Anelyse Weiler: Canada is failing its seasonal migrant farm workers

In all likelihood, the raspberries, plums, and peaches you will buy this summer at the supermarket will have been picked by a migrant worker from Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program. 2015 Foundation scholar Anelyse Weiler was cited in an article published on 3 April 2018 by Concrete Garden shedding light on the program’s structural racism and inequality. She denounced the roles played by both powerful agricultural lobbies and the federal government in maintaining the status quo and the “white supremacy and institutionalized racism and classism” perpetuated by the program. Rather than boycott conventional agriculture products or grow backyard gardens, one solution would be to grant permanent immigration status to the labourers upon arrival, Weiler argued, as “it would put the onus on the government to address how low wages operate throughout the capitalist agricultural system.”

Anelyse Weiler is a 2015 Foundation scholar and a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Toronto. Read the full article here.