Mac's treatment of temporary foreign workers 'callous,' B.C. judge rules

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Mac’s Convenience Stores Inc. and two immigration agencies working for it were abusive and callous in their treatment of hundreds of temporary foreign workers recruited abroad, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled.

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Justice Sharon Matthews has yet to determine damages for a scheme she judged “too obviously abusive to dismiss as simply careless.”

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It could cost the companies millions in restitution to an estimated 880 temporary foreign workers. They were charged up to $8,000 each for the promise of jobs at Mac’s convenience stores in Canada.

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During a trial last fall, Matthews heard Mac’s hired Overseas Immigration Services Inc. to recruit workers and handle paperwork under Ottawa’s temporary foreign worker program.

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In a ruling in the class action lawsuit released Friday, she said the companies worked together to implement a “scheme” of Mac’s offering jobs that didn’t or may not have existed.

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Overseas, with involvement from a subsidiary and Trident Immigration Services Ltd., set up job fairs in Dubai to recruit workers for Mac’s, charging them an initial fee of $1,500 to $2,000 and an additional $5,500 to $6,000 once the workers got visas and a job offer, Matthews wrote.

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Charging people for jobs is illegal, but Overseas argued they were lawful fees for immigration and settlement services.

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The judge disagreed, ruling them unlawful. She found Overseas and Trident liable for damages for unjust enrichment and breach of fiduciary duty toward all of the workers.

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But some of the workers could get higher damages because they arrived in Canada to find the jobs they were promised didn’t exist, according to the judgment.

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The four representative plaintiffs testified they were told Overseas arranged a job for them at Mac’s, but they instead found themselves unemployed and even homeless in some cases.

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One, Prakash Basyal, told court he was working for a Baskin-Robbins in Dubai and using his earnings to support his parents, grandmother, three sisters and brother back home in Nepal. He said he was offered a full-time job at a store in Edmonton.

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He was issued a permit to work at a Mac’s store in Edmonton. But then, Basyal told court, Overseas told him he would instead be working on a farm. He refused.

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He was then offered work at a bottle depot and given a bus ticket to Calgary. After spending a night In Calgary, he was taken to Lethbridge and lived in a room in a couple’s house. He worked at a bottle depot eight hours a day, six days a week, without getting paid the promised $11 an hour, he told court.

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Then, Canada Border Services Agency agents arrested him because his work permit did not cover Lethbridge.

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After some time in a detention centre, he was bused to Vancouver, where he lived in a homeless shelter for three to four months before later getting a new work permit, in 2014.