[Host]: Affordability and cost of living are top issues for Ontarians, and surveillance pricing could create a whole new set of challenges. Ghada Al Sharif is an immigration and work reporter for the Toronto Star. Jared Ong is an organizer with the Workers Action Centre. Great to have you both in our studios. Thank you so much for taking the time. I want to start off with getting a sort of a better understanding of the issue of wage theft in Ontario. Jared, how would you describe it?

[Jared Ong]: So to me, a lot of people see wage theft as just as I was working, my boss didn't pay me for my wages, but I would see it as it's good to understand more of an expanded sense. So it's not only I was working overtime and didn't get paid, but it's also all the entitlements that you have, such as you were working for a public holiday, you didn't get public holiday pay, you were working vacation, you were working, you didn't get your 4% vacation pay. But it's also things such as misclassification. When an employer says, hey, you're not actually my employee, I'm not going to contribute to your CPP, your employment insurance. And when you lose your job, you won't get termination pay. You won't qualify for employment insurance. So wage theft is a very I wouldn't want to broadly define it. And I also want to say the scope is very big. So in the last ten years, about $200 million was assessed by the Ministry of Labour, stolen wages from worker's pockets. And I believe that's just a fraction of what's actually was stolen, because most workers don't want to make a complaint and follow the Ministry of Labour.

[Host]: All right. Got to help us explain. Just the tip of the iceberg is sort of kind of what Jared is saying in terms of that $200 million. How would you describe wage theft in this country, in this province rather?

[Ghada Al Sharif]: Yeah, absolutely. So I would call it I would say it's the tip of the iceberg from the reporting that I've done. I've spoken to labour advocates and legal experts who've called it a crisis in plain sight. The scope of it is is quite massive. As Jared mentioned, it typically occurs among workers who are afraid to speak out, who are afraid or maybe might not know their rights in Canada, their labour rights. And that disproportionately impacts migrant workers, newcomers to Canada, international students, people who have precarious who are here under precarious status and who fear that they might lose that status if they. If they make a complaint.

[Host]: In your reporting experience, you have covered a number of stories. I know you can't go into the specifics. Can you give us some examples of sort of what situations some of these workers are in?

[Ghada Al Sharif]: Yeah. Well, it can get really complicated. So a lot of the workers I've spoken with, like I said, are working in low wage positions. One smoker, one one worker I spoke with. His name is Alberto. He's from Mexico. And he came to Canada hoping to study here, to work here and help his mom pay for cancer treatment. And he got a job off of Kijiji, working as a CNC programmer, and his employer started delaying payments after verbally agreeing to pay him $20 an hour. And there was no reason for Alberto not to trust his employer. And over time, those payments became fewer and farther in between until they stopped altogether and his. Eventually he had to beg and plead his with his employer to pay him just to be able to afford food. And there's no. He had no idea what to do. He didn't know who to turn to again, like I said, he was here. His. His his status was precarious. And he just he was he felt very alone and, and devastated by the whole thing.

[Host]: Jared, that story doesn't surprise you. This is what you hear a lot of. What are some of the most common types of wage theft that you are seeing from workers who are making complaints against employers through your group?

[Jared Ong]: Sometimes it's very obvious. As I mentioned, it can be just be like, my employer didn't pay me. But sometimes it is very insidious and I think the insidious parts are the most hard for people to navigate. So, for example, an employer might not pay them the tips might be taking away their tips, and especially tricky because a lot of tips are being pulled and then distributed, but there isn't proper records around that, for example. And I think just to add on what Guido was mentioning, I think a lot of people feel afraid to actually speak up. A lot of people feel a bit ashamed for speaking up, and sometimes payments might be delayed. You might be paid less than your what you're owed, but it's a cost of living crisis. So maybe $500 is less than what you're owed, but it's better than zero. If you get fired and you have no job at all.

[Host]: Got. There is an increasing trend of subcontracting. And I want us to help understand sort of the, as we mentioned, quite complex in terms of how people are sort of being victims of this. But this subcontracting adds a whole other level to it. And so I want to understand how does that make accountability more difficult?

[Ghada Al Sharif]: Absolutely. So it's important to note that modern business structures really make it harder to hold accountable, to hold, to hold employers accountable. And Ontario's labour laws are built more for that direct employer to employee traditional relationship. But as time goes on, we see that that is not necessarily the case for a lot of businesses. We're seeing much more, as you mentioned, company companies contracting to other companies, those companies then contracting to other companies. And that creates a corporate veil which protects the employer from any kind of accountability or not protects, but it makes it harder to hold those employers accountable and figure out who is responsible for the staff and responsible for paying the staff. One of the workers I interviewed for a wage theft series I did for the Toronto Star. Her her name is Julietta, but she was actually hired as a cleaner for City of Toronto long term care homes. And she thought she was being. She she thought she was being paid and hired by a company that the city of Toronto had hired. But it turns out she was actually being paid by somebody that that company had hired farther down. And so when it came time for her to raise a complaint to the Ministry of Labour, it was much harder because she didn't actually know the chain of command. And so the investigation took longer. She still hasn't got paid. And when I spoke to the city of Toronto, they weren't even aware that that company that they had hired had subcontracted another company.

