Migrant worker’s death on rural road in Niagara Region revives calls for reform

A migrant farm worker’s death on a road in Ontario’s Niagara Region is the latest in a long list of similar tragedies, advocates say as they call for urgent reforms to Canada’s seasonal worker program, from safer rural roads to the end of work permits that tie labourers to a single employer.

Sinhue Garcia, 39, was killed in an alleged hit-and-run crash the night of June 26 while cycling home from the farm where he worked near Niagara-on-the-Lake. A 22-year-old man was later arrested and charged with impaired driving and leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

The advocacy group Migrant Workers Alliance for Change said Garcia had returned to the region for a few seasons while his wife and two daughters remained in Mexico, and his death is not an isolated tragedy.

Dozens of community activists rallied outside the Ontario Ministry of Labour office in downtown Toronto on Friday, demanding action on working conditions for migrant farm workers.

“We’re here to fight for the families who are grieving and we’re here to demand a future where no worker dies in silence,” Elizabeth Ha, an adviser to the equity unit of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said in a speech at the demonstration.

Rally organizers said it’s believed that eight migrant agricultural workers have died in the province in recent weeks, due to varying causes. In one case, two farm workers died in a vehicle crash.

“Eight deaths, eight families grieving, eight families shattered, eight workers who came here to build a better life,” Ha said at the rally.

Advocates say Garcia’s death in the Niagara area is the latest in a string of incidents stretching back years, in a region where Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program — an arrangement between Canada and Mexico, and Canada and Caribbean countries, that allows those countries’ federal governments to recruit migrants to work here — has operated for six decades.

Syed Hussan, co-executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said those who come to Canada under the program don’t typically have access to a car, and find themselves in areas with no public transit. Instead, they get around by bike or on foot, on roads that were never built for that kind of traffic, he said.

At least seven migrant workers have died or been seriously injured in the Niagara Region since 2019, Hussan said. He blamed the deaths on decades of neglected rural infrastructure, including unlit roads, nonexistent bike lanes and inadequate transit options, built up around a program he considers “indentured servitude.”

“Because people work such long hours, because sometimes they don’t even have laundry at their homes, they’re forced to travel at night because that’s the only time. On unlit streets,” he said.

Farm workers who speak up about their situation risk losing everything at once: their job, their employer-controlled housing and their ability to work anywhere else in the country, Hussan said.

“They’re not allowed to work for anyone else in the country. That means immediately you’re homeless, and you have no ability to earn a living or live anywhere. You can’t work. You’re not going to get access to social services and benefits. You maybe don’t speak the language. What are you going to do?” he said.

“In that situation, people simply don’t speak up, no matter what happens.”

Chris Ramsaroop, co-director of the Migrant Farm Worker Legal Clinic at the University of Windsor and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, said he and other advocates have been calling for coroner’s inquests into deaths tied to the occupation, including cycling deaths, for decades. Coroner’s inquests are a form of public hearing held to shed light on the circumstances of a death, and jurors often make recommendations meant to prevent similar deaths.

“Roads are a component of a large puzzle, of a program, of an industry, of a labour system or labour regime that’s built for business,” Ramsaroop said. “The tied work permits, the employer-driven nature of the program, deny workers labour and social mobility.”

The Canadian Press has reached out to the Ontario Ministry of Labour for comment.

The federal government has said that it’s committed to ensuring the health and safety of temporary foreign workers in Canada and is open to recommendations for better worker protections.

Alongside demands for the provincial and federal governments, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is focusing its policy priorities on the municipal level ahead of the October election.

After Garcia’s death, the group started a petition calling for safe transportation options and roads, emergency supports for families and a simpler path to permanent residency for workers, as well as provincial action on housing standards, including laundry facilities that would cut down on workers biking at night.

The municipality of Niagara-on-the-Lake says it has not received the petition, but that it continues to prioritize initiatives that improve safety.

“Throughout this council term, we have continued to invest in initiatives that improve safety across both our rural and urban road network, including the implementation of reduced speed limits in many areas as part of our broader road safety efforts,” it said in a statement.