A class action lawsuit alleging Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program exploits the labour and Charter rights of agricultural workers can proceed, a judge decided last week.

The lawsuit, filed in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, alleges that the federal government “enriched” itself by collecting employment insurance premiums (EI) from workers in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) despite not allowing them to collect EI. It also argues the program is inherently discriminatory to Mexican and Caribbean workers and has been since its inception.

“It’s about trying to change the conditions where workers can actually get access to these benefits, change the conditions where workers have labour and social mobility and they have some ability for dignity and respect in the workplace,” said Chris Ramsaroop, an organizer with Justice for Migrant Workers, a group supportive of the lawsuit filed by Goldblatt Partners.

In a statement, Employment and Social Development Canada said it does not comment on cases currently before the courts.

“EI is an insurance-based program that is fully funded by employers and workers in Canada. As such, all workers in insurable employment in Canada, including foreign workers, pay EI premiums regardless of the industry in which they are employed and irrespective of whether they have an expectation of receiving benefits,” a spokesperson said.

With Justice Edward M. Morgan’s certification of the suit, it can now proceed to trial.

About 75,000 workers who were part of the SAWP program between 2008 and present will be part of the suit, Ramsaroop said.

Ramsaroop noted one of the lead applicants on the suit, Kevin Palmer, worked in Leamington, Ont.

There are a handful of factors forming the basis of the suit, Ramsaroop says. Despite contributing to EI, workers are unable to collect it. Their mobility is also limited because their work permit is tied to a specific employer.

Workers are also not permitted to choose where they live — and if a worker is sick or injured, they’re sent home.

Ramsaroop says these are conditions that Canada determined it could not place on white European immigrant workers in the 60s, but did to Jamaican, Caribbean and Mexico with the inception of the SAWP program in 1966.

“Prior to the emergence of the SAWP program in the 1960s, agricultural workers came, they had the ability to live here as equals, they had the ability for permanent, permanent residency,” he said. “And we’re saying the same thing should happen for agricultural workers today.”

In the decision certifying the suit, the judge summarized the Crown’s position as the SAWP being “the ordinary operation of policies which are properly authorized and legislated and which apply to all similarly situated persons.”

“The Crown submits that the SAWP is an advantageous program for seasonal agricultural workers who freely choose to participate in it,” the decision from Justice Edward M. Morgan reads.

Ramsaroop said that workers have long raised the EI issue with him, and says the lawsuit is about closing that gap.

Ramsaroop says he hopes to see policy change, as well as financial compensation for workers who paid into the EI system yet could not access it.