Labour Day

Raymundo shakes his head no at the question when translated, but to his right, Netali chuckles and shouts, “Chiquito! Small one. Like Smurf!” The group laughs, and Raymundo seems to take it all in stride. The men have been asked if they have given one another nicknames in their time working in the vineyards in Kelowna, British Columbia. Raymundo is slight and perhaps shorter than the other four, but he is certainly not Smurf-like. His companions tease him. Netali reveals that his family has called him El Cuco since he was a child. This sparks another round of laughter.

Five men are gathered around a circular steel table with a gazebo top shaped like a beach umbrella, the faded green paint peeling in the August afternoon sun. Okanagan Lake shimmers behind them, and the suffocating clouds of wildfire smoke of the previous two months have mercifully dissipated, although one can see fires still burning in the hills beyond. The men have walked five minutes from the vineyard, their workplace and home for the past six months and for another two to come. Eight months total in Canada. Eight months away from their families in Mexico.

Javier, our interpreter, piles boxes of pizza and Cokes onto the table, confident the food and drink will be a welcome treat. The men are sacrificing several hours of their precious time off work to meet with a stranger, to share their lived experiences. The refreshments are a small gesture of gratitude.

Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

A substream under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) brought in 50,126 foreign workers in the agricultural industries in 2020, according to Statistics Canada. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture deems “international workers…essential to the production of food in Canada…[and] relied on as Canadian trained and experienced workers that support the success and quality of Canada’s food supply.”

While they come from around the world, close to half of Canada’s international seasonal workers come from Mexico, with those from Guatemala and Jamaica comprising another thirty-four percent. After Ontario and Quebec, respectively, British Columbia hosts the largest number of seasonal agricultural workers. This past summer, in the fertile Okanagan Valley in particular, thousands of workers were employed to pick cherries through July and August, feeding domestic and international market demand. 95 percent of the cherries grown in Canada are grown in British Columbia.

Roasted slope

Trading orchard for vineyard, Raymundo, Netali, Geronimo, Cornelio, and Alberto spend their days picking and processing grapes from five in the morning to two in the afternoon. When asked more about their work, Raymundo and Netali, both natives of Oaxaca, Mexico, admit to having a deep understanding of and extensive experience in most aspects of the harvesting process. Each with over four years of experience working for the same employer, the two men are confident in their knowledge and abilities. The suggestion that they might one day run their own vineyard or winery is too fanciful to imagine, however, and both men throw their heads back in laughter at the idea.

The reality is that the men are, for the most part, hired and treated as labourers, physically toiling in the hot sun and wildfire smoke in picking season. At the peak of the B.C. “heat dome,” a heat wave in late June 2021 believed to have caused hundreds of deaths, their employer had to pull workers from the field because of the extreme conditions.

Current climate realities make their daily work even more challenging and uncomfortable, including the need to wear masks to protect themselves, not from COVID-19, but from the smoke-polluted air. The masks are smothering though too, and for Netali, the smoke is secondary to the oppressive heat: Sufro más cuando hace mucho calor. Me sofoco.

Although they are essential workers, in agriculture in this case, Raymundo does not feel that their contribution is truly valued by the larger community. This is partly because agricultural workers most often live and work far away from the heart of a community or town, but also because they and the work they do are not visible—their faces not seen in Buy BC campaigns or on winery websites. Not at all familiar with Buy BC or its colourful supermarket posters, Raymundo says it’s not about public recognition per se, but it bothers him that the visitors, los turistas, see the fields and are told by a guide how the work is done, but never see or meet the actual workers. The men take pride in their work at the vineyard, but to never be acknowledged as being a critical part of the final product sometimes makes them feel no bueno.

In isolation

With the exception of Tonalá-native Alberto, 37, whose work at the vineyard is his first Canadian posting, this job, as is said, is not their first rodeo. Or orchard or greenhouse, for that matter. Raymundo, 34, began his Canadian tour in Quebec, a common path shared by this group. After two years picking apples in Quebec, Raymundo transferred to an Ontario greenhouse floriculture operation, which was eventually sold. International agricultural workers generally have an initial contract for three years, after which they can request a change in employer and/or region. Raymundo has worked the last four seasons in British Columbia. Cornelio, 50, from Tizayuca, describes his first Canadian job in Ontario packing tomatoes as a good experience. Geronimo, 31, and from Veracruz, spent three years picking strawberries in Quebec before joining the Kelowna group. He did not enjoy picking strawberries—mucho de rodilla—but is content at the vineyard: está tranquilo.

