We’re well into another season and growers across Ontario have welcomed their international workers to their farms for another year. Since the first seasonal workers arrived in Canada in 1966, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) has become foundational for edible horticulture in Ontario. 

Today, through SAWP, more than 30,000 workers from Mexico, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Islands come to Canada annually for jobs in the horticulture sectors. Many thousands come through the Agricultural Stream of the federal Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program. 

In 2022, the federal government announced its intent to develop a new, single stream TFW program for all agriculture and seafood processing, with the goal of it being in place by 2027.

Two consultation papers were released during the second half of 2024, with four additional consultation papers made available recently in relatively quick succession. 

The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA) has been participating in the consultation process around the redesign. The OFVGA labour committee, supported by our OFVGA staff advisor Stefan Larrass, has been diligently working through each of these papers to understand the possible effects of the government’s proposals and to offer practical perspectives and recommendations that we hope will have positive impact on the development of this new program. 

We are working with our national partners, including Canadian Federation of Agriculture and Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, to highlight the unique features and benefits of SAWP and to reinforce the importance of making sure it doesn’t get lost in the program overhaul. It is critical that the new program does not create labour disruptions or place unrealistic expectations and burdens on farm employers. 

Wherever possible, we also try to highlight how the principles and design features of SAWP can serve as a practical model to achieve many of the government’s policy objectives behind this initiative, such as improved worker mobility.  

We knew that to do these consultations justice when they have such potentially huge consequences for growers and our industry overall would be an ambitious undertaking. This has been confirmed by the level of detail in each of the consultation papers and the considerable time commitment it has taken to review and respond to each document. 

As an industry, we are justifiably proud of SAWP which has served growers, workers and their home countries well for decades. SAWP has a more than a 50-year history of collaborative, annual review between the Canadian government, source country governments and growers to ensure the program remains current and reflects Canada’s and the workers’ home countries’ values and interests. 

At OFVGA, our goal is simple: to maintain grower access to this critical labour force we all depend on and to ensure workers and employers don’t lose SAWP and its many design and operational optimizations that have been achieved over many decades of constructive problem-solving and cooperation between the parties involved in the program. 

This includes SAWP’s worker mobility provisions, and its collaborative processes which often see the employer, the worker(s) and the liaison or consular staff from the workers’ home country work directly with one another to resolve workplace issues or to find new job opportunities for the worker if necessary. 

Since its inception, SAWP has continuously evolved to meet the needs of workers, employers and the governments of both Canada and the workers’ home countries. Money that workers send home, called remittances, is an important revenue stream for those economies. This unique collaborative approach continues to this day with regular virtual and in-person meetings with representatives from workers’ home countries, the Canadian government and the farming community to ensure the program continues to provide benefits to everyone involved. 

It’s part of what has made SAWP a valuable asset for the countries who send workers to Canada. Caribbean nations, for example, are actively vying for Canadian farm employers to choose workers from their countries to fill their open jobs. 

At the end of the day, our industry relies on our international workers – without them, Ontario simply wouldn’t have many of the fruit and vegetable crops we know and love. And considering the current trade war with the United States, it is particularly critical that we focus on shoring up the Canadian economy and protecting our food production capacity. 

That’s why it’s important for the industry to take an active role in the consultations around developing this new program. Employers, workers and the workers’ home countries have nearly 60 years of experience with SAWP, and we are working hard to make sure its benefits and learnings are not lost or become collateral damage during the development of the new program.