Mexico to Send Farmworkers to Canada After Reaching Safety Agreement

Mexico will resume sending temporary farmworkers to Canada after the two countries reached an agreement on improved safety protections for laborers on Canadian farms during the coronavirus pandemic

Mexico said last Tuesday it would pause sending workers to farms with coronavirus infections after at least two of its nationals died from COVID-19 after outbreaks on 17 Canadian farms.

Canadian farmers rely on 60,000 short-term foreign workers, predominantly from Latin America and the Caribbean, to plant and harvest crops.

“Mexico had put the program on hold while Mexican embassy officials in Ottawa reviewed Canadian health policies and procedures”

 

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Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Temporary Agricultural Workers Program (PTAT) had “entered into operation once again after a temporary pause.”

So far this year, Mexico’s Temporary Agricultural Workers Program (PTAT) has sent more than 16,000 people on short-term contracts to Canada, including 10,600 people since the pandemic began, the labor ministry said.

Workers planning to travel to farms that have had coronavirus outbreaks or do “not have a strategy of prevention and care for workers” will be reassigned, the labor ministry said in a statement.

Ken Forth, president of Canada’s Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services (FARMS), said at the time Mexico was looking for assurances that workers would be safe. “No additional workers will go to the farms where there’s an outbreak until they can demonstrate to the Mexican government that they’ve done all the protocol for the new workers to come,” Forth had said.

As a result Mexico had put the program on hold while Mexican embassy officials in Ottawa reviewed Canadian health policies and procedures.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reacted quickly, citing living conditions and labor standards as areas that must be considered. “We are going to make sure that we’re following up,” Trudeau promised.

As of late last week, the two nations have reached an agreement to improve the sanitary conditions of the nationals who work on farms.

Reuters