UN envoy doubles down on criticism

Ottawa told to offer pathway to become permanent resident

- GHADA ALSHARIF

A United Nations official who denounced Canada’s temporary foreign worker program as “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery” nearly a year ago doubled down on his criticism in a final report, stressing that granting migrant workers permanent resident status is necessary to end ongoing exploitation.

Tomoya Obokata, the UN’s special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, said in September that he was “deeply disturbed by the accounts of exploitation and abuse shared” with him by migrant workers during a two-week fact-finding mission to Canada in August 2023.

A year later, in a final report, Obokata said the “structural precarity for temporary foreign workers would be mitigated by systematically providing workers with a pathway to permanent residence.

“This would also reflect the fact that, despite their nominally temporary nature, the demand for labour met by the migration programs is permanent, as evinced by the growing numbers of people entering Canada through these programs.”