside then? What did they say when you brought all this to them, including the corroboration from some of the inspectors.

Hilary Beaumont Lakeside said that the lime powder was misused for a brief period of time due to new management. And they said that after the strike, they removed the powder. Although they said that the strike was not actually a work stoppage. They also said that the federal government and Ministry of Labor investigated their use of lime and found that the farm took appropriate steps to correct their mistake. And the company said it advised workers to stay in their bunk houses to prevent the spread of COVID. And they said that they also arranged grocery deliveries and kind of a payment system at the door so they could send money transfers home. Basically, the company was saying that with the quarantine accommodations, there were no hotels, or motels available in the area. And so they had to kind of do the best with what they could in the moment. So they threw together these quarantine accommodations as best they could.

Jordan So we’re speaking in January of 2022. This isn’t the first time we’ve covered migrant workers and what they’re dealing with during the pandemic. The last time we did so the government had committed funds to improve inspection capabilities. It doesn’t sound from your description like they’re optimal yet. But what else has the government or governments I guess, done to help these workers since this began?

Hilary Beaumont Yeah, I’m so so happy that you’re returning to this subject and continuing to cover it. I think that that episode you did was in June 2020. And I looked at all the inspection reports from that time period from March until July 2020. And I’ll be honest, they were abysmal inspections, they were like absurdly thin. So all of the farms in Ontario that the government inspected early in the pandemic, were found to be in compliance with federal and provincial COVID rules, which was like crazy, right? Because they had stopped in person inspections. So they just were getting employers to send them photos of the accommodations. And then saying, Okay, you’re good. You know, like, You’re right that the government committed in mid 2020, that it was investing six-point $16.2 million in inspections. But there was also a recent Auditor General’s report that came out that found that the quality of inspections was actually worse in 2021, than in 2020, which is like, crazy. I know, it’s like, how is that possible? And the auditor also found that the government has, as we know, failed to live up to its repeated commitments to migrant workers over the years.

Jordan I’m not shocked by that, to be honest, But what else have they done? Is that is that funding it?

Hilary Beaumont Yeah, I mean, they say that they have restarted in-person inspections as of August 2020. And, you know, I have no reason to believe that’s not true. But the thing is, like when your inspectors are not talking to workers directly, or are relying on what employers are saying, You’re not going to get the full picture of whether these farms are in compliance. I was looking at one of these federal inspections of a farm and the government had asked employers to send photos of the quarantine accommodations. And there was a photo of two workers holding a measuring tape between them to show that they were staying six feet apart. And this was just like entirely absurd that the government inspectors accepted this as evidence that they were distancing.

Jordan I mean, not to put too fine a point on it. But those six feet apart rules come from the very beginning of the pandemic before we were talking about ventilation and shared spaces and everything. So I guess I take that to mean even the regulations themselves haven’t changed to adapt to new knowledge of how this virus spreads and behaves.

Hilary Beaumont Yeah. So it’s actually the provincial government’s responsibility to oversee ventilation. So I asked them specifically about ventilation and whether they had upgraded their rules for ventilation on farms,and they had not updated their most recent rules for ventilating accommodations on farms, even though we knew very early in the pandemic, that ventilation helps reduce spread of COVID.

Jordan Maybe describe for me if you can, the walkout that did happen. I know you kind of alluded to a tiny result from it. But, you know, that’s something we shouldn’t expect to see very much for folks who, as you say, whose visas are controlled by their employers? And I guess I’m wondering if it worked, why haven’t there been more of them? Or is there talk of more of them? And what did these migrant workers need to organize and obtain better conditions?

Hilary Beaumont Yeah, those are all really good questions. So the workers strike, according to the workers I spoke to involved about 60 workers. And what happened was one morning, they were absolutely fed up with the conditions at Lakeside, and they wanted the lime powder, the powder that burned their eyes removed from the greenhouse. So they walked from their bunkhouses one morning to the door, the front door of the farm of the greenhouse, and they refused to go in is what they said. And they negotiated with management, until management agreed to remove the line powder, which like this is a very rare occurrence, right, because farmworkers, migrant farm workers cannot unionize, they’re not protected in that way in Ontario. So it is extremely risky to stand up to your employers like that. And these workers took a huge risk, they were willing to do that, because the conditions were that bad. And I do think it’s a very inspiring story that they were able to stand up for their rights this way. And I haven’t heard of any other strikes since then. But basically, under the regime that the federal government has set up with these visas, until they have open permits or permanent residents, they can’t very easily stand up for their rights.

