Migrant Farm Workers: Canada

Migrant Agricultural Workers Dept: Assessing the precise number of migrant farm workers in Canada is difficult, according to CBC. Workers can be hired under the federal Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program SAWP , which was established in 1966. Temporary foreign workers can also be hired under the agricultural stream of a federal immigration pilot project for occupations requiring lower levels of formal training and a flatbed truck and passenger van collided on Feb. 6 near the hamlet of Hampstead, Ont., killing 11 people most of them migrant agricultural workers from Peru and seriously injuring three others. Migrant workers have become an important source of labour for Canada's agricultural sector, and they're being recruited from a growing number of countries around the world. How many migrant farm workers are there in Canada? "Our problem is they're under two different programs, so it's hard to get an exact number," says Stan Raper, national co-ordinator of the Agricultural Workers Alliance. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.