Canada Meat Industry’s Core Issue: Low Wages, Not Labor | Mirage News

A programme under fire, and an industry left largely untouched

The UN rapporteur’s report outlines abuses including excessive work hours, limited breaks and physical violence, all worsened because a worker’s immigration status is tied to a specific employer. Critics argue the programme fails to protect workers while suppressing wages across the sectors that depend on it. Ottawa’s 26 August response promised to reduce the programme’s size and scope, but by exempting food processing it effectively allowed beef and pork processors to preserve the low-wage labour model.

Bragg and Hyndman call this strategy 'intentional precarity'. By recruiting workers who are new to Canada and heavily dependent on their employer, meatpacking firms secure a workforce that is less likely to complain, organise or push for safer conditions. This dependency is reinforced by immigration rules that tie a temporary worker’s permit to one employer, making it risky to report abuse or demand fairer wages.

Wages, profits and the cost of living in rural Alberta

Before 1984, meatpacking wages were 8–12% above Canada’s average manufacturing wage. From the mid-1980s to 1997, pay fell to just 82% of that average. As the industry consolidated, firms moved plants from Alberta’s major cities to smaller rural centres, reducing public scrutiny and weakening organising opportunities for workers.

Today, a meatcutter at JBS in Brooks, Alberta, starts at C$21.85 an hour, or roughly C$41,000 a year. That is below Alberta’s median hourly wage of C$28.85. Rent in Brooks or High River is comparable to Calgary, and limited public transport means workers usually must own a vehicle and pay for insurance and fuel, leaving full-time wages struggling to cover basic local living costs.

About 70% of Canada’s beef is slaughtered at two foreign-owned plants in southern Alberta: the U.S.-owned Cargill facility in High River and Brazilian-owned JBS Canada in Brooks. Both operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, slaughtering 4,000–4,500 cattle daily and employing 2,000–2,800 workers each. JBS and Cargill both appear on Forbes’ Global 2000 list of the world’s largest companies. In 2023, JBS posted profits of US$3 billion. Cargill, the largest privately held company in the United States, saw revenues decline from US$177 billion in 2023 to US$160 billion in 2024. In 2021, the year after a COVID-19 outbreak at its High River plant was linked to three deaths, Cargill recorded record profits of US$5 billion.

From resettled refugees to tied work permits

The 2021 Census shows that 72% of workers in Alberta’s meatpacking sector are immigrants, including 19% who are resettled refugees. An additional 10–30% are temporary foreign workers. This composition reflects a deliberate, long-term recruitment strategy rather than a random labour-market outcome.

The pattern began in the early 2000s, when Lakeside Packers in Brooks—now JBS Foods—started recruiting resettled refugees after failing to fill positions locally. During its 1990s expansion, the company had sought workers from Atlantic Canada and British Columbia, but word of poor conditions quickly discouraged applicants. Between 2000 and 2005, approximately 2,000 former refugees from Sudan and Somalia resettled in Brooks to work at the plant. After a 2005 strike won a union contract, Lakeside shifted recruitment toward the Temporary Foreign Worker programme, explicitly looking for workers 'accustomed to physical labour.' Because those workers are bound to a single employer, they are less likely to claim safety rights, refuse overtime or bargain for better pay.

Implications for workers, consumers and procurement watchers

The fundamental issue in southern Alberta’s meatpacking sector is insufficient wages, not a shortage of labour. Business lobbies claim they cannot find enough workers, but the evidence suggests locals are unwilling to endure gruelling, dangerous work for pay below the provincial median. By facilitating long-term, low-wage jobs performed by temporary foreign workers, government policy exerts downward pressure on wages and standards across the sector.

For procurement and supply-chain professionals, the risks extend beyond the plant floor. Major food-service, retail and institutional contracts increasingly require labour transparency, while Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union and others tighten modern-slavery and due-diligence rules. Selecting the lowest-cost processor without checking employment terms can create legal and reputational exposure.

Policymakers must decide whether transnational meatpackers with billions in annual profits should continue relying on a temporary labour programme that a UN expert likened to modern slavery. For shoppers and institutional buyers, the question is whether a lower meat price justifies a system built on what Bragg and Hyndman term intentional precarity.

What this means

Canada’s meatpacking giants have shown that beef processing can be highly profitable. Yet that profitability depends on workers paid below Alberta’s median wage, living in high-cost rural areas and often bound to one employer by immigration rules. The evidence points away from labour shortages and toward a long-standing strategy to suppress wages by hiring the least empowered workers. Whether through ethical procurement, stronger supply-chain due diligence or reform of temporary labour programmes, the current model is difficult to defend as fair or sustainable. For shoppers, business buyers and policymakers, the true cost of cheap meat is ultimately borne by those who process it.