Isaac Phan Nay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Zak Vescera, The Investigative Journalism Foundation, The Tyee

[Editor’s note: This story is a collaboration between the Investigative Journalism Foundation and The Tyee.]

Choori Mohamed came to Canada with a dream of finding a job, getting permanent residency and eventually helping his wife and two children emigrate from his home in India.

Instead, he said, he went into debt paying $10,000 to secure a job and spent more than a year working a job he didn’t sign up for, for an employer he alleges took back part of his salary in cash.

“I never expected these things in Canada,” he said. “Everybody was saying, ‘Canada is a very safe place. It’s the safest country to work in.’ But it’s not.”

Choori Mohamed asked The Tyee and the Investigative Journalism Foundation to omit his first name to protect his chances for future employment.

His experience highlights what advocates describe as the growing and misunderstood problem of labour trafficking — recruiting workers, usually foreign ones, and coercing them to work, often for long hours and little pay.

Authorities have long struggled to estimate the prevalence of labour trafficking. Data from Statistics Canada and non-profit groups usually identify only a few dozen cases each year.

But The Tyee and the IJF have obtained a 2023 report from Canada’s financial intelligence agency that identified thousands of suspicious transactions related to labour trafficking, suggesting authorities understand the true scope of the problem is many times greater than what available data says.

The report, obtained through access-to-information legislation, also found signs labour trafficking was happening in a huge range of industries that rely heavily on migrant workers, including agriculture, fishing, hospitality, construction and manufacturing.

James McLean, the policy and research director for the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, said authorities have persistently failed to stop labour trafficking.

And with well over one million people on work permits in the country — many of them about to lose status — McLean said the risk is as great as ever.

“Labour trafficking has never been a true government priority,” McLean said. “Most anti-trafficking strategies barely mention it.”

“It’s not a minor gap. It’s a structural blind spot, and traffickers know it.”

‘Opportunities for abuse by traffickers are expected to rise’

Anyone can be a victim of labour trafficking. But McLean said the most common targets by far are migrant workers in Canada on temporary visas.

McLean said trafficking can include debt bondage, threats to workers, forcing workers to live in substandard housing or threatening to have workers deported for refusing an employer’s demands.

A hotline operated by McLean’s centre has received a growing number of reports about labour trafficking. In 2024, it identified 100 cases, an all-time high.

But McLean said that is still an underestimate. He said many foreign workers are not aware of their rights in Canada. Others are unwilling to risk their visa status by reporting abuse or may fear retribution from their employers.

“Even with the surge in numbers that we’ve seen over the past few years we still think it’s an undercount and that much of the exploitation going on in the country goes unreported,” McLean said.

The December 2023 report produced by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or Fintrac, is based on suspicious transactions reported to that agency by banks, credit unions and other financial institutions.

The analysis identified more than 3,000 reports that Fintrac believed could be linked to forced labour between January 2016 and November 2023. Fintrac declined to provide more recent data for this story.

Fintrac even identified hallmarks of money laundering linked to forced labour, including payroll discrepancies, bank accounts that seem to be controlled by a third party, and suspicious email money transfers.

The report confirmed many victims of labour trafficking were foreign workers and said they often came from Mexico, India and the Philippines.

It also warned that traffickers would take advantage of federal policy changes that increased the number of such workers in Canada.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government dramatically expanded multiple temporary immigration programs to meet business demands for workers.

That included the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which ties a worker’s visa to a specific employer, meaning they cannot easily quit without losing their status in Canada.

“In this environment, opportunities for abuse by traffickers are expected to rise,” the Fintrac report said.

Amanda Aziz, a lawyer at the Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver, said her organization has seen a huge range of labour trafficking cases in recent years.

In some cases, Aziz said, victims come to Canada expecting to work as engineers, only to be put to work on a farm. She said employers often confiscate workers’ passports and sometimes force them to work gruelling hours for little pay.

“I’d say it is quite common, unfortunately,” Aziz said.

The Canada Border Services Agency declined a request for an interview about what it is doing to prevent labour trafficking and investigate perpetrators. So did the federal public safety minister, Gary Anandasangaree.

‘I didn’t have any options’

Choori Mohamed’s story highlights how Canada’s temporary worker programs expose foreign workers to abuse.

Choori Mohamed’s allegations against his employer and immigration consultant have not been tested in a court or tribunal.

But Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada accepted Choori Mohamed’s evidence of abuse and granted him an open work permit for vulnerable workers facing abuse in Canada.

The Tyee and the IJF also checked his story against an investigation report produced by British Columbia’s Employment Standards Branch, which investigates alleged employment law violations. The document outlines Choori Mohamed’s allegations against his employer and immigration consultant and their responses. It also includes bank account balance sheets, text messages, job offers and other documents compiled by a branch investigator.

His former employer declined an interview for this story.

Choori Mohamed said he spent seven years as a foreign worker in Dubai before coming to Canada in 2023 to build a new life for his family.

“My friends said, ‘If you can get a work permit, it’s a good life,’” he said. “‘If you can get your family to stay here, then your children will get better education.’”

While in the country as a visitor, Choori Mohamed approached Noaisys Immigration Inc., a Delta, B.C.-based firm founded by immigration consultant Simon Chelat, to help him find work and apply for permanent residency.

A 2023 Docusign contract included in the investigation report, signed by both Choori Mohamed and Chelat, outlines the terms of an agreement to pay $10,500 in exchange for help applying for a work permit and to cover any government processing fees involved with the application.

He said Chelat told him about a job as a retail supervisor at a gas station in Whistler that had already been approved for a foreign worker. Choori Mohamed alleged in the investigation report that Chelat told him the fee was to help him get the job.

Consultants call the prohibited practice “job selling.”

Chelat said that any fees charged to Choori Mohamed were for his legitimate services as an immigration consultant.

