The Dominion - Leamington

Nine Women Arrested in Workplace Raid in Leamington, Ontario

dawn — Sat, 30 May 2009 03:10:00 +0000

--Reposting--

For Immediate Release
May 28, 2009

Nine Women Arrested in Workplace Raid in Leamington, Ontario

Justice for Migrant Workers and No One is Illegal-Toronto condemn the latest workplace raids in Leamington, Ontario. In the early morning of Wednesday, May 27th, Immigration Enforcement swarmed Lakeside Produce arresting nine migrant workers, all women, [o]ne of whom is pregnant. They are all being detained in the Windsor County Jail.

“We are outraged by these arrests,” says Chris Ramsroop of Justicia for Migrant Workers. “These attacks destroy our communities. Instead of attacking the immigration system, we are attacking workers who put food on our table.”

These latest arrests mark an alarming trend of workplace raids by the Canada Border Service Agency. In April, CBSA conducted large scale raids throughout the [Greater Toronto Area] and Southwestern Ontario, where over 80 migrants were arrested and deported.

Workplace raids will only serve to terrorize and intimidate workers into working for low wages and unsafe working conditions because they are constantly under the threat of deportation.

In the middle of this recession, the Tory government is spending money and resources on arresting people, throwing them into detention centers and buying their plane tickets, instead of supporting social services for those in need.

The Tory government is targeting racial and ethnic communities and is using the raids to inflame racism and bigotry. They are using migrant workers as scapegoats in this recession.

Kenney's Quiet Revolution

Moira Peters — Sun, 10 May 2009 05:14:34 +0000

Media focus on guns, drugs and hard-nosed ministers precludes dialogue on government shifts in immigration policy

MONTREAL–A massive police operation in the Toronto area on April 1 caught the attention of major Canadian news outlets.

One hundred and twenty-five people were rounded up in a pre-dawn raid and charged with arms, drugs and organized crime-related violations. The arrests made top headlines across national media and were featured in most large metropolitan dailies.

A day later, another police operation in Ontario resulted in the arrest of nearly as many people, but hardly a word was written about it.

On April 2, Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers and southern Ontario police officers arrested approximately 80 people on immigration violations.

While not as sensational as the first news item—which nabbed some 30,000 tablets of ecstasy and 40 firearms—the story contained much of the same interest, drama and newsworthiness: one hundred officers arrested undocumented workers at their places of employment and homes in at least three communities in Southern Ontario. And, according to the CBSA, it was the largest action of its kind in the Greater Toronto Area.

The April 2 raids received next-day coverage in small-circulation local papers like the Barrie Examiner. Not a word was mentioned in the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail or National Post. CTV.ca and the Edmonton Journal eventually picked up on the story, but only several days later, when dozens of people gathered in Toronto and Edmonton (and other cities) to protest the raids and the workers' incarceration.

The Toronto rally was held outside the Rexdale Detention Centre, where those arrested were being held. The individuals were all living or working in the communities of Bradford, Markham, Leamington and East Toronto. Most were apprehended at their workplaces; some were reportedly followed home from work and then arrested. Most were migrant farm workers, employed by at least three companies, including two farms owned by Cericola Farms, Inc.

The raids come at a time when Canadians are questioning subtle but important changes in the Conservative government's immigration policy and in the CBSA's tactics when arresting undocumented individuals. Just as concerning, critical coverage of this event—and recent immigration policy issues in general—has been lacking in the Canadian press.

A recent report by Citizenship and Immigration Canada says that over the past year, crackdowns on illegal immigration in the United States is causing thousands of non-status immigrants to flood across the border to Canada. Last May, then-Minister of Public Security Stockwell Day applauded the arrest of 45 undocumented workers in Toronto and declared that "[large-scale operations protect] the integrity of our immigration program," signalling the government's intent to continue on this path.

Spokespeople from No One Is Illegal (NOII) Toronto and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) denounced the April 2 raids. "Clearly Harper and his Minister of Immigration are moving closer to a US-style immigration system where fear and enforcement are routinely used to terrorize migrant workers," said UFCW Canada National President Wayne Hanley. Both spokespeople expressed concern that large-scale raids on workplaces targeting undocumented workers have become regular occurrences.

In a release from the CBSA, no reason was given for the timing of the raids, simply that they came after three months of investigations. While this is the first police action of its scope in the area, in a report on the event NOII quoted several sources stating that this is not an isolated incident.

The Toronto Star recently ran an investigative piece on problems in Canada's home-care worker program, where individuals, particularly women, are incited to immigrate to Canada to work as domestic workers, only to find themselves labouring in extremely difficult and constrained conditions. The Globe and Mail recently reported that an immigration officer impersonated an individual's lawyer and lured him to a meeting before arresting him on immigration violation charges. The fact that nearly 80 undocumented workers were arrested in the largest raid of its kind in Canada's history and that the event was overlooked in news outlets is surprising. After all, both the Star and the Globe demonstrate a willingness to report to some degree on immigration issues.

