Get Canada's Climate Weekly delivered to your inbox.
Going hungry
Good morning!
As I write this, I’m dreaming of crisp, tart pears. Crunchy potato chips. Fresh green beans. Basically, all solid foods. What can I say, I got a wisdom tooth removed and ever since I’ve been fixated on all the things I can’t have.
But that’s only one of the reasons I stood in the produce section a little too long the other day. Part of me was bummed out about the multi-day soup feast in my future, which, of course, is trivial and will be over soon. The other part of me was considering the people who make this abundant display of fresh fruits and vegetables at my local grocery store possible — and how some of them are going hungry as they work to feed the rest of us.
This week, my colleague Marc Fawcett-Atkinson unpacked the reasons behind migrant farm workers’ rising food insecurity. His reporting breaks down some of the main factors contributing to these workers’ difficult circumstances and looks at some of the informal networks seeking to support them as the cost of food keeps going up. For this weekend’s newsletter, I’m honing in on one of the main challenges migrant farm workers in Canada face, why this isn’t a new issue and what some advocates are proposing as a solution.
I’m also trying out a new section in this weekend’s newsletter, and I’d love to know what you think. It’s inspired by my question last week about what climate words and concepts you found confusing. I got lots of great responses, so thank you for writing in! What you had to say reminded me how complicated a lot of these topics are: it’s tough to succinctly explain things like carbon capture, offset markets and the finer points of the many forms of energy we use. A few of you touched on some slippery words, too — like “regeneration” and “sustainable” — that can mean different things, depending on who you talk to.
For that reason, I’m going to do a shallow dive into one of the concepts that came up last weekend, but I’ll also be working with my Canada’s National Observer colleagues to go deeper on a few more of these confusing climate concepts in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
Also, please keep your questions coming! I love to hear from readers about how we can make some of these tricky topics clearer for you, so please don’t be shy. Let me know if there’s a climate question on your mind at [email protected] and I’ll do my best to find you an answer.
Have a great weekend and stay safe!
— Dana Filek-Gibson
Looking for our reads of the week? You can find them at the bottom of this email.
Food for thought
As far as the produce section at my local grocery store goes, these nectarines are about as local as you can get.
From what I can tell, they were grown in my home province of Ontario, meaning they likely had a much shorter, more planet-friendly journey to the grocery store than the Costa Rican bananas and Peruvian citrus fruits on display around them.
But in the path our food takes from farm to supermarket to table, distance isn’t the only thing that matters. Before these nectarines were piled into bins in a brightly lit produce section or carted on trucks from the orchard where they grew, someone had to pick them. Across the country, more than 60,000 of those harvesters are migrant workers temporarily living in Canada under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) — and as food prices rise, some of them are going hungry, Marc Fawcett-Atkinson reports.
First, let’s break down how SAWP works. The program, which started in the 1960s to supply Canadian farms with much-needed labour, began by recruiting Jamaican workers but now also welcomes people from Mexico and 10 other Caribbean countries. Each year, workers come to Canada for as long as eight months, and their work supports an $82-billion agri-food and seafood industry that makes Canada the fifth-largest exporter in the world.
For many, the money they earn is a lifeline for their loved ones. Workers often send their pay home to help their families make ends meet. But this year — thanks to inflation, extreme weather and supply chain issues — the price of putting food on the table has skyrocketed. And in some cases, the people responsible for getting food into our supermarkets are literally eating less so they can keep sending money home to their families.
Part of the problem comes down to pay, according to sociology professor Anelyse Weiler, who studies social inequality in farming.
"The wages (migrant farm workers) are making are very low compared to what most Canadians would be willing to accept, (and) we know that food insecurity is very strongly tied to income," she told Marc.
The way SAWP is set up can also be a problem for workers in the program. While there are farms that welcome SAWP workers year after year with “clean, adequate” housing — which includes a kitchen, cooking utensils and fuel, according to the federal government — that’s not the story on every farm. Some don’t have fridges or pantries, making it harder to store food. And if kitchen facilities are overcrowded or don’t have enough space to properly prepare meals, workers can wind up relying on food that’s easier to make but less nutritious, said Weiler. Finding culturally relevant foods that workers know how to cook can also be a challenge.
That’s not the only issue with SAWP, advocates say. People in the program are heavily reliant on their employers, who control not only their pay and living conditions but their ability to stay in the country. Workers who are being mistreated or underpaid are almost powerless to complain. If a worker wants to change employers, options are limited. As of June 2019, vulnerable workers can apply for an open work permit if they are facing abuse, but if that option fails, it’s either stay at your current job or go home.
Advocates say the answer to these precarious circumstances is simple: grant permanent residency to foreign workers. Instead of tying rights to visas, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change argues Canada could grant temporary foreign workers, whose labour we rely on to grow our economy, the same rights and privileges as those with permanent status.
