Temporary foreign workers rescued from abusive situation on P.E.I. farm

CBC News has learned details of why nine temporary foreign workers were released from their obligations to a P.E.I. farm business, and has spoken directly with two of those workers.

The federal government granted the employees open work permits to enable them to escape an abusive situation, a program that became available in 2019. They joined between 26 and 42 workers on the Island who were allowed open work permits between the time the program launched and the end of May 2022.

CBC News agreed to not identify the two workers who granted interviews, including not naming the farm business involved. The workers are concerned about reprisals against their families back home, from the agent in Vietnam who recruited them, as well as from the P.E.I. farm operator.

"It was all a scam," said one worker, whom we will call Thi.

News of trouble on the farm is deeply concerning to the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture. Federation executive director Donald Killorn said it is essential for the industry that the program functions well.

"The temporary foreign workers program is one of those federal tools that is critical," said Killorn.

"Our membership wants to see it work properly. We don't want to see it as a tool to take advantage of people. We need the program to work — and that includes enforcement. It includes the proper treatment of temporary foreign workers."

Labour shortages are starting to become an issue across a wide variety of sectors on P.E.I., but Killorn said they have been a problem in agriculture for years.

"At this point, I would say the industry on Prince Edward Island is dependent on temporary foreign workers," he said.

Numbers from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Statistics Canada underline how deep that dependence is.

IRCC reports that 1,475 general farm workers came to P.E.I. in 2021 under the temporary foreign workers program, with an additional 85 people coming to be nursery and greenhouse workers. Statistics Canada reports P.E.I. had a total of 3,600 jobs in agriculture that same year.

The methodologies between the two agencies are not the same — there could be differences in the way workers are categorized — but the numbers strongly suggest that about 40 per cent of the people holding down jobs in agriculture on P.E.I. are temporary foreign workers.

In total, across all industries, about 2,400 temporary foreign workers came to P.E.I. in 2021. Of those, about 15 were granted open work permits.

The open work permit program was created in 2019 specifically to allow workers in abusive situations to leave the employer that had brought them to Canada.