In response to the UN Working Group’s call for input on labour migration, business, and human rights, RHFW partnered with the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC-CTTI), Legal Assistance of Windsor (LAW), and the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre to submit a joint brief.

The submission highlights the documented systemic human rights violations arising from approaches to labour migration that rely on employer-driven models. It outlines concrete policy alternatives to ensure labour migration schemes uphold the fundamental rights of im·migrant workers—especially the right to access justice—and protect against risks of forced labour, debt bondage, human trafficking, and other forms of modern slavery.

In this joint submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking and RHFW highlight how Canada’s employer-tied work authorizations create conditions that facilitate trafficking, forced labour, and servitude.

RHFW’s response to Employment and Social Development Canada’s (ESDC) proposals for stream-specific work permits and transportation costs for the proposed agriculture and fish processing stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). Our submission flags issues around employer-agent sponsorship, tied work permits, and the broader role of employers in transportation, recruitment, job placement, and worker integration. It proposes a migration management model that upholds the rights of all workers, prevents the entrenchment of a permanent underclass, and reverses the degradation of working conditions and employment opportunities for citizens and permanent residents—while allowing for full labour market flexibility and government support to employers in the targeted sectors and regions in a manner that is fully compatible with fundamental human rights.

RHFW’s submission to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM) during its study of closed work permits and temporary foreign workers. It elaborates why restrictive work authorizations—whether sectoral, regional, occupational, or agency-specific—are incompatible with human rights and should not be considered a solution to the abuses associated with employer-specific permits. Instead, it outlines necessary immigration reforms to prevent modern forms of slavery and protect workers’ rights.

Following the September 6, 2023, denunciation by the UN Special Rapporteur, which condemned employer-specific work permits for exposing migrant workers in Canada to risks of modern slavery, RHFW’s brief to the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science, and Technology (SOCI) highlights the need for fundamental changes to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programs: open work permits, a return to government-managed sponsorship, and unconditional access to permanent residency selection upon arrival. These measures are essential to protecting migrant workers’ rights, preventing exploitation, and ensuring they are not subject to conditions that amount to modern slavery.

As part of Canada’s 2019 National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking, the CBSA’s Trafficking in Persons Analyst Group sought the input of NGOs to produce a baseline national assessment of the scope of trafficking in persons in Canada. RHFW’s response outlines, step by step, how traffickers leverage employer-tied authorizations. We include a Quebec case study that illustrates how forced labour occurs within, and is facilitated by, the legal structures of Canada’s employer-tied admission scheme.

In our submission to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights as part of its study on human trafficking in Canada, we highlight the critical role immigration policies play in heightening the vulnerability of migrant caregivers to trafficking. Specifically, by referencing measures of coercion established in judicial decisions concerning forced labour and involuntary servitude, our analysis draws a direct link between employer-tied work authorization and the increased risk of trafficking and debt bondage for migrant caregivers.