From “City Of Roses” To “Sin City North”

This is my final column for Biz X magazine. Twenty-three years is a long time, although leafing through all my columns it almost seems like yesterday.

I would like to start by thanking my wife Susan and my son Andrew for loving and supporting me through the ups and downs of a journalist’s career. And I want to thank Biz X Publisher Deborah Jones for giving me a soap box to stand on.

In 1898, American humourist and writer Finley Peter Dunne offered this advice: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

That lofty ideal has long been a mission to aspire to, for ink stained wretches like myself. I’m sure I have often fallen short of that pinnacle, although I seem to have offended some mighty people along the way.

Deborah, in her first “Publisher’s Note” in 1998, paid me a tribute: “Alan always has the knack of shedding the cold hard light of truth on his subjects.”

You make me blush Deborah.

I have actually contemplated this move for a while now. Former Windsor Star editor Carl Morgan once told me that good writing is very hard work. He was right.

I have always been a slow, meticulous writer and as I get older it gets harder still.

Way back in the mid 1970s, I quit the Toronto Globe and Mail. As a sports reporter with a morning newspaper, I had to meet murderous deadlines and file copy literally as the night games were ending.

I decided I didn’t want to subject myself to that kind of journalism on the run. I was fortunate enough to return to Windsor where I became a columnist and feature writer facing far less exacting deadlines.

In my younger days, I emulated Jack Dulmage, who was Sports Editor of the Windsor Star and famous for his delicate wordsmithing. I admired the wit and irreverence of Dick Beddoes, The Globe and Mail Sports Columnist, in the short time I was there.

I eventually latched onto Biz X, where I have struggled at times meeting the deadlines of a periodical that publishes 10 times a year.

Yes . . . I’m a procrastinator also.

My goals have been to inform, investigate, entertain, amuse and make people think.

If I kick the ruling class in the shins along the way so be it. Journalists like to make a difference, and I’m no different.

My introduction to Biz X coincided with my election to Windsor City Council, where I was seen as a dirt disturber by some and a watchdog by others. I suffered those stressors for 17 years before retiring in 2014.

Windsor’s political scene has always provided fertile ground for opinionists to unearth spin doctors and damage controllers who take themselves too seriously.

My first Biz X offering was in February of 1998. It was entitled “Time To Consolidate Our Marketing Forces.”

I identified seven entities, for the most part working in silos, to market Windsor Essex. The result was “a dog’s breakfast at worst and a patchwork quilt at best,” I declared sharply.

Nearly a quarter of a century has gone by, but in many respects the more things change the more they stay the same. In researching my archives, I came across numerous mentions of the need to shed the “City of Roses” tag (we hardly grow roses anymore) and find a new brand.

Despite calling in outside image consultants in 2008, at considerable cost, those efforts remain fruitless. Rose City has stood the test of time, mostly because we haven’t found something better.

Yves Landry, President of Chrysler Canada, died suddenly on March 15, 1998 one month after the birth of Biz X. It stirred memories of the birth of the Canderel Building, since Landry went to then Mayor Mike Hurst with the brainchild to expropriate the historic Norwich Block and convert it into Chrysler’s Canadian headquarters.

That decision became cannon fodder for journalists like me for years to come when the original plan to build 32 storeys dwindled down to 14.

The headline on my May, 2002 column read: “Honey I Shrunk The Tower.”

I hardly have space to mention all the topics I covered in my adopted role as advocate for the little guy, but I have tried to follow my own advice as printed on the Biz X website.

“I believe all businesses share a common interest in how governments spend tax dollars with an emphasis on exposing and commenting on the political gymnastics and taxation excesses of bureaucracies.”

Sadly, holding government spending to account is a near impossible task during the panic of the pandemic, when pretty well anything goes.

For the purpose of this epistle, however, I will offer one classic example of the little guys getting snookered.

In 2005, the city hiked the liquor licensing fees by 600 percent on mom and pop breakfast places, with a few beers for sale in ice boxes. Pete’s Place, across from Windsor Arena, was one of the victims. The city said the extra money was needed to cover policing costs.

In stark contrast, the City of Windsor subsidized the celebrations of the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit to the tune of $250,000 U.S.

The international media had a field day carving out its own brand for Windsor — “Sin City North” — catering to jet setters on the prowl for the hedonistic pleasures of Windsor’s more liberal laws. Remember Jasons’ laptop dancers and licensed prostitutes?