For Geronimo to feel content is not insignificant; the work and the workplace for these men here in Canada is almost the entirety of their existence for eight months of every year. They go grocery shopping on their days off and may play the occasional soccer game with workers from different farms, but they are far from the centre of town and are separated—hasta arriba del cerro— in every meaningful way from the community their work supports.

Because this is the way it has always been, the men do not question the isolation and genuinely seem to prefer the arrangement that has been fashioned by policy, geographical realities, and economic considerations. And yet there are cracks in the system that not only leave workers vulnerable, but that also sink opportunities for advancement and connection that can benefit the workers, the host communities, and Canada.

Unseen, unheard

A significant obstacle to forming community connections and relationships is a language barrier, a challenge only exacerbated by geographical separation. The men all describe their English skills as limited (poquito, poquito!), but it is obvious they understand much more than they choose to speak. Nevertheless, in this catch-22 situation, even after having worked and lived in Canada for many seasons, they do not feel confident communicating in English. Geronimo acknowledges that language acquisition comes down to practice, something this group of Mexicans don’t do in Canada because it is just them together todo el tiempo.

This lack of skill or lack of perceived or real need to learn English doesn’t necessarily affect the group’s work or their quality of life here, but it can contribute to inequities that aren’t always obvious or predictable. Raymundo and Javier together describe a visit to a local clinic after Raymundo injured his shoulder at work. After having been told to wait in the parking lot, the medical office assistant eventually came out to tell them the clinic would treat citizens and residents first. Stunned and angry, the two men left without Raymundo receiving care, despite his being insured and in need. Not to say that Raymundo would not have been discriminated against regardless had he been able to advocate for himself in English, but it may have been a factor in his poor treatment, in his being labeled as “other.” Raymundo gives this as another example of not feeling a part of the community: no nos sentimos acoplados a una comunidad con los Canadians. His injury remains untreated.

This detachment can also embolden some employers to be less responsive to, even negligent of the needs and basic rights of agricultural workers because they assume the workers don’t have the capacity or resources to leverage complaints or advocate for themselves. Javier shares a story of another farm in the area whose worker accommodations don’t have refrigerators or air conditioning. Three days in June 2021 saw Kelowna temperatures higher than ever before in recorded history, the hottest day registering at 45.7°C. Employers hold the balance of power in other ways too, including, and importantly, the fact that each worker’s employment contract in Canada is contingent on the employer re-issuing an invitation each year. While the Kelowna stories are anecdotal in nature, migrant worker rights advocacy groups have long documented employer abuses and human rights violations across Canada, including those in the agricultural sector. The Migrant Rights Network at migrantrights.ca is one such organization that, among other critical priorities, supports policy change that would create a pathway for all migrant workers to apply for permanent residency status “immediately, independently and permanently without depending or relying on the sponsorship or goodwill of their employers or third-party agencies.” The employment arrangement for international agricultural workers is coordinated at a federal level and was designed to be permanently temporary, erasing the possibility of the workers transitioning to permanent residency in Canada. This seems inequitable and short-sighted.

Pathways to prosperity?

Although the federal government opened a new, temporary pathway to permanent residency that included essential agricultural workers this past spring, the Migrant Rights Network noted that it was “a short-term window for thousands of migrants who are able to meet restrictive criteria, but [kept] the fundamentals of the temporary immigration system intact where hundreds of thousands are exploited.” It is estimated that there are over 450,000 migrant workers in Canada.

The program was closed in just two months, apparently having reached its 90,000 application cap for all streams. In addition to the burden of cost and first-come, first-serve time constraints, application requirements that effectively excluded many agricultural workers included language requirements and a minimum work experience period. Undocumented agricultural workers and refugees were not even eligible. The call for “Status for All” has yet to bring about the change the Canadian Council of Refugees hopes will “move us away from treating newcomers as disposable, as we have been doing by using precarious, temporary labour to fill long-term positions.”

The trade-offs

Despite the multiple ways workers and allies believe the Canadian government fails its migrant workers, for the five men drinking Cokes lakeside around the green table, working in Canada is still better than working in the United States, an early path for some of the men here and a common “choice” for their compatriots. But unlike Canada, “farmworker” representation in the U.S. is historically and overwhelmingly that of undocumented migrants-of the foreign-born agricultural workforce in the U.S., approximately “49% lack authorized immigration status under current U.S. law,” according to non-profit organization Farmworker Justice.

