Good morning. Canada’s fruit and vegetable harvest is in full swing, and across the country tens of thousands of migrant workers are undertaking the back-breaking labour needed to put food on our tables – work that the vast majority of Canadians would rather not do themselves. That’s in focus today along with a GDP catch up and Artemis II look ahead.
Up first
In the news
Banking: TD Bank’s new chief executive officer is ready to unveil his strategy, and Bay Street is awfully intrigued.
Technology: Arctic Training Centre gives companies a chance to test defence tech in a northern climate
Economy: Arizona’s manufacturing boom offers potential lessons for Canada
On our radar
- Today: A new economic outlook from Deloitte Canada shows a path to firmer economic growth is coming into sharper view, but it runs along a narrowing route through Washington.
- Earnings include: Carnival Corporation, PACS Group, Inc. and PowerBank Corporation.
A team of migrant workers harvest melon at Cebulak Farm near Simcoe, Ont., on Aug. 7 2025.Gabriel Hutchinson/The Globe and Mail
In focus
The people Canadian farms depend on
Hi, I’m Jason Kirby, a reporter with The Globe and Mail’s economics team.
Like millions of Canadians, the work I do these days entails computer screens, office chairs and poor posture. But one of my first jobs was toiling as a young teen in the fields of Norfolk County, in Southwestern Ontario, picking peppers, spuds and other veggies.
In August, some 37 years later, I went back to those same fields to report a cover story for the latest issue of Report on Business magazine exploring just how dependent Canada’s $32-billion primary agriculture industry has become on offshore farm workers from countries such as Jamaica and Mexico — and how those jobs have shaped the workers’ lives, as well as the Canadian communities they come to each year.
An offshore lifeline that goes both ways
To say Canada’s agricultural sector would struggle to survive without seasonal foreign workers is an understatement. Yet most Canadians give little thought to the brigade of offshore labourers outside of times when accusations of abuse make headlines.
That’s too bad, because their stories are fascinating.
Roy Campbell, one of the workers I met at a small apple farm outside of the town of Simcoe, has been coming to the same farm for 40 years from Jamaica, and readily pulls out his phone to show photos of the house and store he built back home from his earnings.
I spoke with numerous workers in the fields, in downtown Simcoe during their evenings off and even at farm-vs.-farm soccer tournaments, and almost all had a similar story of using the money earned here to buy property, or build a house or start a business back home.
Migrant worker Roy Campbell sits on large apple crates at Apple Hill Lavender Farm in Windham Centre, Ont.Gabriel Hutchinson/The Globe and Mail
Where are the domestic farm workers?
Farms in Canada have always relied heavily on offshore workers – the federal government’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program will turn 60 next year – but the dependence on foreign labour has never been so acute.
Back when I was working on farms, there was a mix of foreign and domestic labour in the fields. A lot of other kids worked those jobs too, and the local high schools would look the other way if we skipped the first weeks of school to complete the harvest.
That’s not the case any more. As one consultant who provides HR services to farms told me, “I’ve got 600 jobs that nobody wants.”
Sweaty, hot and sore
It’s not hard to see why. The work is gruelling, the pace can be unrelenting, and with the pay at minimum wage or just above, it’s a payoff Canadians aren’t willing to accept.
I spent some time at Cebulak Family Farms, a fourth-generation farming operation near the town of Delhi, picking melons, followed the next day by a morning in the fields at Sandy Shore Farms, near Port Burwell, hunched over picking peppers. Shaniel Murray, a Jamaican man who I was picking with, said it was the first time he’d seen a Canadian in the fields in five years of coming to Canada.
Jason Kirby helps harvest peppers at Sandy Shore Farms in Norfolk, Ont.Gabriel Hutchinson/Supplied
Let’s just say I didn’t last long. (I’d like to blame my age, at 51, but I wasn’t even the oldest one out there.)
As you read this, the work is getting done. By Roy, Shaniel and by tens of thousands of other migrant workers.
As Kathy-Ann Fearon, owner of a Caribbean restaurant in Simcoe and daughter to a former offshore worker, told me, “It’s too bad they don’t get the respect they deserve. If these guys weren’t coming up, there basically wouldn’t be food on the table.”
Charted
GDP, ICYMI
The industry group in July experienced its steepest decline since April, 2020, after U.S. President Donald Trump doubled the tariff rate on steel and aluminum imports to 50 per cent in June. Last week, he expanded his list of tariffs to include heavy-duty trucks, various home goods and pharmaceuticals, taking effect on Oct. 1.
As for future rate cuts? “We think that a further interest rate cut is still warranted, and continue to forecast a move at the October meeting, although upcoming employment and CPI data remain important to that call,” CIBC senior economist Andrew Grantham wrote in a client note.
Bookmarked
On our reading list
Look back: How the Canadian stock market became great again.
Move in: Interest from U.S. doctors looking to work in Canada has spiked, but few have made the move.
Way out: The debate over the value of sending humans to space is as old as the space program itself.
Morning update
Global stocks were higher as investors braced for a possible U.S. government shutdown that could delay economic data releases.
Wall Street and TSX futures were up.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.29 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.67 per cent, Germany’s DAX gained 0.15 per cent and France’s CAC 40 was up 0.058 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.89 per cent lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 1.89 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 71.83 U.S. cents.