Ontario investigating recruiter in Alberta who helps supply low-wage foreign workers to Canadian Tire stores

Ontario’s Ministry of Labour is investigating the Alberta-based recruiter who was involved in bringing in scores of temporary foreign workers to staff low-wage jobs at Canadian Tire stores across Canada.

A ministry spokesperson told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail that it is conducting an open investigation into Allison Jones, the owner of a recruiting agency and an immigration consulting agency in St. Albert, outside of Edmonton. It did not provide any additional details about the probe.

Ms. Jones is a popular recruiter among franchisees of the Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons chains, helping franchise owners fill low-wage positions in their outlets with labour from abroad.

One of her recruiting agency’s clients, a Canadian Tire location in Toronto, is also under provincial investigation over allegations that it mistreated employees. Several workers have told The Globe their wages were reduced by the owner, potentially violating the rules of the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

The TFWP has exploded in use in recent years, part of the Liberal government’s broader policy agenda to increase migration to Canada and address a COVID-19-driven labour shortage. Motivated by the prospect of obtaining permanent residency, the number of foreign workers in Canada increased dramatically over the past three years. In 2023, there were 188,580 TFWP permit holders, up from 81,435 at the end of 2021.

Canadian Tire store in Toronto under investigation for alleged mistreatment of temporary foreign workers

This has turned immigration into a lucrative business opportunity for a bevy of middlemen – lawyers, job recruiters and immigration consultants – intent on profiting from the rush of migrants who are eager to come to Canada, and employers who are desperate to staff their operations.

As the owner of a recruiting agency and an immigration consultancy, Ms. Jones’s companies can charge employers and foreign workers separately. One of her firms, Allison Jones Consulting Services Inc., provides recruiting services to companies looking to hire through the TFWP. The other firm, AJ Immigration Group Inc., charges five-figure fees to international workers who are trying to enter the country.

Eight of the foreign workers who were employed at the Canadian Tire store in Toronto that is under investigation say they paid AJ Immigration Group more than $10,000 to come to Canada, a figure that was confirmed by The Globe through e-mails, invoices and text messages between the workers and staff at both of Ms. Jones’s companies.

The distinction between Ms. Jones’s companies is critical.

Licensed recruiters, such as Allison Jones Consulting, are not allowed to collect fees from foreign workers in exchange for placing them in jobs, because that would violate provincial and federal employment laws.

But AJ Immigration, which is staffed with immigration consultants, can charge temporary foreign workers for giving them immigration advice and helping them with work permit applications.

In practice, the line between these companies appears to exist only on paper. The companies are registered as separate corporate entities, but operate out of the same office in St. Albert, Alta. Two former employees of Ms. Jones said staff at the two companies routinely worked together to bring foreigners into Canada to work at large retailers and restaurants, charging them US$7,900 for the entire process. The Globe is not naming the employees because they are not authorized to discuss the internal workings of their former employer.

The recruiting side of Ms. Jones’s business uses job boards and social media to advertise short-term, low-wage employment opportunities through the TFWP. The Globe reviewed more than 300 job postings on Allison Jones Consulting’s Facebook page and Aboriginal Job Board – a popular website for temporary foreign worker job ads – and found that the postings often do not state what retailer or restaurant the job seeker would end up working at. They typically just describe the role, such as “retail sales supervisor,” “stock supervisor” or “food service supervisor” – popular TFWP positions.

Dozens of e-mail exchanges viewed by The Globe between a Canadian Tire foreign worker and an Allison Jones Consulting recruiter illustrate how the payment and hiring process works.

When the worker first applies for a job, they are contacted by an Allison Jones Consulting recruiter and assessed via an online interview. Before the worker is paired with an employer, the recruiters ask the worker to sign a “retainer agreement” that breaks down a fee that the worker will have to pay to AJ Immigration Group, the immigration side of the business.

For example, an e-mail sent on April 14, 2022, from Roy Ann Salcedo, an Allison Jones Consulting recruiter, to Rowell Pailan, a prospective temporary foreign worker, states: “Kindly sign the retainer agreement as we are catering to a lot of candidates who are given the opportunity to sign the RA. Let us know so we can add you for invoice because there’s already an employer to where you’ll be assigned to as soon as possible.”

The worker agrees to pay a fee of US$7,900, paid in three tranches. The first payment is US$3,000, a non-refundable deposit paid upon the signing of the retainer agreement, before a job interview with the prospective employer is arranged. The retainer agreement says the fees collected are for the provision of “immigration services” and is signed by one of AJ Immigration’s licensed immigration consultants.

Once the worker is recommended to the employer, an interview is arranged between the parties. Candidates who are successful are then asked to send the next US$3,000 for help with processing their work permits.

On Oct. 26, 2022, an e-mail between the recruiter and Mr. Pailan shows Ms. Salcedo reminding Mr. Pailan about the second payment: “We would like to congratulate you on the positive results we received today, your second stage application has been approved. I would like you to refer to your retainer agreement for the next investment before we start processing your work permit application.”

The final sum of US$1,900 is sent after an AJ Immigration consultant has reviewed the individual’s work permit application and submitted it to the federal government. Throughout the hiring and payment process, the worker corresponds primarily with one of Allison Jones Consulting’s recruiters, and not an immigration consultant, although the worker is charged for immigration services. All invoices, however, are sent to workers by licensed immigration consultants working for AJ Immigration.

In an e-mail to The Globe, Ms. Jones herself pushed back on the characterization of her businesses.

