As part of Farmworker Awareness Week, join migrant workers, organizers, historians, and allies from across the country to mark 60 years since the creation of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP).
This event will feature migrant worker leaders speaking for themselves, alongside historian Edward Dunsworth and community organizers Chris Ramsaroop, Byron Cruz, and Sonia Aviles connecting 60 years of labour history to today’s fights over food sovereignty, affordability, and food insecurity.
SAWP began on March 31, 1966 to bring migrant workers to Canadian farms. But it has since become more than one farm labour program, helping lay the foundation for a wider system of temporariness that Canada has expanded across sectors, bringing migrants here to do essential work on temporary or precarious status while denying them permanent resident status and full rights.
Today, Canada says it wants to make groceries more affordable, strengthen domestic food production, support food banks, and build more resilient supply chains. The federal government has announced new food-affordability measures, a Food Security Fund, support for food banks, and a National Food Security Strategy focused on domestic production and access to affordable food.
But the workers who grow, harvest, and process that food are being scapegoated for the affordability crisis.
Canada’s agriculture and agri-food system generated $149.2 billion in GDP in 2024 – none of it possible without the nearly 100,000 migrant workers directly planting, harvesting and processing food.
For decades, migrant workers have kept rural and coastal economies running. They pay taxes even as they are denied the same social services and excluded from rights, dignity, and permanent status they deserve. Migrant workers are not the cause of food insecurity or rising prices. They are a key part of the solution.
This event will connect the history of SAWP to the realities facing migrant farm and fishery workers today, and to the broader fights over food sovereignty, affordability, and food insecurity. Come hear why Status for All is essential not only for migrant workers, but for a just and resilient food system.