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On February 19, 2013, the Ontario Liberals introduced the Ontario Immigration Act (Bill 161). Through Bill 161, the government is seeking control over immigration to Ontario. An important goal of the bill is to enable “immigrants to settle in Ontario and integrate quickly into and to participate fully in Ontario society.” As currently written, however, Bill 161 will not achieve this goal for the majority of migrant workers that come to this province.  It is essential that key revisions be made to this Bill, otherwise new legislation will be necessary.

A genuine Ontario Immigration Act must include just access for migrant workers. This means:

• Inclusion: Full immigration status and access to benefits
• Accountability: regulating recruiters and employers
• Breaking down silos: Cooperation between governments
• Proactive enforcement

Bill 161 fails to do so.

In bringing forward much-needed policy and legislation on immigration and migrant workers in this province, the government has the opportunity to create a legislative framework of fairness; a framework grounded on the principle that workers that come to work and build this province should be allowed to stay if they chose and access the benefits of their labour. In short, Ontario’s immigration policy must support access to residency status to all workers and protection for temporary workers from recruiter and employer exploitation. The Bill fails to do this.

Unfortunately, Bill 161 appears to be focused on bringing Ontario in line with the federal government’s “Expression –of-Interest” model of immigration slated to come into effect next year. This new federal system will set up a system to allow governments and employers to select immigrants based on employment and labour market needs. Bill 161 would enable the Ontario government to create selection programs for permanent residents (for example, under the Provincial Nominee Program) or temporary workers (for example, under the temporary foreign worker program).  The Bill would also allow the government to set up a registry of employers and recruiters to participate in selection programs.

The government is seeking to be more competitive with other jurisdictions in order to boost Ontario’s economic class immigrants from the current 52% to 70% of all immigrants to the province. It would do this through an increase in the number of immigrants that Ontario can select under the Provincial Nominee Program from the current 2,500 to 5,000 per year with a focus on economic class immigrants rather than workers that continue to build the province through temporary foreign workers programs (construction, caregiving, farming, hospitality services etc).

We are concerned that Bill 161 will give recruiters and employers more control over the immigration selection process and not civil society. There is nothing in the Bill to address the exorbitant fees that recruiters charge workers for employment under these programs. Nor is there anything in the bill to address substandard employment conditions that all too many migrant workers face that come through such selection programs. The Ontario Government is going in the opposite direction of the best practices established by Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia that have legislated proactive protection from exploitation by recruiters and employers.

Download our analysis of Bill 161 and what a genuine Ontario immigration act would be:  Creating a Genuine and Fair Ontario Immigration Act.

Get in touch with coordinator@migrantworkersalliance.org if you would like to depute on this Bill.

Bill 146 introduces many changes that Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and Workers Action Centre members and supporters across the province have been calling for.  If passed the new legislation would:

1. Ban recruitment fees for all migrant workers
2. Give workers 2 years to claim unpaid wages
3. Get rid of the unfair $10,000 limit on the unpaid wages that can be claimed
4. Make temp agencies and client companies jointly liable for ESA violations
5. End WSIB rating system loopholes that provided an incentive for companies to use temp agencies

The Ministry of Labour also announced that they will fulfill their 2008 commitment to $10 million for proactive employment standards enforcement. The government pledged to bring in more penalties for employers who violate the law and indicated the need to continue to make further changes to address precarious employment.

Read MWAC Migrant worker members responses here.

Click here to download our analysis of Bill 146 and recommendations to strengthen it.

Key Issues

Migrant workers are paying up to an equivalent of two years’ salaries in fees in their home countries to unscrupulous recruiters and agencies to work in Canada. To pay these fees, entire families go into debt.

Often when workers arrive here, work conditions and wages are not as they were promised or agreed to.

With families back home in debt, workers are afraid to complain about ill treatment by bad bosses here. In some cases when workers complained about recruitment fees, they faced abuse and deportation. Recruiters have been known to punish entire communities by blacklisting their ability to come to Canada.

Employers pass the buck to recruiters in Canada, who in turn claim that its recruiters in sending countries that are the real culprits. Ontario does not have effective enforcement tools to hold recruiters and employers accountable.

In 2009, migrant worker members of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change succeeded in passing the Employment Protections for Foreign Nationals Act (EPFNA) which banned charging recruitment fees from caregivers.

The way forward.

We expect Ontario to ban recruitment fees and bar the seizure of documents from all migrant workers rather than just live-in caregivers as is currently mandated in the EPFNA filling in part of the legislative gap. However, two-thirds of the caregivers the Caregivers Action Centre surveyed after EPFNA came into force paid fees averaging $3,275.  EPFNA relies heavily on worker complaints rather than proactive enforcement making it a weak legislative tool.

Register and license employers and recruiters: The Ontario and Federal government do not keep track of recruiters. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and other provinces are moving towards registering employers and licensing recruiters so that provinces have direct jurisdiction over them. By licensing recruiters, provinces have the ability to carry out targeted enforcement, release a list of accredited recruiters that employers and workers can access and be able to track recruiters that break the law without having to rely solely on workers’ speaking out. For Ontario to ensure recruitment fees are not collected, it must register employers and license recruiters.

Joint and several liability: Manitoba, Saskatchewan and other provinces are moving towards asking for lines of credit or bonds put up by recruiters and employers and holding employers and recruiters jointly responsible for fees charged all the way down the recruitment pipeline. By holding all parties equally financially responsible, provinces are able to enforce a ban on recruitment fees and ensure that workers charged fees are able to recover them. This works hand in hand with recruiter licensing as employers are able to work with approved recruiters and avoid worker abuse.

