A report published by the Centre for Migrant Worker Rights in December 2025 examines labour abuses of women migrant workers in Nova Scotia’s agriculture and seafood processing industries. The report focuses on women employed through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and is based on surveys and interviews conducted with workers.

The majority of workers employed in agriculture and seafood processing are men, but women represent a growing share of the workers. However, many studies on working conditions lack a gender lens and do not examine the specific and unique experiences of women migrant workers, nor how gender intersects with race and immigration status to produce multiple and compounded forms of discrimination.

The report focused on Nova Scotia’s North Shore, particularly Colchester, Cumberland, and Pictou counties, where women migrant workers play a key role in the agriculture and seafood processing work.

The report’s findings reveal that women migrant workers are subjected to various forms of labour abuse in both the agriculture and seafood processing industries. It also finds that women face gender-specific vulnerabilities and compounded barriers.

In both agriculture and seafood processing, women reported experiencing the following abuses:

• Being charged recruitment fees, usually deducted from their wages, including flight costs, medical testing, and other expenses. These usually cause financial burden for the workers.
• Working long hours under physically demanding conditions, including exposure to extreme heat, rain, and cold, as well as workplace injuries and health concerns related to working while pesticides were being sprayed.
• Workplace violence and harassment, including an employer kicking one woman and another woman being physically attacked by a coworker.
• Sexual harassment in the workplace, including reprisals for rejecting sexual advances.
• Control, intimidation, and racism by supervisors, contributing to unsafe and difficult working and living conditions.
• Lack of information about daily working hours, contract end dates, contract renewals, and information prior to arrival regarding wages and deductions.
• Limited access to health care and lack of confidentiality, with employers able to interfere with workers’ health information and prescribed medication.
• Poor housing conditions, including overcrowding; employer control over workers’ lives such as requiring permission for visitors; restrictions on freedom of movement; insufficient basic amenities; rodent and ant infestations; lack of ventilation; and lack of electricity.
• Emotional distress stemming from a lack of respect and appreciation for their work, discrimination, abuse, as well as stress related to separation from their children.
• Lack of grievance mechanisms to report workplace abuses, and when reports were made, a lack of remedy or response from employers.

The report draws on these findings to set out recommendations for federal and provincial governments to strengthen the rights, protections, and support available to women migrant workers. It highlights the need for federal policy reforms to ensure equitable, dignified, and safe living and working conditions, as well as the need for targeted funding to improve the supports available to women migrant workers.