[T]he … [Canadian temporary] Foreign Worker Program serves as a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery… [W]orkers’ … status depends on an employer-specific, closed work permit. … [C]losed work permits … and the absence of a clear pathway to permanent residence also create vulnerabilities for … workers under the high-wage and Global Talent streams (…) – Tomoya Obokata, UN Rappoteur.

United Nations (UN) Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery 2024

In September 2023, an in-person visit by the Human Rights Council’s appointed Special Rapporteur has put Canada in the spotlight for a widespread audience.[1] Tomoya Obokata’s resulting report released in 2024 was merciless: Canada’s temporary migration system was associated with regulatory mechanisms likely to foster contemporary forms of modern slavery. It is true that labour migration and selective entry requirements have been an intrinsic feature of Canada’s history. However, there have also been humanising efforts, which at times have led to progressive amendments such as the removal of explicitly racist (im)migration laws in the late 1960s. Where then does the bifurcation lie? Some have argued that the consolidation of the aggregate Canadian immigration system has indeed been bifid: an increasing focus on migrants’ economic potential has superceded racial categorisation, but only within the permanent immigration programme. In the case of temporary migration, echoes of Canada’s early 20th century racialisation of migrants hired to address employers’ punctual labour needs have recently materialised with unprecedented growth in some Canadian provinces, to the point where temporary migration has become a vividly contested terrain across the federal territory and beyond.

In October 2024, Patrice Jalette and I organised a workshop during the Interuniversity Research Center on Globalization and Work’s (Crimt) conference to provide space for discussion around the major features of the Canadian temporary migration system and its implications within the context of Quebec. Both of us examined temporary migration in our individual and common research projects. Our overarching objective was to assemble the ideas, analyses and experiences of different actors who had encountered in varying ways temporary migrant workers, hiring employers and the main components of the temporary migration programme in its contemporary form. We aimed to facilitate lively interaction within a variegated group of guests and cross-examine distinct perspectives and field experiences. The workshop took place on 25th October 2024 in Montreal during the conference’s ‘community forum’. Social actors such as trade unionists, activists, workers and other practitioners were invited to engage with CRIMT co-researchers on their respective approaches to addressing common themes, while focusing on work and employment practices.

That year, the CRIMT’s conference title, Work on the Brink. Better Work for a Just and Sustainable Future carried a sense of urgency. CRIMT hosted more than 650 participants attending online and in person, with the aim of examining “disruptions and crises affecting the world of work, address their consequences, and critically assess the strategies, policies and actions implemented by world-of-work actors to support, mitigate, or counter these effects’. The Canadian temporary migration system and the alarm it has triggered at the international level constituted a hot topic propitious for an open debate within this international network. Not to mention that, at the time of the CRIMT conference, press coverage in Quebec and Canada had either depicted a dark portrait of less skilled migrant workers’ experiences or focused on law relaxation aiming to facilitate temporary migrant workers’ recruitment for Canada-based employers or reduce their number, because the capacity of Canadian society to accommodate them had been reached.

Following the dynamic and rich conversation that emanated from the workshop, we hoped that the exercise would offer a more comprehensive portrait of the situation. The workshop was held in French for a Quebec-based audience. We therefore, decided to share the highlights of the workshop with a larger audience by building this Futures of Work issue with syntheses of our guests’ contributions. We aim to both ‘zoom in and out’ of the sociopolitical phenomenon. Overall, we intend to show how rethinking the future of decent work in the Canadian context will require urgent attention to both work and non-work elements that affect those who engage in work activities as migrant workers in Canada and become victims of sharply asymmetrical power relations within capitalist production and service-provision regimes. Drawing on researcher and practitioner experiences, contributions highlight how forms of systemic racism are perpetuated through a regulatory mechanism that intrinsically ensures migrant workers’ dependence upon their employers, thus putting dependents at risk and in a vulnerable position.

Zooming out implies the depiction of the situation at the scale of the federal country, with specific contextualising insights that may explain the institutional factors that allow the system to persist in Canada. The first contribution addresses concerns surrounding the impact of constraints imposed on migrant individuals’ fundamental rights by an employer-specific (or closed) work permit and temporary status. Jurist and activist Eugenie Depatie-Pelletier touches on specific historical facts and dares to suggest new imaginaries away from ‘unfreedom’ that would require the complete eradication of the employer-specific permit. The impact on employers of such an ideal human rights-oriented proposition would be significant: to date, the temporary employer-specific permit provides an indirect advantage to employers in terms of employee retention in the medium term. However, while employers can be subject to criticism for contributing to the persistence of the temporary migration programme, Catherine Connelly’s analysis across Canada provides a nuanced account of employers’ roles and experiences with temporary migration as an intrinsic component of their workforce planning, including their own challenges.

