Canadian human-rights tribunal to hear complaints from Trini farmworkers

A human-rights tribunal in Ontario, Canada, will hear a lawsuit on Monday by 54 migrant farmworkers, including several Trinidadian and Jamaican men, on alleged racist policing practices.

A release from the group Justice for Migrant Workers said the case was historic and potentially precedent-setting.

It stems from an October 2013 sexual assault near Bayham, Ontario, when the Ontario Provincial Police did a DNA sweep to collect samples from approximately 95 migrant farmworkers employed in the region.

The release said the police’s investigation was done with what appeared to be a total disregard for the detailed suspect description given by the victim.

The release said DNA samples were taken from Indo and Afro-Caribbean men from Jamaica and Trinidad.

Justice for Migrant Workers is representing the group at the hearing. It said the workers were targeted solely on the basis of their skin colour and their status as migrant farmworker.

Some 54 of the affected migrant farmworkers filed joint human-rights applications with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

Their applications will be heard on Monday.

Their attorneys intend to argue that the DNA sweep and the manner in which it was done was racial discrimination that violated their rights under section 1 of Ontario’s Human Rights Code.

The release said it was the first human-rights case of its kind in Canada to examine allegations of systemic racial profiling and discrimination by the police towards migrant farmworkers.

“It is anticipated that it will expose not only the inherent vulnerabilities that workers are exposed to under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, but how those vulnerabilities were exploited by the police in their execution of the 2013 DNA sweep,” the release added.