Questions and concerns regarding how migrant workers are housed in the Kingsville Region

BY PAUL JUNOR

It has been over 20 years now that the grassroots community group, Justice for Migrant Workers (J4MW) has been at the forefront of fighting for the rights of migrant workers and their families. They are a volunteer-run, political, non-profit collective of activists from diverse walks of life (including labour activists, educators, researchers, students and youth of colour) based in Toronto, Ontario, and now in Vancouver, and British, Columbia.

Over the years, it has put the rights of labourers who participate in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Program and farmworkers without status at the forefront. The overall mission of J4MW is to fight for spaces where workers themselves can articulate their concerns without losing their work or being repatriated. They start with workers’ knowledge and concerns and collectively devise strategies to make necessary changes.

Some of the political actions that J4MW has participated in involve; supporting injured workers to bring attention to the injustices at the WSIB, fighting against the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, and bringing attention to the way in which the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted vulnerable migrant workers.

One of the issues that J4MW has taken on recently is related to its concerns about the proposed bylaw in Kingsville for boarding, lodging and rooming houses. Kingsville attracts a lot of migrant workers and draws many from all over the world. Proposed changes to the bylaw incorporated after a Temporary Farm Working Housing study was done in 2022 is the concern.

Taneeta Doma, a volunteer with J4MW states, “The licensing regime that’s been suggested is a positive step, as well as making sure that there’s distance between workers, agricultural use facilities and pesticides and things like that, because those are concerns that workers have raised.”

J4MW wants to bring attention to this bylaw to ensure that workers’ rights are strengthened even more. Having extra amenity spaces for these workers and dividing operational facilities is good, but J4MW wants this bylaw to extend even more in order to favour the workers.