“We Lived in Fear”

Dozens of migrant workers claim they were duped into working illegally in Canada. Now they’re fighting back.

“K” (middle), is one of the dozens of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the recruitment agency Trésor Inc. PHOTO: Peter McCabe

It’s Saturday at dawn and workers pile into a chartered bus outside Côte Vertu metro.

They know what’s waiting for them on the other end of that ride: earning less than minimum wage in a Dorval factory that supplies airlines with prepackaged meals. 

The conditions there are horrendous. Some of the migrant workers say they’ve gone an entire shift without stopping to eat, others claim they’ve been sexually harassed on the job and there are those who’ve racked up thousands in unpaid wages.

But they still get on the bus because to stop working would be to risk deportation. 

These people left their homes in Latin America on the promise that a recruitment agency would find them legal work, fair wages and an opportunity to become permanent residents. But soon after they started at the factory, many of the migrants say they made a startling discovery — that they’d been tricked into working in Canada without a permit. Some even say they were threatened with deportation for speaking out against the allegedly deceptive practices.

The agency, Gestion Trésor Inc., is the subject of a lawsuit filed on behalf of 400 migrants. So far, six of them have obtained temporary resident status after being undocumented for a year or more. 

They obtained the status from a federal program that protects the victims of human trafficking.

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The lawsuit claims Trésor recruited the plaintiffs through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), assuring each worker they’d take care of all the immigration paperwork and even help them get settled in Montreal. But after they began their new job, the migrants were told they would have to earn their permits after a three-month probationary period.

During this time, the agency subcontracted them to Newrest Group Holdings — an international corporation that supplies Air Canada, Qatar Airways and some of the world’s biggest airlines with inflight meals.

What they didn’t know is that there were no permits and there likely never would be. That’s according to the sworn testimony of dozens of migrant workers.

“We were treated as consumer goods,” said Andrea, a Mexican woman who started working for Trésor in May 2022. “The agency’s recruiter practically sold people.”

Andrea said the experience felt like a modern form of slavery.

By the time the workers figured out they were undocumented, many had already committed most if not all of their limited resources towards staying in Canada. They signed leases on apartments, some bought used vehicles and most hadn’t purchased a plane ticket home. Almost none spoke French or English and most were afraid that going to the authorities would mean outing themselves as undocumented workers.

“We felt trapped,” one worker told The Rover. “We had to keep working even if we were sick or injured, otherwise we wouldn’t get paid. We were afraid, we lived in fear of being found out and arrested.”

Trésor’s president Guillermo Montiel has repeatedly and forcefully denied these claims, telling Canadian Press he was “stunned” at the allegation outlined in the lawsuit. He added that his company has never offered a job to someone without a permit.

On Wednesday, six of the plaintiffs described working without a permit for months. Only one wound up with a permit through the TFWP but the rest say they were undocumented.

Quebec’s workplace safety board is investigating Trésor and Newrest.

The plaintiffs are seeking the court’s authorization to form a class action lawsuit. If that happens, they’ll have one of Canada’s premier law firms specializing in class actions — Trudel, Johnston & Lespérance — in their corner.

Asked why they went to a law firm and not the police, workers say they were afraid they’d be arrested for being undocumented.

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PHOTO: Peter McCabe

The Immigrant Worker Centre (IWC) estimates that as many as 400 workers have been caught up in the alleged scheme. 

Benoît Scowen, an organizer with the IWC, says the six people who came forward Wednesday are only speaking publicly because they now have legal protections from the federal government.

“Everyone else is in an incredibly vulnerable position,” said Scowen, who spent months gathering testimony from the workers. “One of the problems with the Temporary Foreign Worker Program is that the only real oversight mechanism requires workers to come forward. 

“If your employer is abusive, he isn’t going to inform you of your rights. So if you’re not aware of what your rights are or what institutions are out there to protect you, no one’s going to come check on you.”

One worker says she was part of a hiring blitz that saw 100 people recruited at once. 

Two described lining up behind dozens of people outside an office on St. Hubert Street to collect their pay every Friday. Their wages came in cash-filled envelopes that had the employee’s name inscribed on them next to a tally of the hours they worked.

In other words, their employer was handing out tens of thousands of dollars in cash each week to cover payroll. Though it’s legal in Quebec to pay employees in cash, employers must also provide a pay slip, which Trésor did not do, according to the workers interviewed by The Rover.

If this is true — and it’s important to note these allegations have not been tested in court — that means the company has been moving a small fortune in untraceable cash every week.

After news of the lawsuit broke last week, it appeared to be business as usual outside Trésor’s St-Hubert Street office. Workers filed in and out of the building as two men stood guard on the sidewalk. The men leaned against their cars and nodded at the workers as they left with their pay in white envelopes. 

