SlaveryMap
Forced Labor

Elmvale, ON, Canada

A Taiwanese woman, known in Canada by three different names, worked for a Filipino recruitment agency. She met the 11 men when they arrived in Toronto. She told them the employer had backed out of the deal (a lie) and they would have to relocate to a different job site. Together with a man pretending to be a lawyer, she confiscated their passports and visas, and they delivered the men to a business man in an abandoned farmhouse north of Toronto. The twice bankrupt "lawyer" denies he received money from the business man for delivering the 11 workers. Both the "lawyer" and the woman had previous arrest warrants in the Philippines for illegal recruitment and fraud. The man seems to have been involved in human trafficking before. A week after the Elmvale release, the business man who kept the 11 men enrolled the "lawyer" to recruit 191 workers for him, but this time the business man did not receive the legal visas (LMO's) The workers, threatened with deportation, by the man who "bought" them. Http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/Article/488074 http://canadaimmigration.typepad.com/canada_immigration/2008/09/08/index.html

Location
Canada · Elmvale, ON · 2009 (location generalized to protect survivors)
Response & intervention
The Filipino government closed down Cete Millenium and Sanlee recruitment agencies. The RCMP was called in by the F. embassy (Frank Luna the labour attaché) After months of investigations by the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency, no charges have been laid because the initial investigator feels there was not enough "fear for their safety or their lives," After 6 weeks in captivity, one of the 11 victims, escaped and managed to contact the Filipino embassy officials. A few days later the other 10 men were rescued by Filipino consular staff. Facing deportation, 5 were hired by Cover-All Building Systems and now work as welders for that company in Saskatoon. The rest of the men are in Canada also, working elsewhere in Saskatchewan, or in Alberta and British Columbia. One of the victims, escaped and managed to contact the Filipino embassy officials.
Sources

Documented on the original SlaveryMap (2008–2016). Use “Report a problem” below to add a source or flag an issue.

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