Canadians use slaves to farm our food
But don't say it out loud, because apparently the truth is rude.
Canada has slaves. We dress it up in complex acronyms like “TFWs”, but the truth is that we lure migrant workers here with false promises, force them into back-breaking labour, and now, explicitly, we have proof that they are not being paid.
Alek Noel Thompson is a Jamaican man who came to Canada in 2021 on a work permit to perform labour for Polat Construction, on residential and commercial properties. During his time working for them, they failed to pay him over $60,000 CAD in wages for labour he performed. He was unable to leave the job, as TFW permits are directly tied to an employer, and he would have immediately been deported.
According to reporting by Toronto Star business reporter Ghada Alsharif, Polat has worked for all three levels of government, including construction on embassies, Ottawa LRT stations, and properties owned by the National Capital Commission. And while Canadian governments were paying Polat for this work, Polat was not paying the migrants who actually performed the labour and exhausted their bodies.
Despite the Ontario Ministry of Labour ordering Polat over a year ago to pay these people for the work they did…there has been zero enforcement. Alek and his fellow Jamaicans who filed the wage theft claim have received a “ruling” in their favour, but not a single penny of their money. He rightly points out that such abuses would never happen to him in Jamaica, and he has every reason to be bitter towards our country.
Again, we have a fucking word for people who are forced to work without pay, legally bound to one “employer” and unable to leave: slavery.
For all that we call ourselves better than the Americans, I look out at Canada and what I see disgusts me. After all, it’s not like Alek’s story is a new one. Last year, there was massive public furor over the United Nations officially declaring Canada’s TFW program “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery”.
The very nature of the program is exactly the same as the Kafala system practiced by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, which Western publications like The Guardian routinely criticize as forms of slavery. And yet if you dare to compare these near-identical systems, white people will screech at you that you’re being rude, and it’s only wrong when brown people do it.
I don’t care if it’s considered rude by pieces of shit to call out their piece of shit behaviour! The report is correct! It’s completely true! Migrant workers are routinely abused through the TFW “program”, and treated as slaves!
But when former Immigration Minister Marc Miller was asked to respond to that UN report last year, he called it “inflammatory”. And in quite the Freudian slip, Minister Miller proceeded to say the quiet part out loud when discussing “reforms” to TFW permits:
“We want to make sure as we implement our reforms we aren’t affecting food prices, because that’s something Canadians don’t want to see”
…excuse me?
The Minister of Immigration is presented with objective evidence that Canada perpetuates a widespread system of modern-day slavery on Canadian farms in order to grow Canadian food. And his response is “yeah we feel bad, but we don’t want to raise the price of food”?
What the fuck?
No shit food is cheaper when the people farming it are fucking slaves! “Huh, our operating costs are a lot lower now that we’re not paying anyone and can treat them like property instead of people!”
Marc Miller knew what he was saying, the CBC knew what he meant when they reported his words, and the Canadian public all knew what he meant when they read it or heard it. “Yes, we have slaves, and we would rather have slaves than raise the price of food, because otherwise Canadian voters will get mad at us for making them less comfortable.”
For all of Pierre Poilievre’s recent bluster that the Conservatives would end this, the modern slavery present in Canada is a joint institution built by successive Conservative and Liberal Prime Ministers in turn, and he has zero credibility to speak against the abuse of migrant workers when he demonizes immigrants routinely in his political rhetoric.
And to remove all doubt, he too explicitly says that agricultural workers, the most abused of all under the TFW system, would be the one stream he keeps. Both Liberals and Conservatives agree: slaves are good for farms if they make food cheaper.
We are a sick country. We are spiritually diseased. You cannot enter a Canadian grocery store or a restaurant without being complicit in slavery. Our very existence in this country has us sustaining ourselves on food that was grown by people in bondage. And our politicians no longer attempt to pretend it is not the case; they openly justify it now.
It is clear that no politician of significance has the will or the desire to end Canadian slavery. Indeed, it now seems clear that they are acting on the populist whims of the Canadian people, who have chosen cheaper food over living in a free and equal society.
I am filled with contempt. Contempt for our society, that we choose to perpetuate such horrible things. Contempt for myself, that I still participate in such a diseased society.
I am ashamed to be a Canadian. And all of you should be too.