She said any fees charged to workers are collected “as the immigration services are performed.” She added that funds collected from workers are held in trust until the work is completed, ensuring that clients only pay for “services rendered.”

“If your information suggests that workers interact primarily with recruiters who ask for these fees, I must contest this narrative as false. The actual invoices are generated by AJ Immigration Group and not by individual recruiters,” she said.

Ms. Jones also denied that there was a continuing investigation into her and her companies, although she acknowledged that there were complaints filed by individuals to the Ontario Ministry of Labour against Allison Jones Consulting.

“As the complaints are in the initial stages of processing, the Ministry has not yet received and reviewed any evidence. The evidence to be filed by Allison Jones Consulting Inc. will clearly show that it has never charged or received payment from foreign nationals for recruitment services,” she added.

Ms. Jones told The Globe that immigration services offered through AJ Immigration are only provided to individuals who “expressly request such services and enter into a retainer agreement with us.” She said the decision to use AJ Immigration is made “strictly and independently by the candidate.”

But three of the former workers at the Toronto Canadian Tire store under investigation told The Globe that Allison Jones Consulting recruiters never asked them if they wanted immigration services or not. They said they were told to sign a retainer agreement and send a US$3,000 deposit before they were interviewed or hired by Canadian Tire. Their understanding is that they needed to pay US$7,900 for their job. The Globe reviewed correspondence between the clients and the recruiters and affidavits filed to the federal government that corroborate the former workers’ version of events.

Two of these workers have since obtained an Open Work Permit for Vulnerable Workers through the federal government, a program designed to offer open work permits to temporary foreign workers who have been abused by employers or third parties. (Workers hired through the TFWP are usually tied to a single employer through a closed work permit.)

The fees charged by AJ Immigration were cited by the workers in their applications to the government as a reason why they were vulnerable to abuse by employers. “We were forced to accept a lot of bad things from our employer because if we are fired, we can never earn that money back,” read one application signed by four of the eight workers.

It is not uncommon for immigration consultants and recruiters of foreign workers to charge high fees to workers for coming to Canada, according to John No, a staff lawyer and interim director of Parkdale Community Legal Services, a legal aid clinic in Toronto that often deals with refugee and immigration issues.

“The consultants are banking on two things: Either that the workers do not know this is illegal, or that they will not report them because they are afraid of how it might affect their chances of obtaining permanent residency in Canada, which is what most immigrants ultimately want.”

Mr. No said that he has seen numerous recruiters who have structured their businesses to comply with the law: They bill workers for immigration fees through the immigration side of their business, but are essentially charging the workers thousands of dollars each – and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars – to place them in jobs.

The two former employees of Ms. Jones’s companies said they left their jobs because they were uncomfortable with how much money was being collected from foreign workers. They said staffing Canadian Tire stores with temporary foreign workers has become a significant source of business for Ms. Jones’s companies, starting with a Canadian Tire outlet in Edmonton and then spreading beyond Alberta.

At least 45 Canadian Tire stores across Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta have used Allison Jones Consulting to hire temporary foreign workers. The Globe linked the stores to Allison Jones Consulting through documents, conversations with former employees of the agency and job postings on websites that are popular with foreigners seeking jobs in Canada.

According to an agreement between one Canadian Tire dealer in Collingwood, Ont., and Allison Jones Consulting, the company would collect between $1,500 and $2,000 from each employer to process a Labour Market Impact Assessment application, a document needed by an employer to justify the hiring of a foreign worker.

Federal government data show that 51 Canadian Tire stores, including many of the stores linked to Ms. Jones, were approved to hire 635 temporary foreign workers between 2017 and the first quarter of 2024 – the vast majority through the low-wage stream of the TFWP.

But that number does not paint a complete picture of franchisees’ use of the TFW program, because most franchise owners, also known as dealers, register their stores under holding company names that don’t reference Canadian Tire Corp., the chain’s corporate parent. There are more than 500 Canadian Tire locations across the country.

In a statement, Canadian Tire Corp. said that the franchise model of its business means that the corporate office has no authority over the hiring of workers – whether foreign or domestic. But since it was revealed in a Globe investigation last month that one owner of a Canadian Tire store in Toronto was being investigated for mistreating foreign workers, the company sent out a memo to its dealer community reminding them to comply with rules of the TFWP.

The memo also told dealers to take “proactive steps to ensure that any third-party recruiting activities comply with all legal requirements.”

Thirty-two of the dealers who worked with Allison Jones Consulting did not respond to The Globe’s queries about whether they were aware that Ms. Jones’s other company was collecting thousands of dollars from foreign workers. The other 13 could not be reached.

Dave Lush, executive director of the Alliance of Canadian Franchisees, said that because parent companies do not have any direct control over their franchisees – in that the parents don’t hire or fire store employees – those parents are cautious about making sure that they don’t overstep boundaries.

But he added that in an environment in which employers who use the TFWP have come under scrutiny, “some sort of audit process” of franchises should be in place.

Mr. No, the legal aid lawyer, believes that the hope of getting permanent residency in Canada is one of the biggest reasons why foreign workers are willing to pay huge sums of money to middlemen in the immigration system.

“When I tell workers that they shouldn’t have to pay money to get a job here and that they can file a vulnerable workers claim with the government, they often decline,” he said. “They say, ‘That’s going to affect my permanent residence application in the future.’ It shows you how much they want to stay in Canada and how they are willing to do anything for it.”

With files from Susan Krashinsky Robertson