Migrant agricultural workers are employed in one of Canada’s most hazardous industries. The precarious nature of their temporary contracts makes these workers further vulnerable to a variety of health issues, including workplace injury and illness.

When a migrant worker is injured on the job in Ontario, they encounter numerous barriers to accessing health care and workers’ compensation, and many are prematurely deported…

In our decades of conducting community-based health research, we have found that injured migrant workers generally report a lack of awareness of and confusion about workers’ compensation — and face many barriers to filing claims.

Those who do file claims report several challenges, including poor treatment from case managers and insufficient support to access health care and recover from their injuries…

To seriously address the injustices facing injured migrant workers, we recommend the WSIB expand their recent announcement to include all workers who have been injured in Ontario since the WSIB’s practice of deeming began in the 1990s.

The WSIB should also provide all injured migrant workers with greater return-to-work supports — on par with resident workers — that are accessible and provided in workers’ preferred languages, including meaningful opportunities to retrain and reintegrate into the Canadian labour market…