Fourteen people and companies with ties with Canadian nectar products and island gold honey face positions under the Refugee Immigration and Protection Law in the Provincial Court of Pei, and some of them also face criminal charges for money laundering.
CBC News has been informing about companies since 2022, after the Canada Border Services Agency Search guarantees executed on properties of Prince Eduardo island.
“The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) can confirm that it has completed an investigation of complaints against agricultural bus Immigration and Refugee Protection Law and the Criminal Code ” The authorities said in a statement on Friday.
“This is now a case of active prosecution and the CBSA is not currently in a position to provide specific details of its research at this stage of the process.”
In the court of Georgetown on Thursday, a federal prosecutor told the court that the case is based on what was found after eight search warrants were carried out. It is also based on electronic evidence, including text messages, gathered in the last issue of years.
Among the defendants are Kamalpreet Khaira and his company, Canadian Nectar Products, as well as Roger O’Neill and his company, Island Gold Honey.
Who has been accused
Several numbered companies have been charged, including:
- 102045 PEI Inc., also known as Canada fruits,
- 102095 PEI Inc., also known as Atlantic Canada Nurseries Inc., and
- 2786244 Ontario Inc.
A lawyer who appeared practically on the name of Greenspan Humphrey Makepeace told the Court that he was representing all those numbered companies, as well as Canadian nectar products and the Khairas.
Two people who share Kamalpreet Khaira’s last name have also been charged, as well as McPa Walker and Associate expelled from your professional organization in 2006 After declaring the robbery charges.
The Registrar with PEI Public Professional Accountants confirmed to CBC News that Walker has not been reinstated since its expulsion.
The charges include:
- Both numbered companies of PEI, the products of Canadian nectar, Kamalpreet Khaira and four other people have been accused of committing infractions under the immigration and refugee protection law.
- Canadian nectar products, Island Gold Honey, Walker and Associates, Walker, O’Neill and two other people are accused of using a foreign national so that they were not authorized.
- Kamalpreet Khaira, Roger O’Neill, Island Gold Honey, Canadian nectar products, PEI numbered companies and another person are accused of misrepresenting information under the immigration law.
- And finally, criminal charges were presented for washing the product of the crime against the numbered company of Ontario, Island Gold Honey, Walker and Associates, Kamalpreet Khaira, Walker and O’Neill.
None of the accusations have been tested in the Court and have not yet been entered.
Research that goes back at least four years
The unalthted search warrants after CBC news The Court’s application shows that the Canada Border Services Agency had been investigating Khaira, O’Neill and its companies since November 2021 after a council of the Cooper Institute on poor living conditions for temporary foreign workers linked to the Honey of the island.
The temporary program of foreign workers in Canada allows employers to hire migrant workers from outside the country to fill temporary jobs when there are no qualified Canadians available.
It is assumed that companies that hire foreign workers provide a fair salary and help cover the workers’ travel and housing costs. Once the workers arrive to assume the work, they are linked to the same employer and cannot work for another person, in most cases.
In those documents obtained by CBC News, CBSA officials alleged that Khaira directs multiple companies to access additional foreign workers, and made their staff provide “fraudulent documentation to support the work that actually did not take place,” said the request for the search warrant.
In an investigation carried out by CBC is The Fifth Estate, Four workers said they paid up to $ 30,000 each to immigration consultants who promised jobs in Canada and, finally, a path to permanent residence.
After the payments were made, the workers said they arrived in PEI to discover that the promised works did not exist. They say they were transferred between companies, and when they worked, they were offered substantially less hours than he promised for the first time.
In the Documents of the Allanamient
A worker talked about living on a farm after arriving at Pei while organizing the job. Months later, the worker was not yet employed.
Another worker told CBSA that repeated telephone calls to O’Neill were not returned, and that no one from Island Gold contacted after the person arrived in Canada. Instead, the newcomer was aimed at Canadian nectar products.
The CBSA researchers also spoke with a worker who said they were recruited by Kamalpreet Khaira as an agricultural worker with nurseries from Atlantic Canada, in Belle River, Pei, the worker said they were told that they would have to pay Khaira $ 50,000 in installment payments.
The worker described being surprised to reach that work site because there were no company or nursery buildings, only flat land and a house.
The order documents say that Kamalpreet Khaira told the worker that they would choose apples in the products of Canadian nectar, but that they would need to hide that fact.
Migrant workers also described that they were obliged to pay in cash to receive their payment checks, which were often expelled in minor amounts than they had paid to their cash employer.
The workers needed payment checks to demonstrate that they were legally in Canada and employees paid, with the purpose of building a case to obtain permanent status of residents.
Counted workers The fifth estate We continued with the alleged scheme because they believed they needed the piece of payment as an employment record, something that they say they were told to request a permanent residence.
In August 2022, the Branch of Employment Standards of Pei Ordered Canadian nectar products To pay thousands of dollars to four foreign workers who refused to participate in what their ruling called a “cash payment scheme.”
A worker whose circumstances were described in that matter complained about having to pay $ 600 in cash to receive a payment for $ 499.70.
The charges reflect an alleged inappropriate use of the TFW system
O’Neill was represented in the Court on Thursday. The Judge of the Provincial Court Nancy Orr urged him to seek legal advice due to the severity of the charges.
The other companies and the people were represented by several lawyers.
Not all charges were read aloud in court on Thursday, but some were.
Among the detailed accusations were that O’Neill and Island Gold Honey presented impact evaluations of the labor market, a step to obtain approval to hire TFWS, for 27 foreign workers who were not necessary, and then offered them to knowing works that did not exist.
Orr read a position document that says that Canadian nectar products have been accused of knowing foreign citizens who were not authorized to work there, while many of the other positions claim that people attended knowingly in several steps for that to happen.
Orr was not satisfied with the way the crown had presented the charges, with many different names that appeared in the same information sheets when he said they should have divided.
The lawyers and the judge agreed that it was better to postpone the case for approximately one month to order everything and give time for the defense to review the documents and the case.
The matter will return to court in August.
