Ensuring Housing Rights for Migrants in New Brunswick
New Brunswick is experiencing a housing crisis. Migrants are often excluded from public conversations about the housing crisis and when they are included, they are blamed for a crisis they did not create (Hussan, 2023; Rao and Glynn, 2022). Temporary foreign workers at the province’s seafood processing plants report living in overcrowded and unsafe conditions (Bejan et al., 2023). International students cannot find affordable housing in the province’s cities. In September 2023, University of New Brunswick graduate student Pawan Kumar told CBC his search for housing in Fredericton has been “devastating” (Rudderham, 2023). Meanwhile, the undocumented, those without status to be in the country, are forced to live in the shadows and treated as less than human.
While housing is a challenge for many people in New Brunswick, in need of immediate attention, certain groups of newcomers – temporary foreign workers, international students and the undocumented – in the province face unique housing challenges. Their struggles and needs are the focus of this report. In 2023, the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre conducted the Housing Justice is Migrant Justice Project with funds from the Catherine Donnelly Foundation. Part of this project included researching and writing this report. In this report, we contextualize the housing situation facing migrant groups in New Brunswick and look at how we can improve housing for migrants and all people in the province.
Based on desk research and conversations with temporary foreign workers, international students, the undocumented, and their advocates in 2023 and 2024, the report concludes that migrant housing in New Brunswick is inadequate, unsafe and unaffordable. Migrant advocates agree that the best way to ensure the rights of migrants are protected and that they have access to housing and essential social services is through granting permanent residency to temporary residents. In 2021, migrants won a major victory when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter for the Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship called for a plan for regularizing migrants without status. The Canadian government has yet to accomplish this. In fact, Canada has deported 104 per cent more people since the 2021 announcement (Migrant Rights Network, 2023).
The Madhu Centre, migrant advocates and other coalitions and associations like the Canadian Health Coalition (2022), the Canadian Bar Association (2023) and media outlets like The Toronto Star (2022) have called for regularization of the status of the undocumented already in the country to protect people from abuse, violence and exploitation. As we prioritize advancing this systemic solution, we also recommend that governments implement a series of immediate reforms to realize the housing rights of migrants in New Brunswick. Our report calls on all levels of government to rethink their approach to affordable housing by refocusing efforts towards non-market housing.
We ask the federal government to uphold the right to housing for all, and strengthen and enforce national housing standards for migrant workers. We also demand an end to the closed work permit system that traps workers in unsafe working and living conditions. We recommend the province of New Brunswick more robustly inspect the housing of employer-provided migrant worker housing to catch and prevent violations, extend inspections of residences where in-home caregivers and live-in-caregivers work, and ensure the undocumented have access to the provincial rent bank. To truly ensure the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing for all, New Brunswick must put in place basic protections for everyone – this includes a robust rent control regime and eviction protections for tenants across the province.