But their commitment to these issues is disappointing. By declining to cover the April 2 raids, they shied away from deeper questions about Canadian government policy in dealing with undocumented workers.

Neither the Sun Media nor CanWest Global news chains covered the massive arrests in-depth, and recent articles—particularly in CanWest newspapers—raise questions about what Canadians can expect from immigration news coverage in the months to come.

CanWest papers recently ran an article highlighting the toughness and work ethic of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in his push to bring about an immigration policy revolution—without asking what that revolution might be. What they did highlight was that the government is continuing to use outreach policies, such as funds for immigrant communities to draw on to build statues and plaques.

According to NOII, the government has also given misinformation to the press: recently, as reported in CanWest, Conservative candidate Parm Gill claimed the government is aiming to reduce the number of rejected applications from Indian youth. New information reported by NOII and researched by the Canadian Migration Institute found that the number of refugees to be accepted from India is in fact slated to drop from 150 to 125 this year. And nowhere to be found in the article on Kenney was the news, reported by the Toronto Star in February, that the immigration ministry had admitted the economic downturn could reduce the number of immigrants accepted to Canada, all the while trumpeting a planned increase in immigration from 250,000 to 265,000 newcomers per year.

Tim McSorley is Media Analysis editor with The Dominion.

access not fear

good enough to work

The Square Tomato Capital of Canada

Thu, 25 May 2006 15:44:14 +0000

Leamington, Ontario: "The Best Place To Live" For Who?

Leamington, Ontario is the "Tomato Capital of the World." photo: The Municipality of Leamington

The results are finally in. Leamington ON (pop. 25,000) is the best place to live in Canada. Or so says MoneySense Magazine, which found Leamington to be "Canada's best kept secret" after researching 108 communities of at least 10,000 people across the country.

Leamington topped most of the study's categories, including population growth, income per capita, employment, economic diversity, and housing prices. Leamington also scored big points for the weather.

With arguably the best climate in Canada, agricultural output is naturally Leamington's golden egg. In fact, Leamington boasts the single largest grouping of vegetable greenhouses in North America. Leamington's Economic Development Officer, Anne Miskovsky, says there are more greenhouses in Leamington than in the entire United States.

Leamington isn't called the tomato capital of Canada for nothing. Tomatoes are by far Leamington's largest greenhouse vegetable crop, supplying the local Heinz processing plant and supermarkets across North America.

Economic indicators of the MoneySense report show that Leamington benefits from robust and steady growth thanks to its agriculture sector. Greenhouses alone generate about $1 billion every year in revenue for the local economy. However, according to Chris Ramsaroop of Justice for Migrant workers (an Ontario-based NGO), little of that prosperity is being shared with a largely migrant workforce.

"The magazine ignores migrant workers because they are not included in any of the data sets from which the criteria are formed," says Ramsaroop. Though migrant workers spend several months of the year in Canada, they are not granted Canadian citizenship and thus were ignored by the MoneySense report.

Every year since 1966, thousands of Mexican guest workers have come to Leamington as part of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Many of these workers supply cheap labour to the lucrative tomato business thereby fueling local business development. According to Ramsaroop, migrant workers suffer from poor living and working conditions with little or no legal protection. He challenges MoneySense to spend a day in the life of a migrant worker to see if it matches the level of well-being trumpeted in the article.

An Ontario court recently ruled that farm workers are not permitted to unionize. While workers are allowed to form worker associations to voice their concerns, employers are not obliged to respond. Michael Fraser, National Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada, says the decision by Ontario Superior Court Justice James Farley means that farm workers will continue to be exploited and treated like second-class citizens.

Workers have reported a variety of abuses, including badly maintained and crowded living quarters and exposure to unsafe levels of pesticides. Migrant workers often remain silent, however, fearing the loss of an income that is often crucial to their family in Mexico.

Leamington's model of development – one that favours economic efficiency over the well-being of its workforce – is much like the story of the square tomato.

When tomato producers sought to intensify production in the 1960s, they hired researchers to come up with something more efficient than the existing mechanized tomato picker. But rather than reinventing a tomato picker to fit the fragile contours of a ripe tomato, they reinvented the glorious red fruit to fit the picker. The result was a square tomato. This tasteless fruit turned out to be harmful to public health and the project was subsequently dropped.

Leamington has chosen to use migrant farm workers – people willing to work longer hours for lower wages than those in the domestic workforce – to power its economic engine. At the same time, these workers are denied the legal rights that would improve their quality of life.

"Any meaningful evaluation of a community's quality of life should certainly include the well-being of its workforce," says Ramsaroop, who notes MoneySense magazine missed an excellent opportunity to discuss the very real challenges facing migrant workers in Canada's tomato capital.

Leamington, Ontario was chosen as the "best place to live in Canada" by MoneySense Magazine. Van Ferrier asks, 'For who?'