Plight of Canada’s migrant workers profiled in ‘Migrant Dreams’ documentary

By Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – They come from Mexico, Jamaica and Southeast Asia to pick and pack the vegetables and fruits Canadians buy from supermarkets, hoping their minimum-wage earnings will help their families back home.

But when they get here, they sometimes find unsafe working conditions, substandard living arrangements, and are forced to pay exorbitant fees to deceptive recruiters, according to Canadian filmmaker Min Sook Lee’s new documentary “Migrant Dreams.”

The film follows women migrant workers employed in the agricultural industry through Canada’s temporary foreign worker program, which Lee alleges “has turned low-wage migrant workers into a form of indentured labourers in our own country.”

The Canadian Press spoke with Lee about the film, which is making its world premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. It will also screen at the Doxa Documentary Festival in Vancouver on Saturday and Edmonton’s Northwest Fest on May 11.

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CP: What is the government doing to acknowledge how you and others are addressing this issue?

Lee: Currently the federal government is reviewing the temporary foreign worker program and looking at the stories of how this program works. What needs to be understood is, the voices of migrant workers have got to be at the table. Currently, migrant workers’ experiences are under-told or ignored, and this is a documentary that puts forward the voices of migrant workers first and foremost.

This is an employer-driven program. When migrant workers come into Canada, they’re invited as guest workers but they’re low-wage workers. Their status is tied to their employer. If they complain or speak out about the treatments on the farms or the other work sites, they are liable to being deported or losing their jobs.

So it takes tremendous courage and it’s a risk to speak out.

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CP: Where are these workers based?

Lee: Migrant workers work across Canada in all of our provinces, but there are a predominant number of workers in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. I filmed primarily in southwestern Ontario. I was filming for about there years and the women I spent time filming with are from Indonesia.

When I met the women workers, initially I thought I was just going to be spending the season chronicling the lives of migrant workers in Canada…. As I was filming the Indonesian women workers, I realized they were fighting back and I realized documentary is a tool to fighting back.

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