Since then the city has been flipping tens of thousands to market the “Detroit Grand Prix” auto race.

Local politicians love to throw tax money at mega projects and events on the premise that they create jobs. I found an article recently that lays bare the folly of that expectation.

A federal government watchdog recently released a study declaring that a super cluster of innovation projects, heavily bankrolled by the Liberal government, created roughly 14 jobs for every $1 million in funding.

Legendary Chicago Mayor Richard Daley once supposedly said that it wasn’t politically useful to spend money “below ground.” Shiny new skyscrapers are appreciated more than sewer and water systems.

As our roads and sewers continued to rot, Windsor politicians continued to covet fancy bricks and mortar like a $78.1 million aquatic centre that has been bleeding red ink since its opening downtown in late 2013.

That project led to the closure of Windsor Arena, still vacant, and Water World, today serving as a daytime haven for the homeless.

The city ultimately built a new arena, at the expense of the taxpayer, on the outskirts of the city for $71 million.

My most controversial Biz X column? Probably the one in September 2019 entitled “The Trials And Tribulations Of Downtown Windsor.” It followed the departure of Starbucks from downtown, and I speculated: “Does A Cloud Of Doom Shroud Downtown Windsor?”

I have concluded that downtown Windsor will never die. But, for downtown retail stores? Well that has pretty well already happened.

As for me, I don’t intend to head out to pasture. I continue to dream of publishing a book or two, and hopefully avoid any hard deadlines.

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Ontario’s Shame: Private Sector Long Term Care

“Care Not Profits.” That is the slogan embraced by a coalition of passionate lobbyists calling for profound changes to Ontario’s Long-Term Care system in the wake of startling revelations of neglect this summer.

As the headline above suggests, the protesters are calling for the end of privatization of Long-Term Care Homes in the province.

Easier said than done.

Private Long-Term Care has been entrenched as a staple in Ontario since Mike Harris was Premier (1995 to 2002). Dismantling the model would drive the province much deeper into crippling debt.

I’m all for free enterprise, but not when it imperils the lives of our most vulnerable citizens. This is not an industry private corporations should control.

Critics of the current government of Premier Doug Ford point to reports that 57 percent of Ontario Long-Term Care Homes are run by private operators, more than any other province.

One of the prime advocates of the privatization campaign is CARP, formerly known as the Canadian Association for Retired Persons.

A difference maker in this fight is 84 year old Henry Johnson, Secretary of CARP’s Windsor-Essex Chapter 7.

He was Chief Organizer of a “CARP Advocacy Walk”, where walkers were advocating for a voice for seniors in Long-Term Care, on October 18 in Windsor.

Windsor Essex emerged as a hot spot in the province-wide crisis exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are 19 Long-Term Care (LTC) Homes and 23 Retirement Homes in Windsor Essex. As of late October, since the start of the pandemic there have been 76 deaths due to COVID-19, in the region. Fifty-three of those resided in LTC Homes and Retirement Homes (according to the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit).

Prior to the awareness walk, Johnson, supported by CUPE, Unifor and Service Employee International (SEIU) unions, penned a letter to Premier Ford demanding “Care Not Profits.”

The letter claims that amidst all the pain, suffering and COVID-19 deaths of seniors in Ontario, three of the largest companies in the sector paid out $58 million in dividends to shareholders.

“The profit should be turned back to the Long-Term Care Homes for the welfare of residents,” Johnson told me in an interview.

CARP claims the money should have gone to care for vulnerable residents and hiring front line workers at a living wage.

Profit facilities have 17% fewer staff than non-profit homes and are slower to upgrade air conditioning and other infectious disease control measures, CARP claims.

It caught Premier Ford’s attention when his mother-in-law tested positive for COVID-19 in a Toronto LTC Home.

He has appointed a commission, which is investigating the findings of the Canadian Armed Forces in September. The forces visited seven LTC Homes in the province and found cockroaches, bug infestations, rotting food, soiled linens and other disturbing conditions.

I interviewed Mike Cardinal, high profile owner of the independent west end Retirement Home, Cardinal Place (3140 Peter Street, Windsor and online at: CardinalPlace.ca), to get his take on the travesty.

Retirement Homes are self-funded residences that provide rental accommodation with care and services for seniors who can live independently with minimal to moderate support. They receive no government funding.