For this reason, for Netali, working in the U.S. is a risky proposition. The pay may be higher, and there is more of an established Mexican migrant community in American agricultural work, but Netali says, without legal authorization, or papeles paga, one pays a great deal of money to cross the border. Most important for Netali, a father of four, is that he is able to return home at the end of the season to be with his family, something that would not be possible en los Estados Unidos. Netali adds that, here, he is safer and tranquilo, and not perennially anxious about being detained by migración.

Buenos amigos

Raymundo, Netali, Geronimo, Cornelio, and Alberto—who share a casa at the winery—interact and move together like old friends or close brothers. Comfortable posing together for photos and teasing each other during individual portraits (especially Geronimo, who is shy and ducks when the camera is on him), they give the impression of having built bonds of trust and genuine affection for one another. Their different personalities seem to balance the group well and Netali confirms that they are good friends and buenos camaradas, adding that it is important to be a gusto, at ease.

The camaraderie includes Javier, their lone Kelowna-based support, who works for KCR Community Resources (KCR) but often assists local agricultural workers in his spare time. He acts as an interpreter on this day, but on other days he is a taxi driver, mediator, banker, or friend—whatever is needed to support the workers, for whom he feels an affinity and responsibility.

Javier Robles Caraccioli was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. A pharmacist with over fifteen years of experience, Javier took a position as Migrant Worker Support Outreach Worker at KCR in 2019 after moving to Canada in 2015. Javier goes above and beyond for the workers here in Kelowna, and even acts as liaison with the Consulado General de México in Vancouver when the situation calls for it. Javier describes that relationship as a delicate balance of advocacy and diplomacy, keeping the big picture in the frame while also keeping the workers’ needs and rights front and centre.

Don’t worry, be happy

The big picture, or a big part of the big picture, is that the men are here working to support their families back home in Mexico. This is their singular focus. Questions about their families trigger bittersweet responses. All of the group are fathers, although Cornelio’s children are now young adults. Netali, who describes his family as small, has three daughters and a son—a mirror of his own sibling group. It was his son’s seventh birthday the day before. Over eight months, many birthdays are not spent together. However, Netali says that he and his son talk on WhatsApp todos los dias, and, as they do each year upon his return to Oaxaca, the entire family will go out to a restaurant to celebrate his homecoming and all the missed birthdays.

Father of an eight-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy, Geronimo says that when he returns home, his niños just want to play with him non-stop. The conversation topic is uncomfortable territory for him though, as Geronimo describes his strategy for coping without his family as one of closing out thoughts of them: no pienso. Although his focus is shaken when his wife shares that she misses him, for Geronimo, he has made this choice, por sacrificio, for them and must stay the course.

One worry all the workers share is that of getting sick or injured or a member of their family getting sick or injured. Even outside of the context of the pandemic, this fear nags at them all. That there could be an accident or illness which would prevent them from being with their families or lead them to never seeing a family member again is described as a risk they take each year, one not taken lightly. As many of the men are the sole financial support for their families, any loss of employment due to accident or illness here in Canada would be an additional devastating burden. Every season wrapped without these fears being realized is a win.

Cultural exchange—with India

Each year, at the end of the season, the employers at the vineyard host a celebratory dinner. Ironically—as the group has not experienced any meaningful Mexico-Canada cultural exchange over the years—this one night, the Mexican workers and their Indian colleagues manifest a multicultural potluck, sharing dishes inspired by home. Some of the Indian dishes, Netali admits, are picantes, spicy.

According to Netali, the Indian employees are permanent residents who operate the machinery and hold managerial positions. When asked about communicating with each other, Netali confesses that the lilting Indian accent strains his own perceived minimal comprehension of spoken English.

This seemingly odd reality of relative newcomers from vastly different backgrounds struggling to negotiate meaning with one another in the unique setting of the Okanagan Valley could be the start of a brilliant screenplay—or perhaps a new CBC sitcom?

Mexico dreaming

As this season draws to a close—this group returns to Mexico at the end of October—home appears a little closer on the horizon. The men will pick up jobs they had left behind and reunite with their families and friends. Four months to re-set in familiar places and surrounded by their own culture, language, and food before they contemplate the journey north again. Cornelio, for one, can almost taste the barbacoa and pulque that are always a part of the welcome home feast his family prepares for him.

Unanimously, the men share that their Canadian chapter is one part of a legacy they hope to leave: a better life for their children, one that includes an education and a career. For Raymundo the dream is for his children to have professional careers, and that if they do come to Canada, it is to explore and travel, not work in the fields. For Canada to be the path to a dream is no small thing, nor is the work Raymundo, Netali, Geronimo, Cornelio, and Alberto, and other essential workers do for Canada.