They came from Jamaica for work, now they're homeless and out thousands of dollars in lost wages

CTV National News: Exploitation allegations A construction company is being accused of exploiting temporary foreign workers. Judy Trinh on the allegations.

Abuse of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program has left a group of carpenters from Jamaica 'destitute' after an Ottawa company refused to pay them for nearly half a year of work.

Garick and Ramesh Ramsook arrived in the capital with hopes that a temporary job offer could lay the groundwork for a future in Canada. Instead, they are now homeless, desperately looking for work to stave off the guilt they feel for not being able to support their families.

The two brothers were enticed by a job offer from Polat Construction.

According to its website, the company has worked on projects for the federal, provincial and municipal governments. The company installed ceiling tiles for the city of Ottawa’s LRT stations and helped developers such as Minto and the CLV group renovate its apartments.

Polat markets itself as being driven “to deliver high-quality construction solutions at an exceptional price.”

According to documents seen by CTV News, the two brothers signed a two-year contract with Polat Construction for a rate of $26.06 per hour.

The company committed to finding the brothers an apartment before their arrival and offered to pay first and last month’s rent.

“It was a good offer - a good opportunity to make a better life for my family,” said Garick, 39. He told CTV National News that he wanted to earn extra money to send his teenage daughter to college. After talking to a Polat representative, Garick persuaded his younger brother to come along. Garick packed his bags, said good-bye to his twin seven-year-old sons and promised his common-law wife that he would send money back so she could finish nursing school.

Unpaid work

When the Ramsook brothers arrived in July 2023, they put their carpentry skills to work renovating a Turkish restaurant and building cabinets at the company’s headquarters in a west end industrial park. There were delays in getting paid from the start and Ramesh says he felt “threatened” after he confronted his boss about paycheques that didn’t materialize.

“He said if anyone would try to take down his company, he would get rid of them and fight them ten times harder,” recalls Ramesh, 33.

The brothers say they were laid off after managers found out that they were joining a group of employees who were trying to unionize.

After six months of work, they had only been paid for six weeks.

The Ramsook brothers along with two other Jamaican workers filed complaints with the Ontario Ministry of Labour in January 2024 to recoup their salaries.

Six months after they filed their complaints, provincial labour investigators found that Polat Construction had violated the Ontario Employment Standards Act which defines minimum wage and working conditions. In July, MOL ordered Polat Construction to pay the four men a total of more than $145,000 in lost wages.

The MOL determined that the brothers were owed $26,000 each. That ruling took place three months ago. It’s been more than nine months since Garick and Ramesh lost their jobs and nearly a year since they last collected a paycheque for Polat.

CTV News visited the head office of Polat Construction to ask the owner, Canpolat Sahin, about his treatment of the Jamaican temporary workers. At the office on Caesar avenue, reporters found a notice posted on the main door by the landlord indicating that Sahin had not paid nearly $12,000 in rent and that locks had been changed. The company also did not respond to multiple calls and emails from CTV News.

“These workers did everything correctly and the entire system failed them,” says Chris Ramsaroop of Justice for Migrants, an advocacy group that is helping the brothers sue Polat Construction for “wage theft.”

“They’ve been basically left destitute…the employer has yet to pay them. So provincial laws have failed workers and federal laws meant to protect workers have failed,” Ramsaroop said.

In just two weeks, the government will refuse applications for low wage temporary workers in regions where unemployment is at six per cent or higher.

But the construction, health care and agriculture sectors are exempt from the revised policy.

The new immigration measures are meant to relieve pressure on housing and social services, but Ramsaroop says the discourse surrounding the policies has vilified migrants at a time when they are in need of protection.

A recent United Nations report called Canada’s temporary foreign workers program a “breeding ground for contemporary slavery.”

Mounting violations

According to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada there are approximately 69,500 companies that employ temporary foreign workers (TFW) in Canada.

The latest statistics show that inspectors are unable to address a large portion of complaints.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, the federal government received more than 7,590 complaints and inspected 2,122 job sites.

Of the employers inspected, six per cent were deemed to have violated the rules of the TFW program.

Alice Hansen, the director of communications for the federal minister of employment, Randy Boissonault, says businesses that fail to compensate temporary foreign workers will face financial penalties. If they don’t pay, they will be banned from the program. She notes that 12 employers were banned the last fiscal year that ended on March 31.

Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada does post a list of non-compliant employers on its website, but it only captures the cases investigated by federal officials. There is also a question of how much information of abuse is shared between the provinces and the federal government. The case of Polat Construction is not listed on the IRCC site.

Ramsaroop says the federal government’s monitoring efforts aren’t enough to stop the abuse.

“You cannot have a system where employers are given an announced inspection - they’re given a heads up.” Ramsaroop says foreign workers have been interviewed with their bosses nearby and fired for talking to inspectors.

He points out that IRCC’s financial penalties go into federal funds, but don’t necessarily help struggling workers.