Migrant farmworkers on 1,500-kilometre caravan to Ottawa

Fifty years after Canada began flying in seasonal workers to help out on the farm, a group is rallying to have the program’s participants granted permanent immigration status.  “These are the workers putting food on our tables, but they’re not being treated the same as other workers,” said Elizabeth Ha, a member of Harvesting Freedom, a migrant farmworker caravan travelling over the next several weeks from Windsor to Ottawa to highlight issues facing those seasonal visitors.  Facing unemployment at home on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Gabriel Allahdua said it was a “great, great, great moment in my life” when he was selected to participate in the program and visit his first developed country. Allahdua spent four years at an Ontario farm, but he said his initial “high expectations” were met with disappointment.