While there are many flaws in this program design, some of the most critical are those that create, sustain or reinforce unfair employment conditions for international migrant workers.
The first of these is that work permits for both seasonal agricultural workers and migrant workers are tied to individual employers. That means that an individual can only work for the employer who has been approved under the respective program to hire him or her. The ability to change employers, should a migrant worker become exploited, abused, or pressured to work beyond agreed upon contract conditions, is extraordinarily limited.
Accommodation requirements under the various work programs present another barrier to accessing workplace rights. Agricultural workers live on the employer’s farm. Caregivers are required to live in the employer’s home. This limits these workers’ access to information about their rights, and privacy, and, their ability to meaningful exercise of their rights.
It is important to underline the extent of power wielded by employers as a result of these mobility restrictions and accommodation requirements.
The time limitation on these work permits is another barrier to these workers accessing their workplace rights. Seasonal agricultural workers have work permits that are generally for less than one year and must reapply each year.
For most other workers, the permit is for a maximum two-year period. Caregivers must work 24 months in a 36 month period for an employer that has been approved under the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP).
Furthermore, caregivers cannot make applications for landed status until after they complete the LCP.  This means that not only are caregivers tied to one employer, but those seeking status are unfairly at risk of receiving an unwarranted negative status recommendation from their employers.
The abuses that live-in caregivers often contend with have been well-documented by agencies such as INTERCEDE, PINAY, SIKLAB, faith communities, labour organizations and major media outlets. 
The abuses faced by agricultural workers have also been well documented.  The United Food and Commercial Workers and the Agriculture Workers Alliance of Canada for example have decades of experience documenting wage, working conditions and accommodation abuses, occupational health and safety violations, injustice in accessing benefit programs that workers have paid into, and being denied the right to join a union. 
• In southwest Ontario, low-wage agricultural workers – principally recent immigrants just getting a foot on the bottom rungs of the job ladder – are being replaced by migrant workers supplied by