Over the course of an hour, roughly two dozen of them passed through.

A worker collects his pay as two men stand guard outside Trésor’s St-Hubert Street office. PHOTO: Chris Curtis

A sign above the front door advertises a driving school but there’s no indication Trésor has a permanent presence inside the building. In fact, the office on St-Hubert Street doesn’t show up in any of Trésor’s corporate filings. If anything, the company’s corporate profile raises more questions than it answers.

Trésor isn’t registered as a single corporate entity but rather five companies registered at four different addresses in Montreal and Laval. 

The company’s main activities pass through Agence de Placement Trésor Inc., which employs between 26 and 49 people, according to corporate filings obtained by The Rover. That entity is owned by Montiel and his wife, who lists her job as an employee at Montréal–Trudeau International Airport on her Facebook profile. 

Trésor also recruits long haul truck drivers, nannies, cashiers, construction workers, upholsterers, warehouse workers and industrial painters to come to Canada from Central and South America. They come to Canada under the TFWP — a government initiative started in the 1970s to attract highly specialized workers from abroad. The program was expanded under the Liberal government in 2002 to include “low skill” labourers and its criteria was expanded again after the Harper Conservatives took power in 2006.

What started as a program that saw a small number of workers come to Canada each year is now an essential component of the country’s labour force. Today there are nearly 1 million workers in Canada without permanent resident status.

One of the biggest changes to the TFWP came three years ago, when the Trudeau government loosened criteria to meet labour shortages across the country. Under the new rules, people already in Canada on a student or tourist visa could apply to become temporary foreign workers.

Before these changes, a recruitment agency would have to travel abroad, recruit people, complete their immigration paperwork and find them an employer that qualifies for the federal program. They would then wait for months while their request was processed. Meanwhile, the employer would have to conduct an impact study that showed a demand for labour not being met by Canadian citizens.

Eliminating these obligations removed layers of oversight that have allowed predatory agencies to move in and exploit vulnerable workers. That’s what Scowen said at a press conference last week.

But experts say even the old TFWP was something of a nightmare for workers to navigate.

“The system is so fragmented,” said Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau, a Université de Montréal professor who specializes in labour law. “You have labour, which falls under provincial jurisdiction. And then you have immigration, which is federal, They’re all wrapped up into one program. 

“It’s very hard to imagine a global pathway for these workers to raise concerns about being tricked or having their rights violated. If it’s something happening on the job, then it falls on Quebec’s (workplace safety commission) to investigate. If it’s clearly a problem with visas or work permits, then maybe immigration officials are the ones to contact. But, anything in between, it can become very hard to find an institution that will support workers who believe they’ve had their rights violated.”

It was in 2020, as Ottawa relaxed regulations governing the TFWP, that Trésor started ramping up its activity. 

That year, Montiel and his wife registered Gestion Trésor Inc. — a company with zero salaried employees — in Quebec. A few months later, the couple created another corporation, Emploi Trésor International Inc.

By 2022, Trésor added two corporate entities and more investors to its portfolio. The first, 9441-1550 Québec Inc., is owned by a third investor and has no employees listed on its corporate filings. The second, Trésor 9475-0635 Québec Inc., lists two more investors as its only shareholders.

But the alleged wrongdoing doesn’t merely rest in the hands of a small recruiting firm, according to the lawsuit. 

Representatives from Newrest were aware of the “probation period” during which migrants worked without a permit, according to the lawsuit. They also say Newrest participated in the selection of temporary foreign workers.

Between 2020 and 2023, only 63 workers at Newrest Montreal Corporation had valid work permits under the TFWP. During that period, the IWC estimates hundreds of migrants worked in Newrest’s facilities. 

“Newrest and Trésor knew very well that the number of temporary foreign workers legally authorized to work at Newrest was far inferior to the number who worked or have been working there since August 2020,” the lawsuit reads. “(Newrest and Trésor) also knew that the vast majority of those workers would never obtain a valid work permit, but still illegally took advantage of workers paid a low salary.”

In a statement published last week, a spokesperson for Newrest said the company “scrupulously” follows Canadian laws and denied exploiting its workers. Newrest has hired an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into the lawsuit’s allegations.

Newrest operates out of 54 countries and has a massive presence in Montreal, employing 600 people in two industrial kitchens on the island. The company assembles roughly 15,000 meals a day, all of which are destined for flights leaving Trudeau International Airport.

The pressure for workers to meet these quotas is overwhelming.

