Canada is exploring what it can do to protect migrant workers after two died of COVID-19.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recently, and the issue of working and living conditions for migrant workers came up.
Trudeau said he also expressed his condolences to the families of 24-year-old Rogelio Munoz Santos and 31-year-old Boniface Eugenio Romero. The men died after contracting the virus while working in the agriculture sector in Leamington.
As of Tuesday, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit reported outbreaks at three agricultural workplaces in Kingsville and six in Leamington. Many of the newest cases of COVID-19 in Windsor-Essex have been among the migrant worker population.
"We know that there are many issues from living conditions, to the fact that they're tied individually to particular companies or employers, to various challenges to labour standards that require looking at," Trudeau told reporters. "Even look at things like pathways to citizenship that could give people more rights."
The conditions inside bunkhouses, where migrant workers live while employed in Canada, are under federal jurisdiction.
This week, Mexico put a pause on sending 5,000 migrant workers to Canada because of the spread of COVID-19 in the temporary foreign worker population. The country has questions regarding how the workers caught the virus after spending 14-days in quarantine after arriving in Canada.
Trudeau stressed the importance of migrant workers during his daily COVID-19 update with reporters on Tuesday.
"We rely on temporary foreign workers for a large part of our agricultural production," he said. "But, we should always take advantage of moments of crisis to reflect on can we change the system to do better."
