The number of foreign workers has increased sharply in recent years in Quebec and more and more of them are suffering injuries, at work or not. Even if many obtain the care to which they are entitled, their temporary foreign worker status poses significant limits. How to combine an accident or an illness with such a status? When the body doesn’t heal in time for the visa to expire. Today: a serious illness strikes down Yony Juarez Castillo far from his family.
Blue spots started appearing on his legs in the winter of 2022. “At first I didn’t pay attention,” says Yony Juarez Castillo. Then the bruises multiply; he begins to send photos to his wife in Guatemala. Not to worry her, but to get her to seek the advice of a local doctor.
A temporary foreign worker, he has been employed on a dairy farm in Montérégie since 2018, a little over three years.
Even if he begins to know them, he doesn’t dare ask his bosses to take him to see a doctor. “They are always super busy, it will bother them,” he thinks. Then, he notices that blood is mixed with his urine. It was then that the young father asked his employer to return to his country of origin: “I told myself that I could be treated and be close to my family. »
But the owners of the Roch Verner farm instead take him to the hospital. After examinations, the doctor tells him that he has leukemia. “I have cancer? “, he thinks, perplexed, he who has always worked six days a week and who is only 30 years old.
The rest follows quickly. He begins chemotherapy treatments in the summer of 2022. The healthcare team quickly judges that he needs a stem cell transplant. A compatible donor is found.
The problem? It would take eight months of follow-up and treatment after the transplant to ensure success. Like all temporary foreign workers in Canada, Mr. Juarez pays the same taxes and contributions as Quebecers. He is therefore entitled to health care, as long as his work permit is valid.
However, his employment contract does not expire until two months after the scheduled date of the operation, and he will therefore lose his public health insurance coverage.
A letter dated March 2, 2023 from the McGill University Health Center is however unequivocal: without this care, “his chances of survival without disease are of the order of 25-30%” and this treatment is not offered in Guatemala. .
“Every appointment, the doctor asked me if I was going to receive my health insurance extension,” says the young man of 30 years. A community worker, Fernanda Hünicken, then reassured the medical staff: “It’s not medical tourism, he was under contract at the time of the diagnosis. It’s a matter of life or death,” she said.
His only hope is then to benefit from a special measure, little known and rarely requested: the discretionary power for humanitarian reasons of the Minister of Health and Social Services. A request is therefore made on his behalf.
“From the moment he no longer works, he becomes undesirable. We let him fend for himself and he finds himself between two chairs when it comes time to access care, ”explains Mme Hünicken, who acts for the Migrant Agricultural Workers Assistance Network of Quebec (RATTMAQ). “For me, it’s a dehumanization of these workers,” she then blurts out.
Not just pitfalls
A month and a half after his request for an exception, the good news falls: Yony Juarez Castillo will have an extension of his health care coverage, so he can be operated on. “I was really relieved. I think I was lucky,” he told the Dutyalmost two months after the transplant.
The family man from Guatemala has an emaciated face, a dull complexion and a weak grip. “My daughter asked me on a video call, ‘Dad, why did you cut your hair?’ He cracks a smile when he thinks of his 5-year-old and his two other girls, ages 3 and 9.
“It’s because of the treatments that will cure me,” he tried to reassure her. But even when he tells it, his voice is thin. “I vomit everything I eat,” he eventually admits. He has hardly swallowed anything since his transplant last March.
He has “shrunk,” says Walter Guido Hernandez, a Montreal pastor, who, next to him, seems to have energy for four. Yony Juarez Castillo called him the night his diagnosis came in. “I told him not to sign anything that said he wanted to go back to his country of origin,” says this ally of temporary workers.
It’s not medical tourism, he was under contract at the time of the diagnosis. Its a question of life or death.
The pastor knows a whole chapter about immigration, temporary or permanent, he who came on foot from El Salvador to flee the war in 1990. He also supported Yony’s older brother in 2011, Saul Juarez Castillo, when he was victim of a serious road accident while he was a poultry catcher in the Bellechasse region. His colleague died of it and he remained in a coma for two months. “The hospital had almost declared him dead,” relates Mr. Guido Hernandez.
He too had to fight to receive all the care to which he was entitled, as reported by the media at the time.
A year after being diagnosed with aggressive leukemia, Yony Juarez Castillo is still under the wing of Pastor Guido Hernandez and RATTMAQ. Accommodation, medical appointments, subsistence, moral support: there is little he can do without the support of this network.
The hardest part is being away from loved ones, says the young man: “I always counted the months before going back to see them after a contract. »
“We hope that the family does not come just because he is in a coffin”, loose Walter Guido Hernandez, without filter.
Access to private insurance?
The father of the family also hopes to see them, but he does not have the means to bring them for the moment. His private insurance — which the majority of temporary workers subscribe to through a group contract — covers certain medications and has already paid him eight weeks of short-term disability benefits.
He would now like to know if the transportation of a loved one to support him in this ordeal is covered. The RATTMAQ has taken steps to obtain its full insurance policy, “not without a certain apprehension”, insists the legal intervener Fernanda Hünicken. “When you apply, you always get the same slip, which is a summary,” she says.
It is that in a similar case of a Mexican worker, it took eight months, in 2022, for lawyer Andrée-Anne B. Desbiens to extract all the details. Faced with the impossibility of obtaining the complete insurance policy from the Cowan firm, she multiplied the steps, including a request under the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector. The insurer refused.
“Basically, a person has the right to see their full policy. This is absolutely essential, because the table of guarantees [le résumé] does not contain everything”, explains the lawyer Desbiens. Cowan was actually referring to the “policyholder” of the insurance, ie the entity that enters into the contract. In the case of Mexican workers, it is the government of Mexico.
But after challenging the decision before the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, Ms.e Desbiens eventually received the entire font. Result: a provision provided for a financial benefit for the family in the event of hospitalization.
“It’s clear to me that not having access to all the police diminishes the ability to seek redress and keeps them in the dark,” she said.
As for Mr. Juarez Castillo, the steps are in progress. In his case, it is rather the Foundation of companies in recruitment of foreign labor (FERME) which contracted the insurance. “When they arrive at the airport, the welcome team gives them the documents”, assures Fernando Borja, general manager of this agency. And those who want the full insurance policy “must ask us for it,” he continues.
He notes that “insurance premiums remain stable” since such serious illnesses “are rare” among workers, he describes.
As for the migratory status, once the worker is no longer employed, it is no longer the responsibility of the FARM, nor of the agricultural producer. Yony Juarez Castillo’s license expired a few weeks ago and he is therefore awaiting status. An immigration lawyer has agreed to weigh his options for extending his visa or getting another one. “For the moment, I am concentrating on my health,” breathes the young man as he ends the interview before going to rest.