Over the past several months, Speakers Corner has brought you various stories of Ontario workers who have tried and failed to get back pay they are owed by their current or former employers. Even more frustrating for these employees is what they call a lack of enforcement from the very ministry tasked with holding non-paying employers accountable.
Jaskaran Singh, who worked as a retail security guard for a Toronto-based company, is adding his name to the list. Singh reached out to Speakers Corner after having worked for more than a month for Corporate Protection and Investigative Services in 2024.
He quit after working for weeks without getting paid.
“They kept saying, ‘We’ll pay you later,’ but the thing is, the checks never came.”
Singh filed a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, which investigated and released their findings to Singh. According to the report, the company acknowledged pay was owed, and the Ministry then issued an order to the company giving them 30 days to pay Singh for his work.
“They (The Ministry) keep saying it’s been in collections, yet as far as I know, this company is still operating, without consequences, and I haven’t seen a dime.”
Several employees of a snow removal and landscaping company that CityNews told you about late last year share that frustration. More than a dozen of them reached out to Speakers Corner after filing complaints with the Ministry to try and get back pay, they say they are owed.
“I don’t know how the Ministry of Labour has not flagged this at this point,” said Janelle Lavellee, who, months later, is still waiting for payment.
Lack of transparency
Toronto Labour and Employment Lawyer, Lavan Narenthiran, has seen an uptick in similar cases of unpaid workers who express extreme frustration with how the Ministry is handling complaints.
“There’s a lack of transparency, and really the only insight I get is that they (The Ministry of Labour) have a ton of complaints to deal with and probably not enough employment standards officers to deal with those.”
He says while the Ministry may order an employer to pay up, there’s often little timely recourse if they don’t.
“When an employer refuses to pay under the order, the Ministry will then escalate the matter to the Ministry of Finance, who will deal with collections and enforcement,” said Narenthiran, adding it can be a lengthy process.
Under Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, the Ministry has a lot of power to go after companies that are found to be withholding pay. Actions include fines and taking them to court, even jail time for the most severe of cases.
But how often does that happen? For several days, Speakers Corner has been trying to get that answer, asking the Ministry multiple times how many companies have been fined or taken to court in the past year.
A spokesperson did not provide that information.
“They have all sorts of power. They can take legal action. Also, when these cases get to the Ministry of Finance for collections, they can register warrants of seizure and sale against assets, they may request garnishments of bank accounts. But the operative word is ‘may,’” Narenthiran said. “We don’t know if they’re doing that. I can’t tell you one way or the other if they are taking those actions.”
But even court orders don’t always lead to payment.
‘There needs to be more fear’
In January, Speakers Corner spoke to several union employees of an Etobicoke millwork shop who have gone unpaid for months. The workers are represented by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Local 1072, which successfully got orders and judgments against the employer through the collective agreement arbitration procedures and the Ontario courts. But even that has not been fruitful. The company is still operating, and the employees claim they’re still owed back pay.
“I think there needs to be more fear. I don’t think employers fear the consequences anymore, at least some of them don’t,” Narenthiran said. “As early as 2019, we saw cases where employers who were withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars of payment and failing to pay those orders were sent to prison for 90 days. I don’t see that recently, and maybe it does happen, but I’m not seeing it.”
For employees like Singh, speaking out is not about the money.
“It’s not. It’s the principle,” he said. “If, let’s say, I owed the CRA, they would get it in like a fortnight. The Ministry is funded by taxpayer money. Where is it going? Why aren’t you using it?”
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