A Protest Against “Modern Slavery” in Front of Labour Minister’s Office

This Friday morning, demonstrators affiliated with the Comité d'Action en Solidarité avec la Construction au Québec (the action committee in solidarity with quebec construction workers, or CASCQ, which plays off the French word for ‘helmet’) picketed in front of the office of Quebec's Ministry of Labour, Jean Boulet. The activists denounced the use of temporary foreign workers in the construction industry, as well as the law “modernizing the construction industry”.

“Basically, we wanted to occupy the office to get our message across to Minister Boulet, but he didn't want to have a conversation with us,” explains CASCQ coordinator Renaud Simard to North Star journalists in front of the office in Trois-Rivières. “That's why we're out here getting the message across to the rest of the population.” 

Denouncing the Exploitation of Foreign Workers

“We're demonstrating against a reform that Minister Boulet adopted last May, because it's a law that will negatively impact the whole of society, and especially temporary foreign workers on closed permits.” According to the demonstrators, the application of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker program (described by the UN as “fertile ground for modern slavery”) to Quebec's construction industry will cause several problems, especially in terms of workplace safety.

“These are vulnerable workers who will enter one of the sectors with the highest rate of workplace deaths,” adds Simard. “On top of that, they can't denounce abuse because their visa ties them to a single employer who will send them back to their country very quickly.”

Despite the fact that construction workers represent only 5% of the workforce in Quebec, 32% of workplace fatalities occur in the construction industry.

According to the coordinator, “It's also going to have a detrimental impact on workers with status: the more foreign workers that are forced to take unsafe work under the table, the more that employers will be able to pressure union workers to perform unsafe tasks as well." 

A law for “the rich and the developers”

Several other aspects of the construction reform are denounced by the demonstrators, such as inter-regional mobility: “It's certainly not going to be good for rural regions, the fact that workers who, for example, live in Trois-Rivières will no longer have priority for jobs in Trois-Rivières.”

“Just like weakening regulation on the trades which will make it so that, for example, a pipe fitter can do a plasterer's job, without the necessary qualifications." According to Mr. Simard, this deregulation can only be detrimental to the quality of construction in Quebec: “It's not good for our schools, it's not good for our housing, it's not good for anything.”

While the CAQ defends this flexibilization by claiming that it will enable the construction of more housing units and alleviate Quebec's housing crisis, according to Simard, it's not the solution: “This crisis is caused by speculators, and even if we were to build 150,000 new homes, if it's luxury housing that the average Quebecer can't afford, it's not going to solve anything."

“In the end, it benefits the rich and the developers, but not the rest of us, born here or not. Everyone loses except the rich and powerful.”

A Demonstration That Speaks to All

Mr. Simard was delighted by the reaction of passers-by to the CASCQ picket: “We're seeing a good reaction from passers-by, especially those from immigrant backgrounds, it touches them when we talk about immigration without exploitation. Not to mention that people aren't particularly happy with the Legault government at the moment.”

“We consider that construction is everyone's business,” he adds. “[The CASCQ] brings together immigrant defence organizations, tenant defence organizations, and construction unions, because it's everyone's job to stand in solidarity with the working class. We need better conditions in construction if we want better construction in general.”