Three Calgary restaurant owners are facing jail time after they were convicted of financially abusing their employees, who were temporary foreign workers.
Mah also ordered Kasinathan, Marjak, and Roche to serve 18 months of probation and repay the $44,000 they stole from their three immigrant employees, the report said.
The three employees moved from India to Calgary between 2017 and 2020 as temporary foreign workers on employer-specific permits to work as line cooks at Marina Dosa and Tandoori Grill in Calgary.
Kasinathan, Marjak, and Roche told the victims they had to pay $24,000 each towards a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) “for government fees relating to their immigration to Canada,” Mah’s conviction decision last year said.
The LMIA is a document Canadian employers are required to obtain from the federal government to hire a temporary foreign worker, but the government processing fee for the assessment is only $1,000, Mah said.
She noted that Kasinathan, Marjak, and Roche “intentionally made false statements” to the three employees to pay much more. One employee, Parthiban Ramalingam, paid $24,000, while another employee, Venkatesan Durairaj, paid $12,000, and the third employee, Vijayasankar Krishnan, paid $8,000. The Crown presented evidence to the court indicating the restaurant told the employees they would be sent back to India if they didn’t pay the hefty fees.
The court heard that Kasinathan would drive Ramalingam to the bank to deposit his paycheque where Ramalingam would withdraw cash to give to Kasinathan for the LMIA, in addition to $400 for rent. The employees also lived in the homes of the employers and paid them rent. Mah described the living conditions provided to the employees as “substandard.”
The Crown said it took Ramalingam about a year to pay off the total amount of $24,000 for the LMIA, while working 12- to 14-hour shifts, six days a week, at $16 per hour. Kasinathan also asked Ramalingam to do gardening work around the house without pay, the Crown said.
Additionally, the employees were verbally and physically abused, the Crown told the court. Durairaj testified that he felt “mentally and physically stressed and pressured.”
“Durairaj worked in many other countries, but this was the first place he felt like a slave and he felt abused,” Mah’s conviction decision said.
The employees eventually complained to authorities such as Employment Standards, Service Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, the RCMP, and Calgary Police.
None of the accused testified and they were not compelled to be a witness in the case, the defence said. The defence questioned the reliability of the Crown’s case, saying it was based on “compelled evidence” since the Crown’s witnesses were the employees and there were no other witnesses.
The defence said the employers did not ask for nor receive any money from the employees for a LMIA, and that any money paid was to “repay expenses for rent, food, airline tickets, travel and utilities, or loans.” Mah rejected the defence.