This would go a long way to tackling food insecurity among migrant workers, but also reports of discrimination, crowded housing and limited access to medical care — all of which are long-standing problems. Last year, an auditor general report slammed the federal government over COVID-19 outbreaks on farms that employ migrant farm workers, finding inspectors deemed virtually all employers compliant with SAWP’s requirements “without gathering sufficient evidence.” At least nine farm workers died in Ontario during the first year of the pandemic, and while the exact cause of death could not be determined in every case, researchers who did a study into their deaths pointed to a series of “profound” barriers.
Just last month, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal also found provincial police violated the rights of 54 migrant workers when they collected DNA samples following a reported sexual assault, Natasha Bulowski reports. Even though the victim gave a specific description of her assailant — a Black migrant worker with an accent, who was clean-shaven, in his mid- to late-20s and between five foot 10 and six feet tall — police conducted a DNA sweep of all migrant workers in the area. One employer decided any workers who refused would not be invited back next year. For those who rely on income from SAWP jobs to support their families — some of whom have returned year after year for decades — the ultimatum left them no choice.
“This isn't an accident that workers are treated differently and adversely because of their race and where they're from,” Shane Martínez, the human rights lawyer representing workers in the case, told Canada’s National Observer. “This is very much by design that workers are exploited when they come from the Global South to work here in Canada... And this case, I think, just exemplifies how troubling this arrangement is and the need for us to take action and change it.”
What is ... net zero?
The short answer
“Net zero” refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible, and then removing any emissions we can’t eliminate by using natural or technological processes to take them out of the atmosphere.
The slightly longer answer
On a scientific level, the concept makes a lot of sense. It’s pretty similar to what the Earth already does: as part of its natural carbon cycle, the planet emits its own greenhouse gases and then reabsorbs those gases through oceans, forests, soil and other natural elements.
Humans, on the other hand, do a lot of emitting and not nearly enough reabsorbing — which is exactly what got us into this mess.
On a policy level, the idea of “net zero” informs most of the world’s current climate plans. More than 120 countries — Canada included — have made pledges to reach net-zero emissions, usually by 2050. Our 2030 climate goal is meant to help keep the planet from warming any more than 2 C and also serve as an emissions-cutting milestone on the way to net zero.
The trouble is, 2050 is both a long time away and, at the rate we’re going, nowhere near long enough. According to the United Nations, reaching net zero will require “nothing less than a complete transformation of how we produce, consume, and move about.” While countries around the world are making progress, almost nobody is on track to meet their net-zero promises today.
Critics of net-zero policy don’t necessarily oppose the concept itself. Rather, the main concern is that governments, companies and policymakers are fixated on the second half of the net-zero definition — the part about removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — when the real focus should be never putting them there in the first place. Focusing on the “net” part of net zero, they argue, is distracting decision-makers from the thing that actually matters: drastically cutting emissions as quickly as possible to avoid making climate breakdown any worse.
Net zero “is a great idea, in principle,” a trio of climate scientists wrote in The Conversation last year. “Unfortunately, in practice it helps perpetuate a belief in technological salvation and diminishes the sense of urgency surrounding the need to curb emissions now.
“We have arrived at the painful realization that the idea of net zero has licensed a recklessly cavalier ‘burn now, pay later’ approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar.”
This is especially important because the “pay later” part of the equation remains a gamble. While we have some tools for removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, none of them are close to keeping up with the volume of pollution we’re putting out today. Some — like carbon capture — also raise a red flag for net-zero critics because governments and industry are banking on the technology to continue using oil, coal and gas at a time when climate scientists and energy experts agree there is no future that includes both fossil fuels and a livable planet.
As the world moves closer to its 2030 emissions-cutting milestone, governments, industries and companies are starting to feel the squeeze. Finding ways to keep emitting and somehow cancel out that pollution later on may sound appealing, but without the solutions we actually need to make that happen, it’s nothing more than wishful thinking.
Reads of the week
The Native American Journalists Association barred the New York Times from its conference over harmful coverage. The rift began in 2019 after the Times published an article on Inuit artists that was called out for harmful stereotypes, Matteo Cimellaro reports.
Elizabeth May wants running mate Jonathan Pedneault to be the “new face” of the federal Green Party. The pair launched a joint leadership bid, including identical platforms, on Wednesday, Natasha Bulowski reports.
Canada’s biggest banks risk being ejected from the UN’s net-zero banking club. They've got until next summer to come up with credible climate plans that include phasing out money for fossil fuels — or get the boot, John Woodside reports.
Forests can’t adapt to climate change fast enough. So humans are trying to help. Hanna Hett looks at how humans are reforesting parts of the B.C. wilderness — not for the climate as it is, but the climate that’s to come.
Health care on North Vancouver Island is in an “evolving state of crisis,” a new leaked document shows. Rochelle Baker uncovers another briefing note detailing the trouble unfolding in the region.
Ontario’s elementary teachers are ready for class as negotiations kick off. The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario is sitting down with the province’s Education Ministry and school board representatives to hash out a collective deal it hopes can address some of the inequities COVID-19 made worse, Morgan Sharp reports.
Have you been listening to The Salmon People?
We’re already on Episode 5! Catch up on the fight to save the salmon on website or head to Apple podcasts, Spotify or Google.