The COVID-19 pandemic

[tomh009]

Yes, this is true. Issue is that it seems cheaper to ship these workers from poor nations to Canada, house them, feed them, and pay them whatever, than hire Canadians to do the same job. Farm work is hard, no doubt though. And I am guessing that not many would do this for minimum wage or even close to it. Perhaps the government needs to look at incentives for farmers and farm workers to make hiring local for enticing.

(...)

And I'm not totally sure it would even solve anything. If they managed to find enough Canadians willing to do back breaking labor for low pay, and house them in dorms, we'd still be in a situation with a power imbalance in the relationship and living conditions which would result in spreading of this virus.

I've been reading some articles from Europe on this same topic, the inability to get migrant agricultural workers. They farmers have been trying to hire locally, with increased pay (not minimum) but not many people in developed countries are interested in this kind of work, partly because it really is hard work, partly because it's seasonal. And much of the work is done at piece rates, not hourly -- there was a quote from a local strawberry-picking employee who was shocked because the Ukrainian pickers were able to pick more than twice as many berries in the same amount of time.

And, as Dan says, replacing migrant workers with Canadian might not solve the COVID-19 issue anyway.