By Dan Walton
Multiple foreign workers were relocated to new farms last month after their Okanagan employers were suspended from employing Mexicans through the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program. Some of the suspended farms are in the Oliver/Osoyoos area.
Rather than being sent home, “The workers are sent to other farms,” said Consul Hugo Velazquez of the Canada-Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). “Employers are always looking for experienced workers and there are also a number of new farms every year joining the program.”
The inspections that caused the Okanagan farms to get suspended were both random and complaint-driven. “In some of the cases of the suspended farms we were asked by the workers to protect them,” Velazquez said.
In the Okanagan region, which includes 17 communities, there were 233 farms that employed 2085 TFWs in 2016.
Velazquez said “Incidents or observations” are reported at approximately 30 per cent of the visited farms. Warnings are often issued, while suspensions or expulsions are the last resort.
The suspended employers didn’t necessarily break any laws, but it was decided that their workers were receiving inadequate treatment. British Columbia doesn’t have any laws that specifically regulate TFW housing, so legal documents from other jurisdictions are used for reference instead.
“Also unlike other provinces, home inspectors are not registered before any ministry and are not specifically trained to inspect SAWP housing, making it very difficult to hold them accountable for certifying unfit housing premises,” said Velazquez.
But Glen Lucas from the BC Fruit Growers’ Association was a little more optimistic about the quality of inspectors. He said they are certified housing inspectors who do the checks.
“The standard is based on the Ontario standard,” Lucas said. “Mexico recently did a comparison and B.C. and Ontario TFW housing standards are almost identical. We are having a meeting in a couple of weeks with Mexico, Jamaica, inspectors, and agricultural associations as part of our continuous improvement of standards and inspections.”