Jordan When you speak to advocates and people who work with migrant farmworkers. Where do they say this problem comes from? What outside forces contribute to the poor conditions? Or is this just a case of owners trying to put profits over people as much as possible?

Hilary Beaumont Right, that’s such a good question. So obviously, part of it is the visa and permitting process that I just mentioned. But I would say like a lot of it has to do with the system, the agricultural system as well. So one agricultural expert told me that we have a highly concentrated system of profits and corporate control. So we’re all basically cogs in the wheel of this system, from migrant workers to farmers and consumers. And she said that this is not a kind system, it’s all geared toward profit. To emphasize her point, even with the pandemic, the agricultural sector made record profits last year, another advocate had told me that farms are all geared toward exports. And because of that, they need their price points to compete internationally. So they have to keep costs down as low as possible, which of course, affects the workers too. So I think it’s important that, you know, I’m not trying to blame just lakeside, like Lakeside is just one example of a farm in this system. And they are by no means like the worst one at all. They’re just one example of how the system allows abuse.

Jordan Do Canadians have any way to know if the produce they’re buying in their grocery store comes from farms that employ these migrant workers?

Hilary Beaumont Yeah. Cut to me in grocery stores, this whole pandemic like looking at avocados and tomatoes and like, just like checking out the labels and just trying to figure out where it all comes from. I think that we have like a very opaque labeling system of where all of our fruits and vegetables come from. It is extremely hard if you’ve ever looked at these labels in the grocery store to figure out like what the working conditions are for the people.

Jordan What’s so hard about it?

Hilary Beaumont Yeah.Because like all of the vegetables like it just says product of Mexico, or product of California or Ontario it doesn’t say necessarily like what specific farm these tomatoes were picked at. But I did find in a fresh co in downtown Toronto where I did a lot of my grocery shopping. I found tomatoes from Lakeside, they were labeled lakeside. And I took a picture of the tomatoes and the boxes that they came in. And I sent those to workers that I was talking to to verify that it was the same like side and they had picked those. So there, there is a way to verify.

Jordan You just have to be an investigative reporter.

Hilary Beaumont Yeah, exactly. That’s all you need.Yeah. So I mean, I just, I feel like the best thing that consumers can really do is be curious about where your produce is coming from. And maybe if you if you see like it says, product of Ontario, or, you know, these apples came from Washington State or something like that, you can just Google that and see what the working conditions are, like on Apple farms in Washington State or tomato farms in Ontario. And that will give you a pretty good picture of what’s happening.

Jordan What about in terms of advancing protections or advocacy? What can Canadians do if they’ve listened to this and are kind of in disbelief that this is still like this almost two years into the pandemic?

Hilary Beaumont Yeah, for sure. I think that the good news is the pandemic has kind of brought attention to all these problems that were already happening before. So I know that, you know, there’s been a lot of media coverage of these issues. And I think people are pretty aware now of what’s happening to migrant workers in Canada, which is great.So advocacy groups that I’ve spoken to say that basically, these workers need the same rights as everybody else. They need open permits. So that means their visas are not tied to one company. And they need permanent residency on arrival so that they can advocate for their rights from a position of security. And I think like mostly workers that I’ve spoken to just want respect, so they want respect from Canadians and an understanding that they are essential workers, they have been working their butts off this whole time to provide us with vegetables and fruits that we eat. And I think that they just want appreciation of every effort that they’re making, to keep us fed, basically.

Jordan Surely, that’s the least we can do. Hilary, thank you so much for this, and thanks for all the work you do on these issues.

Hilary Beaumont Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you paying attention to this issue.

Jordan Hillary Beaumont writing for the Narwhal since we spoke to Hillary for this episode, Ontario’s Ministry of Labor training and skills development has confirmed one more death of a temporary migrant worker that brings the total number up to nine. The investigation is ongoing.

Jordan That was the big story. For more head to thebigstorypodcast.ca .Check us out on Twitter @TheBigStoryFPNor write us an email about anything at all. The address is thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!].If you’re listening to this show and a podcast player and you haven’t already rated reviewed, subscribe, etc. Please do that. If you have already done those things, then tell a friend to do the same things. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.