Tribunal dismisses discrimination complaint against seasonal ag workers program

Monday, March 16, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario says it lacks jurisdiction to hear a gender discrimination case against a program bringing seasonal agricultural workers to Canadian farms from Mexico and the Caribbean.

United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada national coordinator Stan Raper brought the complaint to the tribunal last year. He alleged the Seasonal Agricultural Workers program discriminates against women workers from Mexico.

Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services (FARMS) president Ken Forth said time will tell if this is the end of the union’s discrimination complaint against the program. “We never thought this was an issue. We have requests for women workers all the time and we never have enough (women workers to fill the requests).”

FARMS is a non-profit organization working to match Canadian farm employer requests for seasonal agricultural workers from Mexico and the Caribbean. Farm employers can only use workers from Mexico and the Caribbean when they can’t find qualified Canadian workers for their farms.

Forth said, “there’s not enough women coming forward to enroll in the program. There’s a simple reason for that. In those nations (Mexico and the Caribbean), a lot of the women between 20 and 45 (years old) have another really important job: they’re raising their families.”

Forth said not all of the women in that age group are raising children but a greater proportion of women in Mexico and the Caribbean are raising children compared to Canadian women in that age group.

The seasonal agricultural worker program was “never developed as a men’s program,” he noted.

Raper said the “reality is there are a lot of women in Mexico who would like the opportunity to work on Canadian farms.” He said he didn’t have numbers on the demand for Canadian farm jobs from Mexican women workers. “FARMS is the one that executes the contracts between the sending countries and the employers. They have the data.”

The tribunal said in its March 6 decision it couldn’t hear the case because the applicant (Raper) “has not personally experienced any discrimination.” The Human Rights Code has a provision permitting someone to bring an application on behalf of another person provided the other person consents.

“The application that has been filed has been filed only by Mr. Raper,” said the decision that was delivered by tribunal vice-chair Brian Cook.

The tribunal deals with all discrimination claims under the Code by either resolving them through voluntary mediation or, if that doesn’t work, through a hearing and an enforceable decision.

Raper’s application alleges the seasonal agricultural workers program and the program’s administrator, Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services, “allows farms to stipulate the sex of the Mexican workers they wish to hire,” the decision said.

The application alleges only four per cent of the Mexican workers coming to Canada as part of the program are women, “which is less than the proportion of Canadian agricultural workers who are women,” the decision said.

Raper said he didn’t know what the union’s next move is on the complaint. “We were kind of disappointed that the tribunal wouldn’t even investigate. We have to revisit the complaint and decide what we want to do.”

In the meantime, the union is focusing on the Ontario Ministry of Labour’s consultation on the provincial Employment Standards Act and the Labour Relations Act. The union plans to make a submission on behalf of agricultural and other workers.

Last year, the union also filed a gender discrimination complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. In December 2014, the commission issued a position statement reminding all participants to ensure their hiring practices follow the provincial Human Rights Code. But the commission declined to do an inquiry into the union’s systemic gender discrimination complaint against the program. BF