Forced Labor2011
Canada CA
Trafficker promised jobs to men from the Congo as tree planters. Up to seven men lived in a shipping container in remote areas of Golden, BC with no toilet or washroom. They ate expired food and subjected to violence. RCMP are also in investigating the death of one worker on one of the traffickers remote work sites. 57 men weren't paid for work between March and July of last year, and are still waiting for compensation. The company already had a "horrible track record" with WorkSafeBC where there were 20 violations found. NOTE: This case is not being charged with human-trafficking. Further details below.
Forced Labor2010
Canada CA
Most of the alleged victims come from a small town in Hungary called Papa, where it is alleged the accused have recruiters working for them. Once recruited the men are instructed to fly to Canada, claim refugee status and then apply for social assistance through Ontario Works, claimed Sgt. Kevin Serniuk, of the Hamilton-Niagara RCMP immigration and passport section. The men were then made to work on construction sites for free, never seeing a dollar of their social assistance money. They were isolated, fed scraps and lived in the basements of about five Hamilton homes belonging to their captors, one victim alleged. “They didn’t have the opportunity to communicate with a large population here in Hamilton, and you couple that with the fact that once they were in Canada they were never really left alone to mingle with the community . . . so their opportunity to communicate with somebody else was limited,” Serniuk alleged. There was one opportunity to communicate and that was at Ontario Works, were social service claimants must meet with staff on their own, he said. It was at Ontario Works that the first alleged victim told his story last December. This led to further alleged victims – some here for as long as a year, others a day, Serniuk said. at first 10 victims were identified, later 6 more and then yesterday 3 more totaling 19 but there may be more.
Forced Labor2009
Canada CA
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