LTC Homes are for adults who need access to on-site 24-hour nursing care and frequent assistance with activities of daily living such as bathing, eating and general hygiene. Cardinal says many homes have cut back on their cleaning, which exposes residents to life threatening Clostridium difficile infections.

LTC Homes, according to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, receive $180.80 per day (base Level of Care) per qualified resident in subsidies from the government, and that money can be gobbled up by the profit takers.

“The amount of fat at the top of some of those large corporations is just disgusting,” says Cardinal. He finds it “horrifying” that PSWs at some understaffed LTC Homes are allowed only five or 10 minutes to wash, dress and feed dementia patients, in the morning. He uses the analogy of an assembly line with row upon row of four seniors in a room allowing COVID-19 to spread more easily.
While he finds such practices deplorable, Cardinal does not agree that all privately-owned LTC Homes should be banned.

“Why wipe out those companies that are doing a good job?” he asks.

Inspectors can quickly unearth who the bad actor operators are by simply talking to PSWs who have moved from home to home.

There are pitfalls, however. Johnson’s group has advocated for a national standard of care, an idea Prime Minister Justin Trudeau latched onto recently. Trudeau offered money, but the provinces, including Ontario, rejected the idea, saying setting health care standards is a provincial responsibility.

Prior to the pandemic, the province scaled back on random inspections of LTC Homes, but the heat has been turned up on that issue, given what the military discovered. I say that random, drop-in inspections are the way to go if resident care in LTC Homes is to be maintained at acceptable levels.

Some unionized PSWs are not badly paid. I’m told that staff in certain Windsor LTC Homes receive $24 an hour, but Johnson says many of the part-time workers are single women with children and have left the industry because they can’t make a go of it.

The Ford government, on October 1, started upping the pay of PSWs by $3 per hour, but so far that is a temporary measure to attract workers.

Recently, adds Johnson, local operators won’t hire workers who also work for some other home. That too has driven caregivers from the profession.

“Stop Warehousing Seniors,” was plastered all over CARP’s calling card, urging supporters to attend its October walk. The pamphlet calls for a new model of care for our precious seniors, a family-centred care, small home like environments, higher staff to resident ratios, full-time, well-paid staff that are trained in empathy.

“We treat our children very, very well,” concludes Johnson, a former teacher. “We need to bring our care of seniors up to the same standard.”

Amen to that!

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Premier Aviation Freebie Extended To Fourth Year

It’s hard to believe, but my approximate eight-year odyssey to extract critical information from the City of Windsor on its chattels at Windsor International Airport, has reached a conclusion.

My requests to the province’s Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) started in 2012 when Premier Aviation began operation of an airframe Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility.

The $23 million, 144,000 square foot space was funded and constructed by the city and federal government with the promise by former Mayor Eddie Francis and others that it would be a major employer, and possibly an engine for a new aerospace industry on the city’s airport lands.

In fact, predictions that the MRO would employ well over 300 workers continue to fall well short, despite herculean assistance from governments.

My first successful Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the IPC revealed, by way of a June, 2014 order, that Premier was allowed to lease the monstrous hangar for the first three years of a 20 year contract at $1 a year. As an adjunct, the facility doesn’t pay property taxes.

Six years later, my latest FOI resulted in a startling March 11, 2020 order from IPC Adjudicator Jenny Ryu. It revealed that Windsor and its wholly-owned subsidiary YQG, agreed in June of 2015 to waive the contract fee for year four of the lease, which ran from April 23, 2015 to April 22, 2016.

That gesture saved the company $120,000, effectively extending the taxpayer supported freebie.

A year and a half later, in September of 2017, the unlamented Canadian owned Premier Aviation sold the company to AAR Aircraft Services, a respected MRO provider headquartered in Illinois.

By then, my second FOI request had unearthed covenants in Premier’s contract with YQG that obligated the service provider to hire 100 full-time employees within the first year, 175 employees by the end of the second year and 325 by the end of the seventh year.

My third request unearthed the information that Premier would be on the hook for stiff penalties $5,000 times the difference between the number of employees guaranteed in the contract and the actual number delivered.

I subsequently asked YQG to provide the number of employees hired in year one and two and the number employed as the seventh year approached in mid 2019, and how much the company paid in penalties if those job guarantees were not achieved.

A battery of lawyers toiling on behalf of the city, YQG, Premier and AAR moved heaven and earth to keep those numbers hidden during the glacial-speed FOI process. I’m tempted to file an FOI to find out the amount of legal fees expended by the city on this file.

