Employer could not show the job description on its application was true
A Pemberton organic farm has been fined $387,500 and barred from hiring temporary foreign workers for two years.
Blue House Organics has been listed as "non-compliant" in a decision posted to the federal government's public registry of employers found in breach of Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program rules, Business in Vancouver reported.
The fine comes with a ban that leaves the company ineligible to hire temporary workers until May 29, 2028.
The three violations
The first violation is an accuracy failure tied to the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA): the employer could not show the job description on its application was true. That obligation runs for six years from the foreign national's first day of work.
The second is that the employer broke federal, provincial or territorial laws for hiring and recruiting employees in the province where the worker was employed, according to the government
The third is a mismatch between promise and delivery: the pay or working conditions did not match, or exceed, the offer of employment, or the job differed from what was offered.
Employer cites flood and federal delay
Owner Alejandro Sucre said the farm did have a worker-housing issue in 2023 but argued it was fixed quickly and that a federal delay caused lasting damage. He tied it to flooding at the farm's Birken property.
"We had a flood in Birken that impeded [having] proper housing so I got trailers as [a] temporary solution," Sucre wrote in a statement reported by Business in Vancouver. He said the concerns were "fully" resolved by August 2023.
Sucre said the hiring suspension "was not lifted in time" for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, so experienced Mexican workers could not return. "Without them, we were forced to rely on untrained labor and outside contractors," he wrote, adding the farm is now "evaluating our options."
In 2025, the federal government permanently banned B.C. employer Toor Vineyards from hiring temporary workers, while imposing a 10-year prohibition for the same practice on Samhil Logistics.
Penalties on the rise
The case lands amid heightened scrutiny of the TFW program. Ottawa said in October 2025 that employers must provide safe, healthy and dignified conditions, with penalties of up to $1 million per year and possible bans.
In 2024-25, Employment and Social Development Canada conducted 1,435 compliance inspections and found 10% of employers non-compliant. Penalties more than doubled, from about $2.1 million to nearly $4.9 million, and 36 employers were banned.
In the 2018–19 fiscal year, 74 companies were fined a total of $102,250 for breaking TFWP rules, CBC reported, citing data from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC).
By last fiscal year, the number of sanctioned employers had nearly doubled to 147, while the total value of penalties skyrocketed to $4,882,500 — more than 45 times higher than seven years earlier. At the same time, applications to use the program have dropped: after reaching roughly 150,000 in 2023–24, the number of employer applications has fallen to about 63,000 so far in the current fiscal year.
