Canada’s refugees are being exploited as cheap labour
Ray Mwareya
Global affairs journalist covering technology, public health, and human rights from Zambia
Ray Mwareya
I have personally seen this as a journalist who covers refugee affairs in Canada – some government-supported refugees and asylum seekers are working under the table for unscrupulous landlords who offer them board and later ask them to do odd jobs in the household.
“I’m new from Haiti – I don’t know how the law works in Canada – and I felt I have to agree to be a laborer for Madame Hadidah* because I live in her house,” Marius* a 30s-year recent asylum seeker from war-torn Haiti told me in Ottawa.
Manuel was doing a lot for Hadidah, digging to clear out her mosquito-infested swimming pool, and doing some carpentry work on her garage. His wages were a robbery – just $5 an hour paid in cash under the table a far cry from Ontario’s statutory $17.95 an hour. Manuel isn’t alone in this predicament. Ahmed* – a 50s protected refugee and permanent resident from Yemen, another conflict-ridden country, who is still waiting two years for the government to process his family sponsorship application, felt he had no choice. “ “It was either me living in Ottawa Mission homeless shelter for months on end or accept a room at Hadidah’s home”, he tells me. In Hadidah’s home, Ahmed shares a room with two other male refugees – and because he has an Ontario driving license – Hadidah the landlord emotionally manipulates him to drive her around her rental properties, cut the grass or scrub the carpets.
“I do everything – and she hasn’t paid me my $7 per hour wages for four months. I am her unregistered electrician, painter, laundry dry cleaner. She tells me I’m lucky to be living on her property because no landlord in Ottawa accepts refugees coming from homeless shelters,” he told me.
“A shadow economy is emerging where refugees become expendable labour for predatory landlords”
It’s likely a widespread, unique angle of labor market exploitation stalking refugees and asylum seekers in Canada – according to anecdotal chats I have had with numerous refugees – and government, media, NGO awareness of this abuse is frankly, low. I would call it “basement barter” trade, work arrangements whereby dodgy landlords in Canada view asylum seekers living on their properties as a rich pool of expendable labor to draw from.
The reasons why this is flourishing under the radar of Canada’s “world celebrated” refugee admissions system is that the victims are some of the most vulnerable members of Canadian society. Recent refugees I have chatted to especially those from Haiti, who arrive traumatized by war, are not aware that the monthly stipend that the government of Canada pays them for private rentals and food are designed to ensure that they don’t get pressurized into dodgy labor for board schemes by landlords like Madam Hadidah. “I thought living under Madam Hadidah’s roof means I must do occasional errands for her. I thought in Canada saying no to weeding out the flowerbed for one’s landlord means I’m ungrateful,” Manuel told me when I finally explained him his rights.
Secondly – unlike years back when I arrived in Canada in 2018 and work permits for asylum seekers would be processed and issued in just two to four weeks after application – Canada’s immigration system is now bloated and close to tumbling both in quality and quantitative metrics. By close of 2025 – the quantity of refugee applications waiting for a decision at the Immigration and Refugee Board rose to 272,440 from 70,223 compared to end of 2022. Work permit issuances for recent refugees, they tell me, are now “three months and counting”. It is that waiting in limbo which is forcing vulnerable refugees to fall into the schemes of cunning landlords like Madam Hadidah. “I left parents with no food and medicines in war torn South Sudan. Here in Ottawa, I have a wife and two kids. The $1000 refugee allowance is a pittance. As the man of the house, even without a work permit, I must accept a $5 per hour job repairing furniture for my landlord and supplement the government's refugee allowance,” Vavi said.
The harsh mix of Canada’s bloated refugee processing bureaucracy, and an uncontrollable unaffordable living and housing is creating a "shadow economy" where refugees are now emotionally preyed on by predatory landlords to offer underpaid labor in exchange for below-standard housing, and also as a way to top up refugee allowances that don’t keep up with inflation.
From my casual research, chatting with refugees living on the periphery of Canadian society, this rising trend of "work-for-stay" arrangements fits into the UN’s 2023 assessment of Canadian migrant programs as "breeding grounds for contemporary slavery”. While Canadian media, government enforcement and NGO work focuses on labor “slavery’ in Canada’s temporary farm workers immigration program, the crisis has broadened from farms to basements as my chats with the likes of Marius and Ahmed[3] [4] . Right now, Canada's immigrant policy is flowing along the rails of wanting all sorts of immigrants to live and work here but not building the adequate housing inventory for them to live in decent, affordable conditions.
Going forward, the easiest way to smash this invisible sub-economy in which vulnerable refugees are mops and brushes for ruthless landlords is to speed up the work permit issuance process for recent asylum seekers. As Marius says: “We are refugees, already here, living here – willing to work for ourselves legally, earn an income – lessen the burden off public finances”.
If this shadowy economy of refugees in Canada being manipulated into illegal board-for-labor activities continues unchecked, the nice-sounding global brand of Canada’s human-rights first refugee policy will be heavily soiled if refugees start getting injured whilst moonlighting as unregulated electricians for dodgy landlords.
“The other day whilst repairing Landlord Hadidah’s basement switchboard, I almost was struck by a live and unsecured electricity wire. Who would have paid me harm insurance if I got electrocuted ?” Ahmed reflects on a near-miss.
*All names in the story have been changed to protect my interview sources.