Suffice to say the fees are a few bucks (LOL) more than I paid to pursue my objectives. It cost me $5 to file each request to the city, and $25 per appeal to the IPC when the city denied me access to the information.

AAR is a publicly traded company and that explains it. The adjudicator noted there are four affected parties representing AAR, and there were claims that certain disclosures would interfere with its contractual and labour negotiations, resulting in financial loss to the American owned company. Ryu rejected those arguments.

Her order to release YQG documents that are responsive to my requests lacks explicit details. For instance, we still do not know exactly how many full-time jobs were created at the end of years one, two and seven of the service agreement.

We do know that the targets fell short and certain penalties were waived. YQG admitted as much to an IPC mediator, identified on page three of Ryu’s order.

We also know, through a recent interview with David Robertson, AAR Vice President of Windsor Operations, that the company has never approached a workforce of 300, although not from a lack of trying.

“We have 150 to 160 workers, including technicians and administrative staff, when we are working full out,” he indicated.

Business was good earlier this year, before the pandemic hit and decimated the aviation industry world wide. AAR workers were laid off and receiving government assistance.

In early July, 60 percent of the workforce was called back to work on two Embraer planes in the hangar that can handle six aircraft at a time.

Robertson has stated he would like to see 300 staff within a couple of years, but a big drag on that objective is a lack of skilled labour.

“Kids today don’t want to get into the technical trades, they want to start at the top,” he says, noting that his recruiting efforts to lure technicians to Windsor to earn $80,000 to $90,000 a year have been frustrated by other MRO outfits, many of them AAR owned.

“We’re all competing in the same talent pool,” he concludes.

Let me return to Premier Aviation and the question of whether Premier paid all its rent and subsequent penalties to the city prior to AAR’s purchase of Premier on September 8 of 2017.

On that point, YQG released a statement, dated August 22, 2017, that showed Premier was past due in the amount of $169,500, plus interest, reflecting five monthly payments of the contract fee covering the fifth year of its agreement with the city, which had escalated to $240,000.

Premier committed to paying the arrears and meeting all other obligations to the city as a condition of the sale.

Premier also agreed in that statement to pay $360,000, in monthly instalments, on a contract fee payable in each of years six to 10 of the terms of agreement.

Of course, by year six the MRO company had been turned over to AAR and I don’t know what that agreement with the city is. We can be assured that job guarantees are not part of it.

I could carry on with a request to IPC for more details, but I have decided against it. I believe there’s enough information out there now for taxpayers to make a judgement on whether they got a proper bang for their buck.

Don’t ask me. After eight years of this, my brain needs a rest.

Here’ my previous columns related to Premier Aviation:

• Premier Aviation Jobs Deal Exposed – September 4, 2018
• Did City Pardon Penalties On Premier Job Guarantees? – November 21, 2018

The views and opinions expressed by Alan Halberstadt do not necessarily reflect those of Biz X magazine or its advertisers.

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David Croll: A Mayor Who Went Above And Beyond

On March 25, 2020, a couple of weeks after we were gobsmacked by the coronavirus, a unified City of Windsor Council voted to defer property tax payments and arrears for 90 days. Mayor Drew Dilkens heralded the compassionate measure as something Windsor has not seen since the days of legendary Mayor David Croll in the throes of the Great Depression in the 1930s. 

The reference piqued my curiosity, and I embarked on a bit of a research mission to find out more about Croll, other than the fact the park adjacent to City Hall is named after him.

I determined there is no danger that his name will ever be removed from the park in an enlightened era when University of Windsor alumni are petitioning for the removal of the name of Canada’s first Prime Minister — John A. Macdonald — from a prominent campus hall.

Macdonald was a staunch conservative who helped start the harsh residential schools that separated indigenous children from their families.

Croll, in contrast, would be comfortable embracing today’s Black Lives Matter crusade. Born in a Moscow slum in 1900, he emigrated to Canada with his family when he was five years old.

He rose to become Windsor’s first Jewish Mayor, Ontario’s first Jewish Cabinet Minister and Canada’s first Jewish Senator.

He served two terms as Windsor’s Mayor, between 1931 and 1934 and 1939-40. A lawyer and businessman, he first won office at age 30 in the wake of “Black Tuesday”, the stock market crash on October 29, 1929.

This is not to belittle what the current City Council is doing for its citizens in the pandemic era. For one thing, there is no consensus among economic tall foreheads that we are on the cusp of a Depression or if the pandemic will result in one.

Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine any Mayor matching Croll’s feats of generosity and humanity. Nationalities aside, he fought for the poor, wherever he might find them.

“He genuinely looked after people’s welfare,” concludes historian Patrick Brode, author of “Border Cities Powerhouse,” a recently published book that catalogues Windsor’s histry from 1900 to 1945.

Brode identified one of Croll’s greatest accomplishments as Mayor; convincing the province to pass the Moratorium Act, which delayed payments on individual mortgages that were in default.
In his book, “The People’s Senator: The Life and Times of David A. Croll,” author R. Warren James outlined claims by Croll in his 1932 re-election campaign that he reduced the city’s bonded indebtedness by $1.5 million in a two year period, while spending $500,000 on relief.

Later on in his tenure, after getting elected to the provincial legislature in 1934 and appointed Minister of Municipal Affairs and Public Welfare, on top of being Mayor, Croll was instrumental in the amalgamation of Windsor, Sandwich, East Windsor and Walkerville in 1935.

According to an obituary in Maclean’s magazine in 1991, Croll arranged to forego paying interest on the city’s municipal bonds and instead used available funds to feed the hungry.

The Border Cities had to pay all the money back to the province, even when the debt extended right into the 1950s, reveals Brode: “All future debentures taken out by the city had to be approved by Toronto.”

For various reasons, one being the collapse of the auto industry, the “Dirty Thirties” cut deeper in Windsor.

As unemployment rose to 24.9 percent in 1933, the young Mayor joined citizens on the bread lines and soup kitchens. He put his own family on a welfare-level lifestyle as a mark of solidarity with the poor.
In December of 1933, he ordered the Windsor welfare department to give every family on its rolls a Christmas turkey.

In 1934, the city faced insolvency, which led to 28,638 persons receiving relief throughout the year.

Croll became a soul mate of Liberal Premier Hepburn, who recruited him to run for the provincial legislature in 1934. As mentioned, he served as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Public Welfare.

In 1937, however, he had a falling out with Hepburn when he supported Oshawa General Motors workers’ bid to form a union. Hepburn backed the company and the rift prompted the principled Croll to resign his cabinet post, and declare the immortal words: “My place is marching with the workers rather than riding with General Motors.”

Enhancing his career in 1945, Croll was elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal representative in the downtown Toronto Spadina riding. A public housing apartment was named after him there.

He was appointed to the Senate in 1955, a post Croll held for 36 years until his death on June 11, 1991, at the age of 91.

In Ottawa, he was active in campaigns that introduced or expanded unemployment insurance, old age pensions and family allowances, as well as a battle for higher standards of living for Canada’s native people. All told, he spent over 60 years in public life.

Research for this column was gleaned from “The People’s Senator: The Life and Times of David A. Croll,” a book by R. Warren James, published in 1990; a 1991 article in Maclean’s magazine entitled “A Canadian of value” and “From The Vault: A Photo History Of Windsor,” published in 2014 by the Windsor Star.

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Is Farm Labour Exempt From Ontario Works Rules?

As sometimes happens with monthly publications, events overtake the original declarations. Such is the case here with the post deadline emergence of evidence that some regional farms did not offer proper care to their seasonal workers, contributing to a heart-rending outbreak of COVID-19. What the pandemic wrought on this industry was unpredictable, leaving us to wonder why anyone would want to work on a farm. Canadians and offshore workers alike. We are hopeful that reform is on the way.

Invariably during times of economic strife and widespread unemployment in our region, the call goes out to send the unemployed to work in the greenhouses and vegetable and fruit fields around Kingsville and Leamington.

There were various media accounts this spring about migrant workers from Mexico and Jamaica having difficulty crossing the U.S. border due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Thankfully, after government intervention, they were allowed to enter the country, and after 14 day quarantines, they were able to harvest the crops of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers etc. and avert financial disaster for farm and greenhouse owners.

There are an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 migrant workers in Essex County, according to Joseph Sbrocchi, General Manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers.

The media attention on the crisis prompted some commentators to question why unemployed Ontarians and Canadians apparently won’t do this kind of work.

Ontario Works regulations say jobless people must actively seek work in order to continue to receive social assistance benefits.

Is there an unwritten rule exempting farm work from that requirement? Our guardians of the public purse didn’t want to touch that hot potato with a 10-foot pole.

