Toronto Star reporter goes undercover to work as a temporary worker at Fiera Foods. Three temps have died at Fiera Foods or at Fiera’s affiliated companies since 1999.

There is no permanent office for the temporary agency that hires for Fiera Foods.

Fiera has been slapped with 191 orders for health and safety violations over the past two decades, for everything from lack of proper guarding on machines to unsafely stored gas cylinders.

In workplaces around the province, the use of temp agencies limits companies’ liability for accidents on the job, reduces their responsibility for employees’ rights, and cuts costs.

When a temp gets hurt, the company is not fully responsible because the temp agency assumes liability at the worker’s compensation board.

Temp agencies operating in non-clerical sectors and construction represent less than 2 per cent of the workforce but they ranked in the top 10 for absolute highest number of reported injuries over the past decade.

Overall in Ontario, temporary jobs — which include but are not limited to temp agency jobs — have grown at more than four times the rate of permanent jobs since the 2008 recession, according to Statistics Canada.

In 2013, Fiera received a $3.2 million federal business loan. The following year, Fiera was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs to expand capacity. At the time, the company was lauded by Premier Kathleen Wynne for providing “good jobs” to Torontonians.

Fiera donated $2,500 to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario in 2007 and has donated $25,000 to the Liberal Party of Ontario since 2010, electoral finance disclosures show. In 2016, the company was included in a provincial trade mission to India.

This is the reason why Ontario must limit maximum political donation to $100 a year. In Quebec, the maximum annual political donation is $100 a year.

This investigation took one year to complete according to this video featuring the reporters who undertook this undercover reporting.

You can read the entire article published by the Toronto Star by clicking this link.

Click here to read my previous blog about taking money out of Candian politics.