(Ottawa) Temporary foreign workers who are poorly protected during the pandemic. A significant number of travelers returning home without the Public Health Agency ensuring they are complying with quarantine orders. And a food system that still remains vulnerable to the shocks of a health crisis.
Auditor General Karen Hogan flays the Trudeau government in a report tabled Thursday in the House of Commons on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in cases that have made headlines in recent months.
The Auditor General is particularly critical of the treatment that Canadian authorities gave to temporary foreign workers during the pandemic.
Among other things, she found that inspectors from the Department of Employment and Social Development were content to perform summary checks, if not incomplete, to ensure that employers were meeting the requirements imposed during the pandemic to protect safety. and the health of these workers.
For example, she notes that inspectors have often found that the employers in question were meeting COVID-19 quarantine requirements, including housing workers separately, even though they had been provided with little or no evidence. in this sense. His investigation, which spanned almost a year, showed that this was not the case.
Mme Horgan decided to inform the government of these shortcomings in the middle of his investigation in December 2020. To his surprise, the situation worsened thereafter. The number of inspections with deficiencies rose from 73% to 88%, not to mention the ministry was lagging behind in the number of inspections to be carried out.
During the pandemic, the ministry used virtual inspections to verify employers’ compliance with the requirements.
In some cases, inspectors noted on file that employers were not meeting quarantine requirements, such as providing cleaning and disinfectant products during the two-week isolation, but no follow-up was done by the following.
Worse still, inspections of minimum living conditions, such as access to running water and the occupancy rate in housing during the season, were incomplete. In almost all cases, the inspectors did not collect the relevant information, but still reported that the employers were complying with the applicable standards.
Also, inspections carried out following the reporting of COVID-19 outbreaks revealed similar problems, raising concerns to the Auditor General that employers had not provided sick or symptomatic workers with space to isolate themselves. correctly. However, the respect of the minimum conditions takes “an even greater importance in the context of a pandemic with protocols of disinfection and social distancing”, underlines it in its report.
Several outbreaks of COVID-19 have been reported among temporary foreign workers in 2020 and 2021. There have also been at least three deaths from this virus.
“We found that the inspections carried out by Employment and Social Development Canada – both in relation to quarantine, outbreaks or minimum living conditions – had given little assurance that the health and safety of temporary foreign agricultural workers were protected during the growing seasons in 2020 and 2021, ”says the Auditor General in her report.
Before the pandemic, the ministry had been singled out for the poor quality of inspections. He then undertook to correct the shooting.
“These results reveal the presence of a systemic problem in the ministry’s inspection regime that requires immediate attention,” said the Auditor General.
Temporary foreign workers have become an essential workforce over the years to enable agricultural businesses to operate. It has also become crucial for the food processing industry.
In 2019, 54,000 temporary foreign workers came to Canada for jobs on nearly 4,700 farm operations or businesses.
In the years leading up to the pandemic, advocates for temporary foreign workers and some governments of foreign countries denounced the poor living conditions available to them in Canada, including overcrowded housing.
In its response to the report, the Ministry of Employment and Social Development acknowledged these shortcomings, noting in particular that the quarantine inspection regime “was developed in two weeks” and that the program had to be adapted according to ” changing guidelines ”in health. The ministry is committed to adopting corrective measures, in concert with the provinces, responsible for the housing sector.
Border control measures
The Auditor General has also combed through the management of border control measures by the Public Health Agency. And there again, it notes many shortcomings.
For example, in June and May 2020, it found that the agency was unable to confirm whether 66% of people arriving in the country met the conditions for quarantine. A year later, the percentage of travelers for whom the Agency had been unable to verify whether they had met their quarantine obligations had fallen to 37% thanks to the introduction of the collection of travelers’ contact details electronically instead. than on paper.
“Although the Public Health Agency of Canada has improved its results, this is not a success. The inability of the Agency to confirm whether more than a third of travelers comply with quarantine orders remains a significant problem, ”Karen Horgan said in her report.
Its investigation also made it possible to demonstrate that the Agency had not adequately implemented two new border control measures introduced at the beginning of 2021. First, the Agency had no information or was unable to associate 30% of the results of the tests for COVID-19 to travelers who arrived in the country between the months of February and June 2021. Then, the Agency did not know if the people who were to quarantine themselves in a hotel designated by the government did so because it did not have a stay register for 75% of travelers arriving in Canada by plane.
“People are starting to travel again and new variants continue to emerge, which is why the Agency must improve the way it manages and enforces border controls that aim to limit the introduction into Canada of the COVID virus. 19 and its variants, ”recalls Ms. Hogan.
As for the Canadian food system, the Auditor General points out that the federal government still does not have a national response plan to react to a major crisis such as a pandemic, even if Ottawa recognized in 2009, that is to say there is 12 years old, that the food sector is “an essential piece of infrastructure”.