(Vancouver) A year-long appeal by 76 largely poor and elderly Indo-Canadian Farmworkers began in Tax Court in Vancouver on January 9th. The Farmworkers are appealing rulings by the Canada Revenue Agency that the records of employment prepared by their employer, a farm labour contractor, had all been falsified, and that most of them did not work enough hours during the 1997 picking season to qualify for EI.
Sarah Khan of the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre and Jim Sayre of the Community Legal Assistance Society have been working with the Farmworkers Legal Advocacy Program, a joint program of Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society and Abbotsford Community Services, to try and assist the Farmworkers. Ms. Khan and Mr. Sayre were appointed Friends of the Court in this case in order to present historical and contextual evidence about systemic problems in the farm labour contracting industry.
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