I left a message for Jelena Payne, City of Windsor’s Commissioner of Community Development and Health Services, requesting a phone interview. Payne’s Assistant called me back and said I needed to pose any questions to the communications branch of Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services.

A polite young man named Daniel Schultz from that department asked me to send him the questions. After an email exchange that I felt didn’t answer my core question, I decided to get blunt.
“Is there ever the occasion when a social assistance recipient is cut off benefits because he or she is able-bodied and refuses to seek a job, or take a job, in a greenhouse or in a vegetable or fruit field in Ontario?”

Here is Schultz’s roundabout reply . . .“For the purposes of eligibility for Ontario Works, adults receiving social assistance are required to participate in employment assistance activities to help them find, prepare for and keep a job. These activities are determined on an individual basis between a client and their caseworker and may include job search, employment placement and job retention services, and access to basic education. Additionally, recipients are required to make reasonable efforts to accept and maintain full-time, part-time, or casual employment if they are physically capable, for the purposes of eligibility.”

Next I called Sbrocchi, who is based in Leamington. Historcally, Ontarians have not wanted to do seasonal work,” he understated.

When I asked him if farm workers are exempt from Ontario Works eligibility rules, he quipped: “You’ll have to ask the government that.” When I told him I already did so, he replied: “The response of Canadians to come forward looking for agricultural jobs is disappointing. Hopefully people will come around, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

There are starkly different points of view on this issue. The old school chalks it up to a culture that is too soft, catering to a lazy younger generation with an aversion to hard labour, or labour of any kind.

In this pandemic era, why would an unemployed person take a job on a farm when he/she can sit at home and collect $2,000 a month (this was allowed during a certain time frame) from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

On the other hand, in normal times, a single person on social assistance in Ontario is paid only $656 a month. A couple with two children gets $1,173. The intent of Ontario Works is to help residents find employment, develop job skills and get financial help with necessities while they look for work.

A temporary worker in Ontario receives a minimum wage of $14 an hour, with free lodging and one trip into town a week. Sbrocchi says migrants, many of whom have been coming to Essex County for decades, push hard to work 55 hours a week or more in our greenhouses or fields.

He tells the story of a conversation he had with one Mexican worker recently, who has been coming back for nine years to help feed his family back home and send his son to law school.

“He boasted that he makes more money working here for eight months of the year than his son earns as a lawyer for a full year in Mexico City,” Sbrocchi informed me.

The minimum wage in Mexico, which had a 20 percent boost in 2020, is $11.95 CAN a day — not an hour.

“I’d love to see more Canadians pursue job opportunities in agriculture,” says Justin Falconer, CEO of Workforce WindsorEssex, a workforce and community development board whose mission is to lead regional employment and community planning for the development of a strong and sustainable workforce.

The non-profit agency, with core funding from the provincial government, has a job match board that fluctuates hourly. On May 27, 2020, of 956 jobs available for unskilled workers, 112, or 11.7 percent, were for greenhouse workers.

Farm operators are obliged by federal law to advertise job openings for domestic job seekers in newspapers, or they can’t employ foreign workers. Sadly, there are precious few local applicants.
Falconer and Sbrocchi, as part of their mandate to attract domestic workers, are trying to upgrade the image of farm workers.

“There’s a stigma attached to the word migrants,” states Sbrocchi, who has taken to calling them “guest workers”.

There is a skill set required to do farm work, he adds, drawing a comparison to a busy coffee shop worker who has learned how to efficiently pour a cup of coffee.

“The picking and packing jobs are entry level jobs and provide a tremendous opportunity to learn the industry on the ground floor and have an opportunity for advancement into jobs such as forklift driver, inspecting, purchasing, marketing and supervisor,” says Falconer. “Training is also available from the employer.” 

The working conditions in greenhouses can actually be quite pleasant, with bright sunlight and controlled temperatures.

The image of the agriculture industry suffered a blow this spring with a COVID-19 outbreak and the deaths of young migrant workers employed in the county. As tragic as this is, it is not surprising given the communal setting of the temporary worker bunkhouses.

Farm operators are required to provide infected employees with places to isolate in off-site housing such as hotels, and keep track of information made available to the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit.

Sbrocchi insists the bunkhouses of the biggest operators are state of the art facilities and subject to the oversight of six different federal departments.

“The industry is evolving and changing” says Falconer, who expresses hope that the future will see more Canadians in these jobs.

Everything is possible in this new pandemic age, including even that.

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