Anti-reprisals mechanisms: Migrant workers must be able to make complaints about lost fees after their contracts are complete (up to four years) so that they don’t have to choose between keeping their jobs and recovering fees paid abroad. Community members must be able to make complaints about unfair recruiters and employers and provisions must be in place to give access to temporary resident permits to migrant workers while they have Ministry of Labour complaints pending so they do not get deported while waiting for a decision.

Further down the line, inter-provincial and bi-lateral agreements with other states must be established to ensure that recruiters do not skip provinces after charging monies and stop offering fake jobs in Canada that don’t exist.  Recruitment fees are one part of the puzzle. Migrant workers deserve equal wages, healthy jobs, decent housing, and a strong voice. Most of all migrant workers deserve the opportunity to have full immigration status on landing.

Ontario will bar employers from charging all temporary foreign workers recruitment fees, according to new legislation introduced Wednesday.

By: Nicholas Keung Immigration reporter, Published on Wed Dec 04 2013

Banning recruitment fees for all migrant workers; removing the arbitrary monetary cap on reclaiming unpaid wages and tougher penalties for employment standards violations announced today means that migrant workers gain a few more protections today, but comprehensive changes are still needed says the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), Canada’s largest migrant worker advocacy coalition.

Changes were also announced today for other workers in precarious jobs, see our member organization Workers Action Centre’s update on that here.

“After migrant workers exposed abuses by recruiters in 2009, we won protections for live-in caregivers but other migrant workers were unnecessarily excluded. Today after four years of migrant workers speaking out about their experiences, recruitment fees have finally been banned for all migrant workers.

Unfortunately over two-thirds of the caregivers we surveyed after the law came into effect in 2009 still paid fees. That’s because these protections rely on complaints and not proactive enforcement. For there to be meaningful protections, Ontario must follow provinces like Manitoba and implement employer and recruiter registration, licensing and regulation including joint and several financial liability.

Migrant workers are not inherently vulnerable, its provincial laws that exclude us from basic protections that make us so. Many migrant workers are women and racialized people who are being denied immigration status by the Federal Government. Ontario must step up. We are urging Ontario’s government to sit down with migrant workers and update labour laws and other legislation. It is high time that migrant worker achieve the same protections and benefits as other Ontarians.

Liza Draman, Caregivers Action Centre

Continue reading “Migrant Workers respond to proposed Ontario law”

12 easy steps!

MEDIA ADVISORY

29 April, 2013 

Media Liaison: Syed Hussan, coordinator@migrantworkersalliance.org, 416 453 3632

Federal Immigration policy changes lack enough protection for migrants
Consultations with migrant workers necessary for meaningful change

The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), a coalition of migrant worker groups and community, faith, and labour allies who have worked directly with migrant workers for decades believes that the minor changes introduced today do not respond to the key concerns migrant workers have identified in the program and are mostly cosmetic.

“We are not stealing jobs, but filling the ones that Canadians do not want due to the long hours, low pay, and live-in requirement,” insists Kay Manuel, a live-in caregiver and member of the Caregivers Action Centre. “The biggest problem with the migrant worker program is that we don’t have the same rights as citizens, the only solution is full immigration status for all workers.”

“We are tired of hearing about laws about how we migrant workers live and work without our voices and concerns ever being heard,” Manuel added.

“Either the Tories want to launch the largest deportation campaign in the history of Canada by shutting out 300,000 migrant workers or they are just posturing in response to public outcry over the failings of the program they created,” adds Chris Ramsaroop, who has worked with agricultural workers in Ontario for the last ten years. “While incremental steps have been taken to eliminate the 15% and 5% rule, and the elimination of the Accelerated LMO process, the core structures of the TFW programs that deny migrant workers the ability to exert their rights have remained intact. Migrant workers will now face greater hardships because of the downloading of LMO costs on to employers which really just means downloading it on to the workers. This adds to the huge sums of money migrant workers already have to pay to get work in Canada.”

“The entire argument about migrant workers taking jobs that unemployed Canadians would otherwise take is about exceptions not the rule,” says Syed Hussan, Coordinator of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. “In the past these low-paying jobs were held by new immigrants not young unemployed Canadians, except they had full status and could bring their families. Now it’s the same demographic working the same jobs, except they have lesser rights. It’s not workers stealing jobs from Canadians, it’s the Conservative government stealing status from immigrants, and separating families.”

Short-term reforms to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program

Here are some immediate steps the Conservative government can take to correct the mistaken policies of past years:

• Eliminate the 4 and 4 rule under which workers can work in Canada for four years and are banned for the next four
• End the downloading of costs through LMO user fees on to employers and/or migrant workers.
• Restore the EI special benefits for TFWP, and ensure full access to employment insurance to all workers that have been employed in Canada.
• Work with provinces to develop a pan-Canadian framework to register and regulate recruiters and employers to ensure that workers rights are protected, and that recruiter fees are eliminated.

Any further reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program must prioritize consultation and decision making by migrant workers themselves.

Sources:
www.migrantworkersalliance.org

Today’s launch of the LCO commission report highlights the necessity for the government of Ontario to implement proactive steps to protect the over 60,000 temporary foreign workers in Ontario.The report echoes calls from the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change to ban recruitment and placement fees for all temporary foreign workers. The banning of fees is the first step in regulating the run-away recruiter industry that is exploiting thousands of workers in the province. More recommendations from Metcalf Foundation here.

The commission heard first hand from migrant worked who demand an end to recruitment fees and protection from reprisals. It is imperative that the province takes the necessary steps to protect the provinces most vulnerable workers. We owe it to all the migrant workers who build our communities, put food on our tables and take care of our loved ones.