Worker Exploitation in Canadian Agriculture
This brief highlights experiences of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in British Columbia (BC), Canada based on fieldwork with TFWs in the Thompson-Okanagan and Lower Mainland regions of the province between May and July 2025. This research responded to an alarming report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery that recently described Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) as a ‘breeding ground’ for modern slavery.
Despite agriculture in BC being a significant industry, there has been very little research on the experiences of agricultural workers in the province, since most research on the TFWP has been conducted in Ontario and Quebec. There are good reasons to assume that worker experiences in BC could be different because, unlike Ontario and Quebec, BC has its own Temporary Foreign Worker Protection Act which governs recruitment, enforcement, and employer obligations amongst other dimensions of workers’ lives and livelihoods during their time in Canada.