Great novelists imagine vivid worlds populated by characters who make readers think, feel, and reflect on their own circumstances and those around them. Surrey writer Harpreet Sekha certainly meets this standard with his new novel, Frosty Lanes.
Translated from Punjabi by Dr. Akal Amrit Kaur and Mrs. Inderpal Kaur, Frosty Lanes offers a panoramic and often disturbing view into indentured servitude in the Canadian trucking industry. Two Punjabi truck drivers at the centre of the novel, Gursir and Karanvir, endure severe exploitation under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Gursir lives in Surrey and Karanvir lives in Brampton, but they spend much of their time driving big rigs along the Trans Canada Highway, often in dangerous winter conditions.
They pine for permanent residence status and happy lives with the woman that they each love in Canada. Yet pathways to citizenship remain elusive, no matter how hard they work.
In Canada, it’s illegal for employers to force people to pay a fee for a job. But in Frosty Lanes, trucking company owners demand exorbitant amounts from Punjabi drivers seeking employment. It’s done in return for being hired under a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) document.
An employer can only obtain an LMIA from the federal government after demonstrating that no Canadian worker or permanent resident is available. This enables the foreign worker to qualify for a work permit.
Frosty Lanes exposes LMIA loopholes
In Frosty Lanes, Shaminder, a trucking company owner in Surrey, deducts $4,000 for immigration consultant’s fees from Gursir’s pay. That’s in addition to the LMIA fees that Gursir had already paid before starting his job.
Shaminder also refuses to pay Gursir for driving a truck to Montreal, claiming that this was part of his training. Plus, Gursir is dinged another $1,000 for alleged wear and tear on the trailer. Yet Gursir still must pay tax on his entire income, as if these deductions never occurred. There’s no recourse for Gursir as long as he doesn’t have PR status.
Karanvir had previously driven a truck in Spain. What he experienced in that country does not compare to the exploitation that he endures in Canada. In one instance, Karanvir’s crooked immigration consultant, Chitti, tells him that he must pay $20,000 to be hired under an LMIA.
“You want to be a permanent citizen,” Chitti says. “Just take it as your fees for PR.”
And on it goes as Sekha depicts the toll that this takes on the drivers’ lives.
Meanwhile, Gursir’s wife discovers how workers in Canada are duped by help-wanted ads by employers who simply want to prove that there is nobody in the country available for the position. These fake ads, designed to get an LMIA approved, offer reasonable wages, but they’re actually a mirage. Prior to the ad going into a newspaper or online, the employer already plans to hire a foreign worker at a lower wage.
Frosty Lanes is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair’s shocking early 20th-century novel, The Jungle, which blew open widespread abuse of immigrant labour in the meat-packing industry. Like Sinclair, Sekha has clearly conducted extensive research and he’s able to convey the pain of the day-to-day lives of his characters.
In fact, Frosty Lanes provides sufficient detail to warrant a public inquiry into how LMIA agreements are regulated.
Manpreet Sahota reads Harpreet Sekha’s Punjabi short story “Weeds”.
Sekha’s tells stories full of empathy for migrants
Sekha, an immigrant from Punjab, has already written four books of short stories, the novel Hanere Raah, and the nonfiction work Taxinaama in Punjabi. He often shatters stereotypes about Punjabi immigrants while conveying the magnitude of their challenges.
One example is his short story “Weeds”, which addressed how a Punjabi-language broadcaster had to compromise his principles to keep his job. This story demonstrates how some Punjabi media outlets work hand-in-hand with an immigration industry that takes full advantage of newcomers.
Prism, Sekha’s empathetic collection of seven short stories, was a finalist for the 2018 Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature. It is one of his three books that have been translated into English. The second is called Journal of a Taxi Driver in English, and it’s about the Greater Vancouver taxi industry.
With Frosty Lanes, Sekha continues along these lines, shining a light on how and why well-meaning migrant Punjabi truckers endure such hardship at the hands of their employers.
In 2023, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, Tomoya Okabata, blew the whistle on what’s being inflicted on temporary foreign workers in Canada. Obata, a professor of international human rights law at York Law School in the U.K., concluded that Canada’s program “serves as a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery”. That’s because it “institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights”.
This year, Amnesty International followed up with its own damning report, based in part on in-depth interviews of 44 migrant workers from 14 countries.
In response to rising unemployment in Canada, B.C. premier David Eby and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have called for the abolition of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. But a more nuanced view would also look at it from the perspective of the temporary foreign workers themselves, which Frosty Lanes does with such devastating precision.
A more compassionate response would entail setting up a proper regulatory framework to curb widespread abuses and dissolve assymetries of power. This would offer real-life Gursirs and Karanvirs an opportunity to achieve their dreams and build a stronger, more vibrant, and equitable Canada.
Frosty Lanes is available on Amazon. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
