Imagine leaving your home country to work in Canada’s construction sector.
On the job site, you encounter dangerous working conditions and rampant abuse. You’re made to work extra hours every day. Your first paycheque is late, and when it does come through, your wages have been docked. When you complain to your employer, they threaten to deport you.
What would you do?
This is the reality for tens of thousands of migrant workers who come to Canada every year to build our homes, care for our children and elderly family members, and harvest our food.
Despite the essential role they play in the Canadian economy, migrant workers face systemic abuse and exploitation. The recent passage of Bill C-12 into law – legislation that, according to Amnesty International and others, replicates “U.S.-like anti-migrant sentiment and policies in Canada” and represents “a significant attack on refugee and migrant rights” – means the situation is poised to become even worse.
Canada’s federal decision-makers can and should use their constitutional authority to redesign our labour migration systems around rights, mobility, and integration. Not only will this help eliminate exploitation and abuse, it will also strengthen Canada’s economic resilience by reducing workforce turnover, improving productivity, and creating more stable labour markets.
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Programs such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) have expanded dramatically over the last decade. Entire sectors, including agriculture, food processing, long-term care, and construction, now depend structurally on migrant labour.
The conditions they face are so dire that the UN describes Canadian migrant-worker programs as “breeding grounds for contemporary forms of slavery.” Clearly, the need for policy reform is urgent, and the TFWP has faced criticism from politicians of all political stripes.
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Unfortunately, instead of advancing good-faith arguments that seek to protect the safety and wellbeing of migrant workers, many politicians are instead scapegoating migrants for youth unemployment and the cost-of-living crisis.
Such rhetoric fuels polarization, worsens negative public sentiment toward immigrants (especially racialized ones), and distracts from the real structural drivers of economic challenges, including stagnant wages, weak labour protections, and corporate practices that prioritize cost-cutting over long-term workforce stability.
Rights-based framework for improvements
Here are four evidence-based policy directions we need right now:
1. Replace employer-specific work permits with open or sector-specific permits.
Evidence reveals that binding temporary workers with limited marketable skills to specific employers opens the door to abuse, often leaving workers afraid to report problems or unsafe working conditions.
This arrangement also harms employers by increasing legal and reputational risk, suppressing feedback, and fostering unstable workplaces marked by high turnover, low trust, and reduced productivity.
Allowing workers to change jobs would make temporary foreign workers less vulnerable to possible mistreatment and build a more resilient workforce. The federal government has already piloted open permits for vulnerable workers fleeing abuse. Expanding these to sector-wide or occupation-wide permits would maintain labour-market targeting while reducing dependency on any single employer.
By enabling mobility while preserving labour market targeting, this reform would stabilize key industries, improve productivity, and reduce the costly turnover that weakens Canada’s economic resilience.
2. Establish clear, accessible pathways to permanent residency for all migrant workers.
Many workers who have lived, worked, and paid taxes in Canada for years remain excluded from permanent residency due to program caps or restrictive selection criteria.
Ensuring that workers supporting core sectors have a predictable route to stay would strengthen communities and reduce the churn that destabilizes workplaces.
3. Invest meaningfully in labour inspection and enforcement.
Enforcement capacity has not kept pace with the growth of precarious work across Canada, affecting temporary foreign workers as well as Canadian-born and permanent resident workers in low-wage and insecure jobs.
Complaints-based systems routinely fail when workers, regardless of status, fear job loss, retaliation, or blacklisting for speaking up. Well-funded, proactive inspections, paired with anonymous reporting mechanisms and meaningful penalties for non-compliance, are essential to detecting abuse, protecting workers’ rights, and ensuring a level playing field for employers who follow the rules.
Stronger enforcement would protect all workers in precarious jobs, uphold fair competition among employers, and reinforce the labour standards that underpin public trust in Canada’s economy.
4. Integrate migrant-worker representation into federal policy consultations.
Too often, discussions about migrant work exclude the very people living the experience.
Incorporating migrant organizations into advisory tables would align policy decisions with lived realities and reduce blind spots that perpetuate harm.
These changes would both protect workers and strengthen the integrity, efficiency, and legitimacy of Canada’s labour migration system, which ultimately benefits employers, communities, and the broader economy.
Grounding policy in lived experience would lead to more legitimate, effective labour systems that better serve workers, employers, and the long-term health of Canadian society.
A rights-based framework is not a radical proposition; it is a practical one that aligns with Canada’s values, international commitments, and long-term economic goals.
It’s not too late to build on our history as a successful immigrant-receiving country. Without immigrants, Canada’s economy would falter, revealing the contradiction at the heart of our system: we depend on migrant workers to keep the country running, yet deny many of them the rights and security they deserve.
This piece was written as part of the Centre for Global Social Policy’s Opinion Piece Project, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Research Chairs.
