Indo-Canadian gets 20-mth house arrest for misuse of immigrant workers at construction site

Toronto: An Indo-Canadian has been sentenced to 20 months of house arrest for misuse of immigrant workers at a construction site.

In a statement issued on Friday, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) said that on April 2, Gurwinder Singh Ahluwalia, a resident of Winnipeg in Manitoba, pled guilty to one count of unauthorised employment of foreign nationals and was sentenced to 20-month house arrest and ordered to pay a 50,000 Canadian dollars fine ($36,045).

The arrest followed after in August 2023, the CBSA Criminal Investigations Section began an investigation after receiving information about the “employment and mistreatment of unauthorised workers at a local construction site”.

Investigators found paperwork and work permit applications associated to Ahluwalia who was the construction site manager, the statement said.

In May last year, CBSA executed search warrants resulting in the seizure of multiple electronic devices and physical documents. The documentation revealed that Ahluwalia lured foreign nationals to Canada to work without authorisation and underpaid workers who had valid work permits. He was charged by the CBSA on November 26, 2024.

Janalee Bell-Boychuk, CBSA’s Prairie Region Regional Director General, said, “We will continue to pursue prosecution for individuals who abuse our immigration system while safeguarding workers from exploitation.”

The CBSA opened 184 criminal investigations into suspected offences under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act or IRPA last year.

It receives referrals for suspected immigration offences from a variety of sources, including partner organisations and other government departments.

As the Hindustan Times reported in February, several Indo-Canadian trucking companies, farms and even a gurdwara are among the concerns that have been penalised by the Canadian government for being non-compliant when it comes to hiring temporary foreign workers.

Of the over 400 firms found to be non-compliant, at least 10% appear to be run by Indo-Canadians.

Prominent among them is Toor Vineyards, based in Oliver in the province of British Columbia, which was fined 118,000 Canadian dollars ($85,066) and permanently banned from the using the temporary worker programme.

Details of the companies found non-complaint have been posted on a public website by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada or IRCC.

Also on the list is Samhil Logistics, based in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), which has been fined 100,000 Canadian dollars ($72,090) and subject to a ten year prohibition on hiring through the temporary foreign worker or TFW programme.

There are several such Indo-Canadian outfits that were found ineligible for the programme by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the agency which manages it.

Much of this enforcement action was taken to curb the misuse of the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), , a document prospective employers have to procure prior to hiring a foreign worker. LMIA fraud has been a topic of discussion in Canada over recent months as the government has sought to curb immigration and clean up the system. There have been multiple anecdotal reports of unscrupulous immigration agents working with employers to generate LMIAs, after prospective employees pay sums ranging from 10,000 Canadian dollars ($7,209) to nearly 75,000 Canadian dollars ($54,067). Some prospective immigrants have told the Hindustan Times of these demands for processing the LMIA.

That was alluded to in a release from ESDC on January 17, in which it said it had “significantly expanded its efforts to monitor and combat” LMIA misuse, with more rigorous oversight in high-risk areas, when processing LMIAs and conducting inspections and eliminating attestations from professional accountants or lawyers as proof of business legitimacy to help ensure job offers are genuine, among other measures.