Arthur Cajes is one of many foreign workers who paid $8,000 to an immigration consultancy in an effort to work at a Canadian convenience store. But when he arrived, the promised job didn’t exist.
He’s part of a years-long class action lawsuit making its way through the BC Supreme Court. The workers won a small victory this week when a judge decided the chain of convenience stores that promised them work could be liable to pay damages along with the immigration agency.
Cajes was working in Dubai in 2012 when he attended a job fair looking for foreign workers to fill positions in Canada hosted by Overseas Immigration Services Inc. He ended up spending thousands for a chance to reunite his family in Canada, according to the decision posted online November 4.
Cajes lived in Dubai with his wife while supporting their two children in the Philippines. They had no hope of making a permanent home in the United Arab Emirates, but coming to Canada offered them a chance to one day get permanent residency.
Overseas Immigration Services Inc.’s flyers advertised Canadian jobs in truck driving, bricklaying, carpentry, mechanics, and food services.
Cajes paid Overseas $2,000 to enter the application process, and met with two representatives of Mac’s Convenience Stores and Subway. Mac’s stores have been re-branded as Circle K in Western Canada, and some locations contain Subway sandwich counters.
Karolis Kavolelis/Shutterstock
Cajes impressed the interviewers and was sent an employment contract in April 2013 that was signed by Mac’s senior recruiting and training manager, Geoff Higuchi. The contract said Cajes would work as a supervisor at a Mac’s location in Calgary, earning $13 per hour and working a 37.5-hour week.
He signed the contract and used it and Mac’s labour market opinion document to apply for his Canadian work visa under the Temporary Foreign Worker program (TFW). The TFW program allows workers into Canada to work in specific jobs for specific employers.
The visa came through in October 2013, at which point Overseas told Cajes his second payment was due. His wife took out a loan for the $6,000 Overseas asked for. The company then booked him on a flight to Vancouver.
Cajes landed at Vancouver International Airport on February 16, 2024. An Overseas worker met him and took him to accommodation in Surrey where Cajes lived with several other workers in housing he says was overcrowded.
Newly arrived worker told promised job doesn’t exist
The next day, Cajes went to Overseas’ Surrey office to ask about his job at the Calgary Mac’s. But an Overseas employee told him there was no work for him at Mac’s.
Cajes’s work permit only allowed him to work at the Calgary Mac’s location. Working anywhere else would be illegal and put him at risk of being detained by the Canadian Border Services Agency.
Cajes is one of many foreign workers recruited by Overseas for work at Mac’s who arrived in Canada to find the jobs never materialized. They’ve come together for a class action lawsuit seeking damages from Mac’s and the foreign worker recruiting agencies it worked with.
Some workers, like Cajes, were provided accommodation but no work. But others, like Edlyn Tesorero, were provided neither housing nor a job.
Tesorero booked and paid for her own ticket to Vancouver after sending $8,000 to Overseas. On her first night, an Overseas employee took her to a hotel. From there, she was put on a bus to Calgary. She couch-surfed in Alberta’s biggest city for six months while repeatedly contacting Higuchi about the job she was promised. She finally gave up and moved back to Dubai in 2014.
Another worker, Prakash Basyal, also arrived in Canada to find his promised job at an Edmonton Mac’s wasn’t going to happen. Overseas instead offered him work at a bottle factory, which Basyal thought was legal. But Overseas never got him an updated work permit, according to the court decision. Basyal was handcuffed by CBSA officers and taken to homeless shelters first in Calgary and then in Vancouver.
Bishnu Khadka also quit his job in the UAE to work at Mac’s. He paid Overseas $2,000 when starting the job search and another $6,000 when he was hired. He waited for several months back home in Nepal before Overseas booked him a ticket to Vancouver in 2014.
Once Khadka arrived in Canada, an Overseas employee told him he’d be living and working in Kitimat — a small city in Northern BC. Khadka was put in an unfurnished apartment with another worker, where he said the two of them shared one blanket. He worked at a Mac’s location for four days before the store changed hands, which nullified his work permit.
The workers’ stories were illustrated in affidavits for the BC Supreme Court case. The matter of whether Overseas broke the law by charging workers fees ahead of their job placements has not yet been decided. But a judge decided this week that Mac’s could be held vicariously liable for Overseas’ actions.
Court decision enables class action to seek damages from Mac’s
Dustin Godfrey/Shutterstock
This week’s decision from the BC Supreme Court means the workers can seek damages not only from Oversees but also from Mac’s.