“From day one we were made aware that we would not receive training, however, we were pressured to finish set tasks quickly,” Andrea said. “The overwork and psychological pressure, as well as the insults and mistreatment they exerted on us was high. We had to continue working otherwise we would not have our work permit.

“That conditioning kept me there, even with the fear and panic attacks… I suffered psychological, physical, verbal and sexual abuse from my superiors. For example, I was once asked if I was a virgin, I was forbidden to speak my mother tongue or even to talk, I was touched without my consent and I was even pushed.”

The lawsuit alleges that the undocumented workers are at the bottom of a three-tiered system at the Dorval factory. 

At the top, Newrest’s Canadian employees are unionized and enjoy all of the legal protections outlined in their collective bargaining agreement. In the middle, migrant workers are paid $15 an hour through the TFPW to do jobs Canadians are unwilling to do at those wages. 

At the bottom, undocumented labourers say their bosses at Newrest worked them like rented mules. They say they were discouraged from speaking to each other during breaks, one worker said she was punished for laughing at a joke and another claims that she was fired in August after asking other workers about their undocumented status.

The plaintiff — identified as H in the lawsuit — is a 39-year-old woman supporting five children and her mother back in Mexico. H was an engineering student before being recruited by Trésor for a two-year contract to work near the airport, earning the kind of money that could make a difference in her family’s quality of life.

H claims Trésor president Montiel promised to help her apply for permanent residency, a work permit for her husband and a permit for their children to come study in Canada. But when her job started in October of last year, H was informed she would have to work for three months before receiving her permit but that this was a perfectly legal arrangement. It wasn’t.

Over the next four months, she pressed Newrest and Trésor for more details about her work permit. She says they ignored her or minimized her concerns at every turn. By January, H was told she’d be receiving her TFWP visa imminently. But when she started raising concerns about workplace safety and unpaid overtime, H says her bosses threatened to fire her or take her name off a list of workers waiting for permits.

Desperate for some form of protection, H went to the union representing Newrest workers. She was turned aside because she isn’t a member. Eventually, Newrest and Trésor found out about H’s complaint to the union and she was fired.

She claims that towards the end, Trésor President Montiel told H that a group of migrant workers had once tried to sue the company but all wound up being deported. Montiel then allegedly said the police would not help someone like her.

Montiel did not respond to multiple interview requests from The Rover.

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PHOTO: Peter McCabe

Canada’s labour market would be in tatters without the TFWP.

Whether they’re farmhands harvesting crops under the blistering August sun or factory workers putting their safety at risk to keep our economy running, people come here from around the world with little guarantee that their labour will earn them a path to citizenship.

If you combine that desperation for a better life with a system that puts unchecked power in bosses’ hands, it creates a dangerous situation. In Canada, migrant workers generally operate under a “closed” permit system that binds them to one employer. If they run afoul of their boss, they’re sent home.

“For lack of a better term, these workers feel like they belong to their employer,” said Scowen. “How can you reform a system that’s so prone to abuse?”

Both Canada’s immigration and labour ministries are not commenting on the specifics of the Trésor case but sources inside both departments say they’re aware the system desperately needs reform.

In the past, when the TFPW has been questioned, Ottawa’s response is always some variation of “Canada is facing an unprecedented labour shortage.” And while that may be true, Professor Gesualdi-Fecteau says the labour shortage rhetoric hides an uglier truth.

“Is it a real labour shortage or is it a shortage of people wanting to work in these conditions,” Gesualdi-Fecteau said. “We have a demographic deficit in Canada and across the west, we’re getting older. But still, we have to address the fact that few people from the local workforce are willing to take a job in agriculture because it’s hard seasonal work for little pay. The TFWP is a way to fill positions that people with permanent status in Canada won’t.”

Perhaps what’s most galling about this case is that it forces us to confront injustices we normally get to ignore. If you’ve taken an overseas flight in the last two years, odds are you were served a meal prepared by a migrant worker. Is the person who cooked your cordon bleu chicken safe or do they live in constant fear? It’s not the kind of thing you want to think about on your way to Paris but it’s a fair question.

Even if none of the allegations in the lawsuit are true, we still benefit from a system where people leave their children for months so they can provide us with cheap labour. If you have kids, you can imagine how hard that might be.

When you go through Montiel’s social media accounts — where he posts pictures of his Alfa Romeo sports car, his Harley Davidson, floor tickets to a Rod Stewart concert and luxury vacations across the world — the difference between his world and the workers’ is striking. Even if everything is above board.

In the coming months, a Superior Court judge will decide whether the lawsuit proceeds and, if it does, Montiel will have his day in court.

Until then, the workers who put everything on the line to be here will keep climbing on the bus outside the metro station and making the food that keeps Canada’s third busiest airport in business.