‘Zooming in’ on the meso-case of Quebec has allowed Patrice Jalette and me to identify some of the specific elements that depict workers’ work and non-work situations once they are hired as temporary migrant labourers. Elsewhere, researchers have shown that there are cases of workers involved, for instance, in agricultural work who experience an absence of social protection beyond the basic labour legislation provision. However, our scholarly account of workers’ experiences corrobates Mouloud Idir’s critique of the ‘temporary’ status as a legal concept. According to the union official, ‘unfreedom’ is also present for unionised migrant workers, insofar as the employer-specific permit and ‘temporary’ status fosters vulnerability and dependence on the employer, despite union membership opportunities and ensuing protection.

While it is important to acknowledge skilled migrants’ success stories such as those encountered by law practitioner Jean-Philippe Brunet, the aggregate observation across our guests’ contributions leaves us in a reflexive cul-de-sac. Based on Brunet’s contribution, we acknowledge that the dark side of temporary migration in Canada can be nuanced by stories of skilled workers who have been able to identify a ‘clear’ pathway’ (to echo the UN Special rapporteur’s words) to permanent immigration. Success stories mitigate our portrait of the situation, while one equally wonders how they compensate for the problematic moral deficit that this type of permit delivery implies for fundamental rights for both skilled and unskilled migrants. Temporary migration, as the UN Special Rapporteur reminds us, goes beyond being a work- and employment-related matter: it constitutes a human rights issue for all that has yet to be properly addressed in Canada.

Image credit: Ravi Patel via Unsplash

Google Expands Veo 2 Video-Generating AI Model to Premium Users

Veo 2 Now Available to Gemini Advanced Subscribers

Google is bringing its Veo 2 video-generating AI model to users who pay for Gemini Advanced, the company’s premium AI plan. This expansion comes as Google looks to deliver an answer to OpenAI’s Sora video generation platform, and as competition in the space grows fiercer.

Key Features of Veo 2

Starting Tuesday, Gemini Advanced subscribers will be able to select Veo 2 from the model drop-down menu in Google’s Gemini apps. Users can create eight-second video clips at 720p resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and upload these clips to TikTok, YouTube, and more via Gemini’s "share" button. Veo 2-generated videos can also be downloaded as MP4 files, watermarked with Google’s SynthID tech.

Limitations and Integrations

There’s a limit to how many videos users can create each month, and the Google Workspace business and education plans aren’t supported at the moment, the company says. Additionally, Veo 2 is being integrated with Whisk, an experimental feature in Google Labs that lets you use images as prompts with Gemini to create new images. A new feature, Whisk Animate, lets users take images they’ve generated and turn them into eight-second, Veo 2-generated videos.

Future Plans and Concerns

Google’s applications of Veo 2 may seem fairly basic at the moment. However, the CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, recently said that the company plans to eventually combine its Gemini AI models with Veo to improve the former’s understanding of the physical world. Meanwhile, many artists and creators are wary of video generators like Veo 2, which threaten to upend entire creative industries. A 2024 study commissioned by the Animation Guild, a union representing Hollywood animators and cartoonists, estimates that more than 100,000 U.S.-based film, television, and animation jobs will be disrupted by AI by 2026.

Conclusion

Google’s expansion of Veo 2 to premium users marks a significant step in the company’s efforts to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving AI-powered video generation space. While the technology holds promise for creators and businesses, it also raises important questions about the future of work and the impact of AI on industries.

FAQs

Q: What is Veo 2?
A: Veo 2 is a video-generating AI model developed by Google.

Q: What is Gemini Advanced?
A: Gemini Advanced is a premium AI plan offered by Google.

Q: What are the limitations of Veo 2?
A: There’s a limit to how many videos users can create each month, and the Google Workspace business and education plans aren’t supported at the moment.

Q: What is Whisk Animate?
A: Whisk Animate is a new feature that lets users take images they’ve generated and turn them into eight-second, Veo 2-generated videos.

