Montreal, Canada – “It would be contrary to the whole Canadian belief in freedom of the individual.”
The year was 1952, and Canada’s then-minister of immigration, Walter Harris, was rebuffing the idea of tying immigrant farmworkers from Europe to their Canadian employers.
“However, it is my opinion that the Canadian people would be entirely opposed to any such practice.”
Fifteen years later, however, government officials were singing a different tune. Continuing to face labour shortages in the agricultural sector, Canada began bringing in Black and Indo-Caribbean seasonal farmworkers.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/9/overtly-racist-lawsuit-challenges-canadas-migrant-farmworker-system