Farmfare

In the summer of 1999, the provincial government of Ontario proposed to make Canadian welfare recipients work as seasonal labor in the horticulture sector. This idea came to be known as farmfare. Farmfare was not an entirely new idea. In 1971, Canada’s Parliament debated this topic under the rubric “Manpower: Use of Unemployed and Students Instead of West Indians to Pick Fruit.” Pierre Elliot Trudeau, then prime minister of Canada, defended the offshore program as necessary to fill jobs “which the unemployed and the students refuse to do” (quoted in Sharma 2001: 432). In August 1999, with neoliberalism at the top of the provincial policy agendas, the idea was floated again by a conservative member of the provincial parliament, Toni Skarica. This time, farmfare was not presented as an employment opportunity for desperate workers but as a disincentive to sign up for welfare. Ontario premier Mike Harris added momentum to the debate by raising the issue to reporters. Harris suggested that manual labor on Ontario’s farms could change the supposedly negative attitudes toward work among welfare recipients: “Getting up in the morning, getting regular, managing your time, getting out and doing things, feeling good about producing something, doing some work, they are all important . . . to help break that cycle of dependency” (quoted in Ibbitson 1999: A12). He also suggested that farmfare could help Ontario’s agricultural industries to deal with seasonal labor shortages (Gray 1999). In September 1999, Ontario’s Social Service Department confirmed that farmfare could be justified under Ontario’s workfare requirement that “able-bodied” welfare recipients should either train or work or lose their benefits. These were harsh words and tough measures proposed by the provincial government. Little wonder that farmfare generated fierce debate over the merits and potential consequences of such a program. Social advocacy groups, such as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, labor unions, and churches, including the United Church of Canada, mobilized opposition against farmfare. The United Farm Workers initiated a petition against the implementation of farmfare, which opposition politicians presented on several occasions to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

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