Canadians like to think our country has a good record on slavery. After all, the narrative goes, Canada was the terminus for the Underground Railway, the land of freedom where escaped American slaves could find refuge from the obscene horrors of American chattel slavery. And modern Canada, we are tempted to boast, is a champion of human rights, a righteous opponent of slavery in all its contemporary forms. Turns out the real story is more complicated and less noble.
And now a recent United Nations report says that Canada continues to allow conditions of modern slavery in our farm fields and in low wage job sectors using temporary foreign workers, Indigenous workers and visible minority workers. In the meantime, bankers and bureaucrats are tinkering around the edges of the situation, more concerned, it would appear, with how to best calibrate the number of near slaves that should be brought into the Canadian economy to insure maximum returns for our financial and political masters.
Some inconvenient truths about slavery in Canada: Canadian settlers owned and exploited slaves for several centuries, enslaving both Indigenous people and kidnapped Africans.
Some Indigenous nations took captives in war and enslaved them, both before and after contact with Europeans, although most authorities agree that the forms of slavery seen among some Indigenous nations were less vile than Western sponsored chattel slavery, with its globalized regime of abduction and near genocidal levels of deaths among abducted and enslaved Africans. For example the Canadian Encyclopedia tells us:
“Indigenous enslavement was significantly different than the practice and institution of enslavement as carried out by Europeans. European enslavement was more than a denial of freedom, it was racist practice that involved enslaving those deemed ‘inferior.’ Europeans used the labour of slaves to fund the growth of their colonies.”
According to Parks Canada, “Between c. 1629 and 1834, there were more than 4,000 enslaved people of African descent in the British and French colonies that became Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. The colonies denied their humanity, reduced them to property to be bought and sold, exploited their labour, and subjected them to physical, sexual, psychological, and reproductive violence.….
In some instances, slaves held by Indigenous nations were eligible for adoption into the nation, an option not open for slaves held by settlers. For slaves held by settlers, the
prospects in what is now Canada were grim, as acknowledged by the Canadian Encyclopedia, which notes:
“In the British and French colonies, violence was part of daily life for enslaved people of African descent. Few lived beyond the age of 25. Physical violence for the purposes of punishment, reprisal, or dehumanization, ranged from lashings with chains and public whippings to torture. Many also faced sexual exploitation, abuse, and violence, especially girls and women, who had no control over their bodies and no reproductive rights.”
True, slavery was banned in Canada before it was in the US, and three decades in the mid 19th century that saw the operation of the Underground Railway brought somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 escapees to Canada.
But even now, nearly two centuries later, Canada stands accused of involvement in slavery. In a scathing report issued in July of 2024, Tonoya Obokata, the Special Rapporteur of the UN’s Human Rights Council, says that Canada is involved in forms of modern slavery. The report says Canada is complicit through its treatment of resident Indigenous and visible minority workers and. in particular, through its temporary foreign worker programs.
Some of the UN findings include: “Given the structural inequities between temporary foreign workers and employers and their insufficient access to justice and remedies, workers experience a wide range of abuses. The Special Rapporteur received reports of underpayment and wage theft, physical, emotional and verbal abuse, excessive work hours, limited breaks, extracontractual work, uncompensated managerial duties, lack of personal protective equipment, including in hazardous conditions, confiscation of documents and arbitrary reductions of working hours. Women reported sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse. Fraud is also an issue, as some workers reported receiving false assurances that their employers had undertaken a labour market impact assessment or applied for permanent residency, only to find out that they had fallen out of status. Complaint mechanisms are difficult for workers to navigate without external assistance, although the Special Rapporteur was encouraged to learn that efforts to increase awareness of such mechanisms had led to a 39.4 per cent increase in the number of complaints received. Confidentiality is not always well-maintained and whistle-blowers face retaliation despite prohibitions against reprisals. In addition, police have reportedly failed to take complaints seriously, claim that they do not have jurisdiction and report workers to immigration authorities rather than investigating their complaints. “
Despite these dire findings, the attention of the Canadian government and its central bank
has not been focused on remedies to these long-standing injustices. Instead, the attention has been on tinkering around the edges of the temporary foreign worker programs to make them work better for the “economy”, AKA the interests of the ruling class. Late in its term last year, the Trudeau government announced reductions to its notorious temporary foreign worker programs , changes that were roundly condemned by worker advocates.
For example, Sayed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change told the CBC “High unemployment, low wages and unaffordable housing is not being caused by immigrants and migrants — these are caused by employer exploitation and policy failures. Migrants build communities, and they deserve equal rights and respect, not scapegoating.”
Hussan is right. The time for Canada to come to terms with its shameful legacy of involvement with slavery is past due. Workers should not be used as temporary and disposable spare parts for the machinery of capital. Wide ranging reforms on the lines of those suggested by the United Nations and by worker advocates
ought to be at the top of the legislative agenda for the new Carney government, and we should all work to increase public pressure for such reforms.
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