Hundreds of migrant workers win class action against Mac's Convenience, immigration consultants

The Supreme Court of British Columbia has found that Mac's Convenience Stores Inc. breached its duty to deal honestly with temporary foreign workers, as the chain offered signed employment contracts for jobs it knew it would not or could not provide "except by happenstance."

On May 28, Justice Sharon Matthews ruled against the employer in Basyal v. Mac's Convenience Stores Inc. – a class action brought on behalf of roughly 880 workers recruited under the federal Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), including a subclass of about 125 who travelled to Canada but were not given the work set out in their contracts.

The court found Mac's "breached its duty of honesty in contractual performance" by failing to tell workers it could not provide the contracted jobs. The duty, recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada in Bhasin v. Hrynew, applied even though Mac's argued the contracts contained conditions that left it with no obligation to perform.

Workers paid for jobs that vanished

According to the B.C. Supreme Court, Mac's recruited convenience-store staff in Dubai through two firms, Overseas Immigration Services and Trident Immigration Services. Workers paid an initial fee to begin the process, then a second fee of about $6,000 once they held a visa and a signed Mac's contract. 

The court found many of the promised positions did not exist.

Mac's named workers to "blanket" labour market opinions covering hypothetical roles, including jobs in independently operated dealer stores it did not staff, the court found. By the time workers obtained visas and travelled, the court found, positions had often been filled locally or had disappeared.

The workers testified they quit jobs in Dubai, paid the recruiters thousands of dollars and arrived in Canada to find no work waiting. Two of them lived in homeless shelters for a period, and one was detained by the Canada Border Services Agency after taking unauthorized work to survive.

One worker who arrived in Calgary expecting a food-service supervisor position emailed a Mac's manager for help after weeks without work. The manager replied that the offer "was canceled due to the length of time it took for you to come," and wrote, "I [am] also concerned that you came here without validating there was a job." The court noted the employment contracts Mac's had signed in fact confirmed those jobs.

Previously, a Canadian employer was ordered to repay $14,193 after a tribunal found it received a $12,000 recruitment fee from a temporary foreign worker it employed for just 21 days.

Recruiter fees ruled unlawful

Mac's conceded breaching the contracts but contested the honesty claim, arguing "true conditions precedent" meant it owed no duty. The B.C. Supreme Court disagreed, finding a binding contract existed and that Mac's could not unilaterally "rescind" the offers. Citing an internal email admitting workers came "under false pretences," it found Mac's committed "an obfuscation of the truth if not an outright lie."

The court also found that the recruiters charged fees that "were for jobs and were prohibited by employment standards legislation," despite paperwork describing them as immigration services. 

As regulated Canadian immigration consultants, Overseas and Trident "owed fiduciary duties to the class members" and breached them by collecting the unlawful fees and staying silent about the unavailable jobs.

In assessing punitive damages, the court pointed to a Mac's market manager who had warned early on that the workers "only have us, no family, no one to lookout but us," and who urged the company: "Imagine if that was you."

The court found the "scheme was too obviously abusive to dismiss as simply careless." It said Mac's conduct toward the workers "callously disregarded the harm it was causing."

The court found Mac's conduct warranted punitive damages, as did the conduct of overseas; the punitive claim against Trident was dismissed. Most compensation was deferred to individual hearings, and the court ruled the amount of punitive damages cannot be set until compensatory damages are assessed.

Ottawa has made numerous changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in the past couple of years.

Here’s the timeline of the Basyal v. Mac’s Convenience Stores class action:

_{Source note: Dates for the underlying recruitment events are drawn from the reasons for judgment in Basyal v. Mac’s Convenience Stores Inc., 2026 BCSC 961 (Supreme Court of British Columbia, Matthews J., 28 May 2026). The procedural milestones link to the reported decisions on CanLII.}