Mac’s argued it shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of the recruiting agency it worked with. It also argued the workers were going after it because of its “deep pockets.” Further, Mac’s said it didn’t create the circumstances by which Overseas allegedly exploited overseas workers — saying Overseas was already hosting job fairs in Dubai for several other clients.
But the BC Supreme Court judge didn’t agree with Mac’s arguments. Though Mac’s didn’t organize the job fairs, it opened the possibility for abuse of power when it offered prospective workers job contracts.
The convenience store chain relied on Overseas to complete the employer’s obligations under the Temporary Foreign Worker program. The decision said that, at the time, employer responsibilities included government applications, covering roundtrip airfare to and from Canada, and assisting workers in finding appropriate accommodation.
Mac’s was only involved in interviewing and signing standard form employment contracts. Overseas recruited and pre-screened candidates and then filled out their immigration paperwork on behalf of Mac’s.
The BC Supreme Court decided Overseas was acting as an agent of Mac’s, and therefore Mac’s could be liable if it is found that Overseas broke Canadian rules around recruiting foreign workers.
Lawsuit alleges recruitment agency was getting paid at both ends
The lawsuit alleges that Overseas companies were collecting money from both Mac’s and prospective employees while filling jobs at convenience stores in Western Canada. Evidence indicates that Mac’s paid Overseas $500 for every cashier it successfully placed and $1,500 for every store supervisor position it filled.
At the same time, Overseas was charging applicants $2,000 at the start of its recruitment process and $5,500 to $6,000 when a position was secured. Not all foreign workers paid the same amount, but they all paid something.
It’s not disputed that Overseas charged the prospective workers fees. But the nature of what the fees were for will be looked at in court. It has not been proven that the fees were illegal.
Overseas claims the $8,000 or so was for its settlement services. Overseas said in a deposition that the initial $2,000 fee was levied to test the seriousness of job-seekers. It did not want to waste time with “tire kickers.”
But Canadian law prohibits employers from charging workers fees to obtain a job. It also forbids employers from trying to recover fees from the worker that it’s obligated to pay. This includes application processing fees or costs associated with recruitment advertisements.
“As an employer, you must confirm and ensure that you or anybody recruiting on your behalf doesn’t charge or recover any recruitment fees, directly or indirectly, from the TFWs,” the Government of Canada says on its 2024 website.
The workers allege the $8,000 they were charged was an illegal fee to secure a job in Canada.
The matter is proceeding to trial, and Mac’s will only be held liable for damages if the court finds Overseas’ fees broke immigration rules.
Recruiter tries to argue workers should have mitigated their losses
Farm workers in Richmond, BC (DSoleil Studios/Shutterstock
The defendants tried to argue that the workers who found out their promised jobs didn’t exist after arriving in Canada should have taken steps to mitigate their financial losses.
Overseas said it offered to set these workers up with agricultural jobs and offered to place them with other clients it was working on labour permits for. TFWs are only permitted to work for the employer that brought them over, so waiting for the paperwork to come through would mean staying in Canada without housing or a job for six to eight months. The timeline for agricultural work was slightly quicker, but would still involve a wait.
Overseas also said it offered workers who didn’t have jobs airfare back to the city they came from.
But the BC Supreme Court judge decided it was unreasonable to expect the workers to mitigate their losses, since they were limited in their job-seeking abilities by their work permit tying them to the employer that brought them over.
The decision also revealed miscommunication between Overseas and Mac’s. When Cajes reached out directly to Higuchi about details of the job while still in Dubai, Higuchi told him he was not “on his list.” Cajes reached out to Overseas about the confusion, and Overseas instructed him to pay his second instalment of $6,000 and get on his flight to Canada the next month.
Meanwhile, Overseas told Higuchi that Cajes had found other work.
How to join the class action lawsuit
The class action lawsuit against Mac’s, Overseas, and Trident Immigration Services (which sometimes collected a portion of workers’ fees) is still accepting new class members. Anyone who paid a fee and then accepted a contract to work at a Mac’s store in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, or the Northwest Territories is eligible to join.
The lawsuit claims that Overseas representatives told foreign workers they would get jobs in Canada for their fees under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program. The lawsuit claims the fees were illegal and that some class members were not provided employment as promised.
The class action lawsuit has been certified. Daily Hive has reached out to the law firms behind the class action and to Circle K Canada for comment.
Overseas Immigration Services is located in Surrey, BC, and claims on its website that it does not charge job-seekers placement or recruiting fees. It has not responded to a request for comment.