Heh, it's sorta funny how the report is focused just on women, but the journalists, while verifying/vetting the report's findings, get told it's not a gendered issue, that everyone with precarious residency and working under contractors in the agri sector are getting exploited. Canada really loves to only focus on specific demos, explicitly ignoring men.

More generally, I'm not totally sure where the specific issues are, based on the linked story. Contractors in many sectors will generally work with placement services that take a cut of their wages for those placements. I've known people who worked for places like EA, where tons of contractors were employed with this setup. Even people working as office temps in white collar gigs, are usually paying that placement fee throughout their contract term. Contractors are also often not paid for their commute in to the work site, heck practically no one is. Even if you're a full citizen working in a different sector, if it takes you 2-3 hours to get to the worksite, because you're on transit or car pooling or whatever, you're not getting paid for that commute. And if you're working in a rural area, without great transit, and are relying on someone else to get you to work.... idk, neither of these things sounds to me like 'systemic abuse' of workers in just the agri sector, but rather how the system treats most workers in Canada. It treats people that way with some rationale behind it -- like you can't realistically force employers of things like small businesses to pay for staff commute times, as it'd make the compensation very erratic and unpredictable, not to mention nearly impossible to track. Nor can you expect contractor-placement firms to provide that service for free -- they typically setup wage % agreements with contractors, because contractors are less likely to have funds to pay upfront for placement. Claiming these things are abuses, doesn't really offer any practical solution.

As for undocumented people / people working under the table and getting paid in cash, not being able to report things like verbal abuse due to a lack of evidence.... well, that sucks. But also.... how about... not working illegally / in violation of your visa/legal status? The way the article reports it, any more material abuse, such that leaves physical evidence, is outside the regular experience/situation (the comments from workers specifically notes the lack of any evidence of abuse in this category as being a reason they don't go to the authorities -- implying that in cases where there's evidence of physical abuse, they have options). If you're choosing to work in a situation where you're paid in cash, and likely are avoiding taxes / government oversight due to knowing that your employment is against government rules/expectations, then it's absurd to me to complain that you don't have government oversight/protection. If you're not choosing to work in that situation, and are being forced into it, that'd be slavery -- something that's been illegal in BC practically since the day it joined confederation. I'm fairly sure you'd have legal options / avenues for equity if that were the case, and it were reported to the authorities.

idk, I don't think it's entirely right to frame this as systemic abuse of immigrant women farmworkers. Not only because the journalists interviews showed it to be far more expansive than just women in that sector, but also because many of the "abuses" are evident in many sectors beyond just farm workers -- and those "abuses" have rational / reasonable explanations for why they occur. And as for people working under-the-table complaining about a lack of government supports, they're literally choosing to work without government supports and dodging government taxes.