Contract Labour in Canada and The United States: A Critical Appreciation of Tanya Basok's Tortillas and Tomatoes: Transmigrant Mexican Harvesters in Canada

Abstract

Between the mid 1960s and mid 1970s the Canadian government entered into agreements with Mexico and various Caribbean nations the largest being Jamaica to supply contract workers to farmers in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and Manitoba. The government was responding to powerful agricultural lobbies that had pushed for years to secure something more than stop-gap measures to rectify what they claimed was a chronic labour shortage. The program made it possible for Third World workers and peasants to spend between six weeks and eight months annually in Canada, working mainly in tobacco, greenhouses, and open field fruits and vegetables. Perhaps because of its small size (until recently less than 10,000 workers annually), reputed success as measured by the high percentage of return migrants, and geographically limited reach (southern areas of four provinces), the program attracted little attention from Canadian politicians, the Canadian public, or academics (though see Cecil and Ebanks, 1 99 1 , 1 992). Public and academic interest in Canadian contract labour has increased since the late 1990s.1 Not only has the number of offshore