“The allegation you reference does not constitute a substantiated story, nor has any credible information been presented to support it,” a spokesperson for Chelat said in an email to The Tyee and the IJF.

“To be very clear, our firm does not engage in any such activities.”

When The Tyee and the IJF contacted Chelat’s firm in January, the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, the regulator for that profession, had suspended Chelat’s licence for six months in connection with a separate instance of a job-selling scheme.

The college’s disciplinary committee detailed the case in a decision published on its website.

The college found Chelat “failed to be honest and candid with his client.”

It ordered Chelat to pay more than $26,000 in costs and fines and suspended his immigration consultant’s licence for six months starting July 2025.

Chelat was still fighting these allegations in 2023 when he met Choori Mohamed.

Choori Mohamed said his wife took out a loan in India to cover the initial payment, which was more than he could afford.

But when Choori Mohamed moved to Squamish and began work in March 2023, he said it wasn’t the job he signed up for.

According to an offer of employment included in the investigation report, Choori Mohamed was hired as a “retail supervisor.”

The document shows he was to be paid $22 per hour, and his job responsibilities included supervising sales staff and cashiers, operating registers, hiring and training staff and keeping the store tidy.

But Choori Mohamed said his employer had him mainly working as a cashier alone, stocking the shelves and cleaning toilets, with no supervision duties.

Choori Mohamed requested The Tyee and the IJF not identify his employer but shared a contract, correspondence and a report from the Employment Standards Branch to back up his account.

Choori Mohamed alleged in the investigation report his employer required him to pay back $4 cash for each hour he worked — effectively bringing his wage down to $18 per hour.

Choori Mohamed also claimed his employer told him to pay four instalments of $250 to cover the business’s government fee for processing the labour market impact assessment, or LMIA, plus an extra $5,000 to support his permanent residence application.

“He said, ‘Everybody does the same,’” Choori Mohamed said. “Nobody explained to me these things.”

The investigation report included a balance sheet of Choori Mohamed’s bank account, with cash withdrawals highlighted. In the report, Choori Mohamed alleges these withdrawals were given to his employer.

It also includes a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation in which Choori Mohamed tells his boss, “I brought the cash it’s with me, you told me it’s 390.”

The WhatsApp conversation shows his employer replies the next day with a voice call.

Reporters contacted the employer via phone, but he declined to speak to The Tyee and the IJF about those allegations.

“I cannot discuss anything about this, because we are not in business anymore,” they said, adding they retired last July.

But in an email to an investigator with the B.C. Employment Standards Branch, the employer denied the allegations that he took Choori Mohamed’s wages.

“Let me be absolutely clear: I have never, and would never, abuse the Temporary Foreign Worker Program,” they said in the email, which was included in the branch’s report.

The situation left Choori Mohamed stuck.

Visas for temporary foreign workers are tied to their employer. For Choori Mohamed, quitting would mean leaving Canada unless he could find and obtain an entirely new work permit first.

And he had to keep working to pay off his debt.

Choori Mohamed said he was barely able to make enough money to pay for his loans, cover the LMIA fees and send money back home to his family.

“It was a hard time,” he said. “I have a wife and two children in India, I have to take care of them. I don’t get anything.”

Choori Mohamed’s situation changed on a Friday in June 2024 when he was taking part in a group prayer. There, he was approached by a volunteer at the Squamish Welcome Centre.

The non-profit community organization helped Choori Mohamed apply for a vulnerable worker permit and make a complaint with the Employment Standards Branch.

On Nov. 6, 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada issued him a 13-month open work permit.

Choori Mohamed’s former employer agreed to pay him $23,000 to settle the Employment Standards Branch complaint before the tribunal made a decision.

Choori Mohamed’s story is one of dozens of cases of labour exploitation in Squamish alone, according to the welcome centre’s migrant worker support co-ordinator, Zulma Reina.

Since the centre launched its migrant worker support program in 2023, it has had more than 130 participants.

Data collected by the centre shows about a third of those participants faced some kind of abuse at work, including wage theft, illegally charging foreign workers for government fees or sexual abuse.

Reina said it’s rare for exploited migrant workers to get any kind of justice.

She said some workers, like Choori Mohamed, have been able to get open work permits, but others are afraid to report abuse.

“They are really, really afraid of the consequences,” she said. “They think if they complain or say anything about the employer, their work permit could be cut, and they will need to leave the country right away.”

Others, Reina said, are worried that an investigation into their employer will put their co-workers’ jobs and status in Canada in jeopardy.

“The system is broken,” Reina said.

‘Ripe for labour trafficking’

A Statistics Canada report published last month indicates that more labour-trafficking victims are coming forward to Canadian police.

The report found an uptick in police reports about human trafficking of men and boys, who are more likely to be trafficked for their labour than for sex. Statistics Canada also noted that 85 per cent of the men and boys reported some kind of business relationship with the accused.

Even though more cases are being reported, the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking’s McLean said police rarely lay criminal charges against alleged traffickers.

“Privately, law enforcement acknowledges they lack the mandate, training and resources to investigate these cases proactively,” McLean said.

When lawyer Aziz approaches local police or the Canada Border Services Agency on behalf of a worker, they rarely investigate a case, she said.

Aziz acknowledges the cases can be complicated for police to look into.

“Unfortunately, sometimes these labour traffickers are quite smart,” Aziz said. “They have an entity in the home country, an entity in Canada — this chain to make it difficult to determine who is actually the agent here who needs to be prosecuted.”

McLean believes the federal government should allow migrant workers to more easily move between jobs, which he argues would help them escape exploitative situations.

Aziz agreed that many of the current problems are caused by the government’s own rules.

“Our system does help to create the circumstances that are ripe for labour trafficking,” Aziz said.

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