The eight key elements needed for a just and sustainable labour (im)migration policy

Over the past 25 years, the systemic violation of employer-tied migrant workers’ rights has been denounced in over 50 reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and by more than a dozen divisions of the United Nations. In 2024, the UN Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery added to these denunciations after his visits to Canada and Australia. Within several countries and some of their specific regions, court decisions and parliamentary committee reports have raised similar concerns. It should be no surprise that, in 2006, an employer-tying measure applicable exclusively to non-citizen workers – the issuance of employer-specific work permits – was unanimously declared by the highest court of a country to be an unjustifiable violation of workers’ fundamental liberty and dignity and officially recognised as a ‘modern form of slavery’. A similar judicial inquiry has now been ordered by a judge in Canada, and at this point we must ask ourselves which immigration policy tools are in fact compatible with basic human rights.

In the wake of the abolition of slavery, employer-tied worker regimes were reconsolidated across the world through policies restricting a right to change employers, or through policies restricting potential employers’ right to hire these workers. Such employer-tying measures had – and still have – a significantly negative impact on the individuals facing a condition of ‘unfreedom’ within the labour market, as well as on citizens, free workers hired alongside them and society as a whole. As such, during the first half of the 20th century, state measures binding workers to specific employers were repeatedly invalidated as slavery-like practices by local, appeal and Supreme courts, notably in the United States of America.

However, during and after World War II, the criminal employment law restrictions on workers’ right to change employers reemerged across the world within labour migration programmes, once again legalising a modern condition of worker servitude – this time around, only for certain non-citizen workers. Thus, through employer-controlled work permits and/or permanent status access regimes, increasing groups of (im)migrants have faced various threats of state sanctions associated with the termination of their relationship with their employer(s)-sponsor(s): the immediate inapplicability in the country of their right to work, higher risks of non-renewal of their work permit, higher risks of non-fulfilment of the conditions for permanent status recognition, higher risks of family unification delays and denial, higher risks of detention for breach of immigration conditions, and higher risks of expulsion together with higher risks of prohibition of re-entry to the host country. In this context, employer-tied migrant workers rarely demand respect for their rights. They make sure not to behave in a way that could jeopardise the relationship with their employer, systematically putting up with abusive if not unsafe conditions convenient for employers or agents operating in employers’ interests.

More recently, a series of actions has been pursued. In September 2024, the Canada-based Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers was allowed to launch a constitutional class action in court, whose aim was to declare unconstitutional the regulatory dispositions that have authorised the binding of migrants to employers and the damages for workers who have been bound to employers since 1982. Soon after, a second migrant worker constitutional class action was filed in Canada, which sought an additional redress for migrant agricultural workers barred from unemployment insurance benefits. Meanwhile, in the UK, a legal action on the basis of the right not to be held in servitude was launched against the restrictive work permits imposed in the commercial fishing industry in 2023. In a similar vein, the London-based Anti-Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit is preparing a legal action, claiming damages for workers hired under restrictive seasonal work permits. Another employer-tied migrant worker class action has also recently been launched in the USA on the basis of the anti-trust policy applicable to the employers concerned.

In Canada and elsewhere, how exactly could a labour (im)migration policy be both compatible with fundamental rights, and economically and demographically sustainable? Legal analysis and empirical studies lead to the conclusion that eight elements are key when it comes to addressing this issue. First, instead of a private worker sponsorship regime and the entitlements this gives to employers and their intermediaries, governments must take back the responsibility and management of the sponsorship of all (im)migrant workers invited for fast-tracked admission under work permits – and of their family members. Such a government sponsorship regime would be implemented through programmes ensuring free or low-cost governmental services for recruitment (involving also the government of the country of origin), access to micro-credit, immigration procedures, job placement and initial social integration. Second, annual recruitment quotas should be established on the basis of estimated regional skills shortages, family/humanitarian/student immigration, and worker out-migration.

Third, unlike work permits that are explicitly tied to specific employers, or implicitly through occupation, sector, region and/or recruitment agency-specific restrictions, open work permits would minimise barriers for migrant workers to exercising their rights. Fourth, as soon as forced (im)migrant labour no longer fills at low cost the most dangerous and/or difficult jobs, authorities will have to implement strong incentive programmes to ensure workforce attraction and retention in essential but substandard occupations and regions.

