‘Overtly racist’: Lawsuit challenges Canada’s migrant farmworker system

Excerpt

"Hyacinth Simpson, an associate English professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, explained that prior to that, non-white immigration to Canada was “highly controlled”.

This was because “Black and Asian peoples particularly were considered undesirable, unassimilable, and unlikely to bring any benefits to the country – economic or otherwise,” Simpson, a postcolonial scholar, told Al Jazeera in an email.

Within this system, tied employment practices are a “tried and true way” of maintaining a power imbalance between employer and employees, Simpson added. This includes tying farmworkers to specific farms or employers, preventing them from changing jobs, and even busing workers between their residences and grocery stores.