Our Changed World: Essential Changes for Essential Workers
The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the importance of temporary migrant workers (TR), who gain entry to Canada through the so-called “low-skills” category.
We now understand how crucial these workers are to our personal health and food security. But the language we use to label them is pejorative.
Labels and language are important because they give shape to our ideas, influence our imagination and put a contour on abstract terminology. The labels of high skills and low skills are now neither accurate nor relevant because we know that we need skills at all levels to sustain ourselves. Therefore, we need new language for new times. We need to pivot to thinking about essential skills and essential workers.
We also need a permanent pathway to permanent residence (PR) for these workers and not force them to rely on temporary worker status. As the government TR-to-PR program proved, there is a lot of interest by essential workers. This is a sentiment echoed by many Canadians.
According to a 2021 Nanos Research poll commissioned by myself and Sen. Rob Black, more than eight in 10 Canadians support or somewhat support providing a way for temporary migrant workers to remain in Canada.
They also fully understand and appreciate how important these workers are to the agricultural sector and putting food on our tables. The findings of this poll are similar to a much larger poll conducted by Environics that found that Canadians today are much more appreciative of the essential work that migrants do.
Offering migrant workers the option of applying for permanent residency would remove much of the vulnerability associated with temporary status, and the employers would benefit from having a workforce made up of mostly permanent residents.
Some of the work, such as animal production, food processing and greenhouse production, takes place on a year-round basis. This would also help employers maintain a stable workforce without the need for annual expenditures on recruitment, transportation, training, housing, legal and medical issues.
In addition, the change would benefit workers by making it possible for them to migrate with their families to Canada.
This will alleviate isolation, as well as help revitalize rural communities with not one but clusters of families from the same community.
The Canadian government needs to act quickly to thank the contribution of these essential workers and open more pathways to permanency. It is not only the right thing to do it is also essential to health of our nation.