Fifth, to further protect all workers’ right to a meaningful access to justice and to reparation in case of a rights violation in the country, authorities will additionally need to ensure that all (im)migrant workers admitted under a work permit are granted unconditional access, upon arrival, to a permanent status recognition procedure. Thus, while permanent status will not systematically lead to permanent immigration, it remains a necessary condition for (im)migrant workers to fully exercise their rights and access justice in their country of residence and employment. In this context, to ensure that such a human rights-compatible immigration regime is demographically, economically and politically sustainable in the long term, out-migration facilitation measures (our sixth element), and in particular unemployment/work-related accident/pension benefits also accessible from abroad, must be prioritised. Such a wellbeing mindset will also need to include the promotion of (im)migrants’ rights to (international) family life.

Finally, to ensure minimisation of (im)migrant workers’ fundamental rights violations, labour (im)migration regimes must be complemented by sanctions for employers and intermediaries offering employer-tying/modern servitude work contracts (our seventh element), and by ongoing legal status regularisation procedures accessible at all time to migrant workers who find themselves unable to meet in time all the conditions required by general and fast-tracked work permit renewal procedures (our eighth element).

In sum, regarding labour (im)migration policies, yes, a better world is possible and, as demonstrated by historical best practices and judicial lessons, emancipatory policies for unfree workers are achievable every time a strong court declaration creates the momentum for political will.

 Eugenie Depatie-Pelletier is a law researcher and activist, and currently research director at the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers. The Association works to advance the rights of household and farm workers in Quebec and Canada through several activities such as strategic litigation, advocacy education and research. The Association is currently involved in a constitutional class action advocating the right for temporary migrant workers to change employer.

Image credit: Manuel Sardo via Unsplash

The newest season of Doctor Who opens as the series often does — with an unsuspecting human stumbling into some alien strangeness that doesn’t make any sense until an odd yet charming Time Lord shows up in a police box ready to save the day. The premiere episode, “The Robot Revolution,” feels like classic Doctor Who as it pits the Doctor and his new companion against an army of killer machines from another planet.

## The Robots’ Motivations

For most of the episode, you’re led to believe that Belinda’s robot captors are just hunks of metal hoping to use her presence as a way to quell a pesky, human-ish rebellion. But in its closing scenes, “The Robot Revolution” flips the script by revealing that Missbelindachrana-1’s machine overlords are actually acting on orders from Al, who has turned himself into a human-machine hybrid hellbent on merging with Belinda because he thinks he’s entitled to do so.

## Critiquing AI and Incels

AI and incels have both been the subjects of fierce debates over how society is changing and the role technology plays in radicalizing people. But rather than just treating AI as being innately malevolent, Davies felt that it was important for “The Robot Revolution” to dig into the ugly facets of society that are coded into AI by dint of it being a human creation. It’s not just that the robots of Missbelindachrana-1 are evil — Al’s long-standing resentment of and desire for Belinda are foundational parts of them.

## The Doctor’s Mission

“Everything I write has to have some of the modern world in it, because that’s the entire reason and purpose of science fiction,” Davies explained. “If you look at those who are programming AI and wonder about their nature, that leads you very swiftly through the stages of what Belinda discovers on the planet Missbelindachrana-1.”

## Confronting Racism

In an upcoming episode, the duo are travelling through time to Miami circa 1952, and while Belinda’s “absolutely wide-eyed at that,” for obvious reasons, the journey forces her to confront the era’s racism. “What Belinda hasn’t thought about, especially because she’s a British woman, are the segregation laws of the time,” Davies said. “Brittain’s not without our problems in this country, but we never had segregation laws like the US did in 1952, and that becomes a very interesting story that’s also very classic Doctor Who in that there’s a monstrous being on the loose.”

## Conclusion

In “The Robot Revolution,” Davies uses the Doctor and Belinda to explore the darker aspects of society, including the ways in which technology can be used to further harmful ideologies. By confronting the uglier aspects of human nature, the episode offers a thought-provoking commentary on the state of our reality.

## FAQs

Q: What is the main theme of “The Robot Revolution” episode?
A: The episode explores the darker aspects of society, including the ways in which technology can be used to further harmful ideologies.

Q: What is the significance of Missbelindachrana-1’s machine overlords?
A: The machine overlords are acting on orders from Al, who has turned himself into a human-machine hybrid hellbent on merging with Belinda because he thinks he’s entitled to do so.

Q: How does the episode critique AI and incels?
A: The episode critiques AI and incels by showing how they are connected to the way people relate to the world around them, and how they can be used to further harmful ideologies.

Q: What is the significance of the upcoming episode set in 1952 Miami?
A: The episode will explore the era’s racism and segregation laws, and how Belinda will confront these issues as a British woman traveling through time.