The Filipino and Latin American Community in PEI: Life Beyond the Fish Plant

1. The Numbers Behind This Community

Of the work permits issued in PEI in 2023, seafood and fish plant workers, harvesting labourers, and general farm workers made up 78% of all Temporary Foreign Worker Program permits, per a 2024 Cooper Institute research report. In 2017, PEI recorded 962 low-skill temporary foreign workers, the majority in fish processing, drawn mainly from Mexico, the Philippines, China, and Guatemala, according to Cooper Institute's earlier 2018 community forum. Of the province's twelve seafood-processing plants, only one was unionized as of that forum, with two previously unionized plants having since closed.

2. What Recruitment and Arrival Actually Look Like

According to Cooper Institute's research, Filipino workers are typically recruited through overseas agencies and pay recruitment fees; those agencies then have no further involvement once the worker arrives. Filipino workers can extend their stay in Canada by applying for a new contract, remaining under implied status while that application processes, and many stay in Canada for several years this way. The Cooper Institute's 2024 report on permanent residency struggles found that among a sample of migrant workers interviewed, five identified as Mexican nationals and three as Filipino, with the majority working in seafood processing, illustrating how central these two national groups are to the sector's workforce.

3. A Fish Plant Story From Wellington

Zenaida "Zeni" Angeles was one of 27 Filipino workers recruited from Taiwan in 2013 to work for Acadian Fisheries in Wellington. According to her account shared at Cooper Institute's 2018 public forum, the work is seasonal, roughly 8 to 9 months a year, during which workers try to maximize their hours; during the off-season, workers with sufficient insurable hours can draw Employment Insurance until the next season opens. Workers without full-time, year-round work, unlike those who find placements on dairy farms, face a harder path toward the permanent residency many are working specifically to reach.

4. From Fish Plant Worker to Small Business Owner

Ruby Lubigan arrived in PEI from the Philippines in 2011 to work at a fish plant in the western part of the province. Over the following decade, she noticed a growing number of Filipino and other Asian temporary foreign workers settling in the area around Bloomfield.

"I decided to open my business … so they can cook whatever they want, anytime they want," said Lubigan of her decision to open Sari Sari Retail, a grocery store she runs out of her Bloomfield home, in 2018.

"It's really important for us to make our own culture food. We miss our home," she told CBC News.

The store now stocks a mix of Filipino, Thai, Japanese, and Chinese ingredients, serving the region's broader Southeast and East Asian temporary worker population, not just Filipino customers. Lubigan has since become a Canadian citizen and works full-time at a bank in O'Leary alongside running the store.

5. The Isolation Behind the Success Stories

Cooper Institute's forums have also documented the harder side of this community's experience: workers tied to a single employer through closed work permits, language barriers limiting access to information about their rights, and, in some documented cases, workplace intimidation tied to fear of losing hours or status. This is precisely why organizations like Cooper Institute, IRSA, and informal community networks matter as much as they do, for a workforce whose legal status is often directly tied to one specific employer.

6. Support Available Today

• IRSA's Temporary Foreign Workers Support program helps with settlement, work permit questions, and information on TFW rights
• Cooper Institute publishes migrant worker guides in English, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese specifically because the community itself spans those languages
• Faith communities and informal social networks in rural areas like O'Leary and Tignish provide much of the day-to-day social integration that formal settlement services can't fully cover on their own