"I did not expect to be a slave here."
Bénédicte Carole Zé came to Canada in 2016 to work on a poultry farm after paying $10,000 in illegal recruitment fees for a job here. But once she arrived, she says she was forced to work 70- to 80-hour weeks for an employer who she alleges sexually abused her, controlled her banking and did not let her leave the house or have a cellphone, while threatening her with deportation if she complained.
"I lived two years under slavery," Zé, now a permanent resident and an advocate for migrant justice, said in French at a media conference in Montreal Thursday morning.
"An animal had more value than me. I had no rights."
The Cameroonian woman's story is just one of many accounts of exploitation and abuse in a new Amnesty International report into the experiences of labourers in the temporary foreign worker program (TFWP).
I think chicken marketing boards should find out who did this to this worker and cancel the quota.
Quota holders need to be reminded that their business depends on governments which have granted extraordinary privileges. Abusing those privileges is unconscionable.
And if the marketing boards fail to investigate and take appropriate action, their provincial and national supervisory agencies ought to.
