By Hina Alam
A New Brunswick seafood processing company is challenging in court the record $1-million fine and 10-year ban on using the temporary foreign worker program that it received from the federal government.
Employment and Social Development Canada penalized Bolero Shellfish Processing Inc. in September, saying the company broke hiring laws and didn’t provide its employees proper pay or working conditions. The department said the $1-million fine is the biggest sanction it has ever issued.
In its Federal Court application dated Tuesday, Bolero says the government’s allegations have caused it to “suffer considerable stigma akin to a finding of guilt in a criminal proceeding without any right to a trial or a hearing.”
The company says the federal government took four years to investigate — a time frame it says was unreasonable and prejudicial. Bolero also alleges that Ottawa failed to disclose key evidence or give it enough time to respond.
“These measures go well beyond a mere regulatory response and have the effect of significantly damaging the company’s reputation and operations, and are grossly disproportionate to the respondent’s allegations,” the court application says.
In listing its reasons for the fine, the federal government says Bolero broke federal or provincial hiring laws, offered pay or working conditions that were inferior to the listed offer, and did not do enough to ensure the workplace was free of abuse.
The company’s court application says that in 2021 it received notices of inspection from Service Canada regarding the employment of 35 foreign workers. But Bolero says several delays prolonged the inspection.
“As a result of the respondent’s delays, the decision was rendered more than four years later,” the filing says. “The respondent’s delays prejudiced the applicant, including in its ability to respond to the respondent’s allegations.”
The application says that the federal government determined that Bolero had not employed the foreign workers for the minimum 30 hours a week as required by the labour impact assessments tied to the worker program. In response, the company says eight foreign workers did not work the required hours “because of dramatic and unforeseeable changes in economic conditions.”
“Bolero paid the workers for the equivalent of 30 hours of work per week even though they did not work those hours. In other words, the temporary foreign workers were paid for work they did not perform.”
The application says Bolero was found not to have paid proper overtime to one foreign worker, and that two workers had not been covered by health insurance for a period of time.
The company blames an “unintentional administrative error” for the improper overtime pay, adding that the employee “did not suffer any financial loss and was fully compensated.” It also blames the lack of health coverage on an “administrative error,” saying “as soon as the error was identified, the private health insurance was reinstated.”
“Bolero did not financially abuse the temporary foreign workers,” the company says in its filing.
In an interview with The Canadian Press earlier this month, a migrant workers advocacy group said Bolero employees were given contracts in 2023 that promised them a minimum 30 hours of work a week. Niger Saravia of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change said workers were required to pay rent for accommodations provided by the employer.
But the hours eventually dropped, leaving workers struggling to pay their employer for the rent, he said.
In a news release, the workers group also described a “forced debt scheme,” where workers were paid the promised 30 hours, but in cases where they worked less, they were allegedly told they would have to pay back the difference later or work unpaid labour.
Bolero’s parent company, Sogelco International, has said Bolero Shellfish “categorically rejects the conclusions of the federal government, which do not reflect the reality of its practices nor its commitment to the well-being of employees under the temporary foreign worker program.”
