The court found 'false pretenses’ that left workers in shelters and detention
A convenience store chain signed employment contracts with temporary foreign workers for jobs it knew it would probably never be able to provide, then faulted the workers when they arrived in Canada to nothing, the British Columbia Supreme Court has found.
In reasons released on May 28, 2026, Justice Matthews ruled that Mac's Convenience Stores Inc. breached its duty of honesty in contractual performance toward foreign workers recruited through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. The case, Basyal v. Mac's Convenience Stores Inc., also found that two immigration firms, Overseas and Trident Immigration Services, charged the workers unlawful fees of roughly $7,000 to $8,000 each for jobs they were not permitted to sell. The court held that the conduct of Mac's and Overseas warranted punitive damages.
Jobs that existed only on paper
Mac's operates convenience stores across Western Canada. Starting in 2012, it retained Overseas to recruit foreign workers, paying the firm $1,500 for each supervisor and $500 for each cashier or food counter attendant it hired. Many of the workers were recruited at events in Dubai, where they were already working and hoping for a better life in Canada.
To bring workers in, Mac's needed positive labour market opinions confirming it had real jobs to fill. The court found that Mac's placed hypothetical positions in stores it did not operate onto blanket applications, then assigned workers' names to roles it was not actually trying to fill. In one instance, Mac's named 40 people to an opinion for 40 cashier positions in Edmonton it was not seeking to staff.
Once a worker signed and obtained a visa, the court found, the job was often gone. Corporate stores reverted to independent dealers, positions were filled locally, and the two-year contracts could rarely be honoured. The workers, Justice Matthews found, were never told.
A duty to tell the truth
Canadian law recognizes a duty of honest performance, set by the Supreme Court of Canada, that bars parties from lying to or knowingly misleading each other about matters tied to carrying out a contract. Mac's argued it owed no such duty because the contracts contained conditions that had not yet been met, and because it had directed Overseas to tell workers not to travel until their jobs were confirmed.
Justice Matthews rejected those arguments. The contracts were binding, the court found, and by sending signed employment contracts and approved labour market opinions naming each worker, Mac's communicated that the jobs were real. Staying silent about the truth, the court held, amounted to active dishonesty directly linked to the contracts.
The court found the dishonesty was intentional. "The scheme was too obviously abusive to dismiss as simply careless," Justice Matthews wrote, concluding that Mac's created false pretenses and failed to correct them even as workers quit jobs abroad and travelled across the world.
When the workers arrived
For the representative plaintiffs, the consequences were severe. The court heard that Prakash Basyal flew to Canada expecting a cashier job in Edmonton, was sent instead to an unpaid stint at a bottle depot, was detained by border officials for working without a valid permit, and spent months in homeless shelters. Another worker also stayed in a shelter, and a third eventually gave up and returned to Dubai.
The court found the recruitment fees the workers paid, beginning with a few thousand dollars and followed by a second payment of $5,500 to $6,000, were fees for jobs rather than for immigration services. Such fees are prohibited under the employment standards laws of British Columbia, Alberta and other provinces. Overseas and Trident were unjustly enriched, the court held, and breached fiduciary duties they owed as regulated immigration consultants.
Justice Matthews found that the conduct of Mac's and Overseas warranted punitive damages, though the amounts, along with the workers' compensation, will be set through individual assessments. "I find Mac's callously disregarded the harm it was causing for the subclass members but was not ignorant of it," the judge wrote. The claim for punitive damages against Trident was dismissed.