[Host]: Okay. So I can already see that when workers come to you to help sort of sift through all this, there is a lot to kind of figure out who's in charge. How successful have your clients been in recovering wages owed to them?

[Jared Ong]: We've been pretty successful in getting direct action and getting money back here and there. I would say sometimes even faster than the Ministry of Labour. Sometimes because the Ministry of Labour process can take up to one year from the time you actually file a claim, but through direct action, through letters, through public pressure, we have gotten about $80,000, I believe, this year alone for workers getting money back. But I hundred percent agree. Navigating the complication of I might be working at one place, but my uniform says a different thing. My supervisor says a different thing. My pay stub says a different thing. Who is my employer? And I think the laws have not caught up with how businesses are structuring to purposely evade the law. And subcontracting is a big thing.

[Host]: Help me understand, you mentioned the Ministry of Labour, but the Ministry of Finance also plays a part in this, and that gets a bit confusing as well. Can you help me shed some?

[Jared Ong]: Yeah. So when a worker files a claim, they file a claim through the Ministry of Labour, it takes anywhere from like six months to nine year for the investigation to start and complete from the time someone is filed. But after a worker, the investigation is finished and they say, hey, bad boss, you need to pay up and the boss does not pay up. Then it gets transferred to the Ministry of Finance to do collections and everything. The problem is, despite $200 million being assessed as owing, about $80 million have not been recovered.

[Host]: Okay.

[Jared Ong]: So that's a lot of money out of people's pockets. And I always see it as such a big power imbalance. If I stole $5,000 from my boss very quickly, the police would come, I would get fired. They would get the money back. If my boss stole $5,000 from me, it will take a year, and there's a good chance the Ministry of Finance will not recover that money. And at the end of the day, even when I do make a complaint, I still get fired. So.

[Host]: All right. Got it. Before I mention, before I get to you, I should mention that we did reach out to the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Finance, but we did not hear back in time of our taping. But do you want to add in on there?

[Ghada Al Sharif]: Yeah, I wanted to say, too, that in theory, the once the case goes to collections under the Finance Ministry, the Finance Ministry can and has reached out to those employers for, you know, Garnishments they've threatened employers with seizing assets, liens. However, in practice, it's very easy for employers to just disappear. And I noticed that in my reporting as well, where when I tried to reach out to the employers that we were investigating for the wage theft series, they either refused to respond, emails bounced back, emails no longer exist, emails no longer existed. Addresses were. I couldn't find the addresses of the of the business or they were random addresses in the suburbs. So it just showed to me how easy it is for employers to ignore orders to pay that are issued by the Ministry of Labour.

[Host]: All right. There are a few mechanisms that the Ministry of Labour uses to hold employers to account. The most serious charge is what is known as a part three prosecution, which involves hefty fines, jail time and the Ministry of Labour enters the employer into a public record. I want to pull up a chart that shows the instances of part three prosecutions since 2017, and you can see in 2017 79, in 2018 50. And I want to focus in the last five years, three out of the last five years. We're talking single digits here. Jared, what does this chart tell you about how seriously the Ontario government takes this problem?

[Jared Ong]: It seems to me that although the Ontario government says we're going to be tough on bad employers, it's a few bad apples. We're going to make sure to deter them from doing stealing wages in practice, although they made the stick really big. If it's a carrot and stick kind of situation, they're not really swinging for the fences very much. So they actually made a big deal about doubling the amount of maximum fines for prosecutions from $50,000 to $100,000. But if the scope of the problem is so big and you're not actually using all the tools available, such as liens on property assets, bank accounts being garnished, then what is the point of having all these tools if the ministry does not have the resources and the staffing to actually use all of the tools?

[Host]: All right. I want to talk about a new bill. Ontario introduced Bill 105 in April this year, called Protecting Ontario's Workers and Economic Resilience Act 2026. Is there anything in this bill that will protect workers from what we have been talking about?

[Ghada Al Sharif]: What's interesting about Bill 105 is that it's being introduced at a time when Ontario is facing an enforcement crisis when it comes to wage theft. The issue is that it's a lack of transparency around who decides what is vexatious, how do we decide what is vexatious? So the fact that we're getting rid of that transparency at a time when, you know, as Jared said, millions of dollars are still owed, the bill will give the Ministry of Labour power to refuse to investigate wage theft claims that have come forward. You know, we're already we're still facing this this problem, I think, says a lot about what this bill will do to protect workers.

[Host]: Jared.

[Jared Ong]: It's a bit like a twilight zone where advocates, organizers, journalists tell the government, we wish that you would do something about the backlog. Workers cannot wait one year and they twist the wish by doing listen to deal with the backlog. We're not going to investigate all cases in case they're vexatious. In case they are, we're just going to inspect some cases. And one of the reasons they stated was lack of evidence. We won't investigate cases due to lack of evidence, but we know that employers are very good at hiding evidence. They would send you all the schedules by WhatsApp. They would delete the WhatsApp messages. Maybe you have a company email where you kept all your records. Once you leave the job, they delete your Gmail account. You don't have access to any more. You try to find employers by calling them, emailing. They disappear. So if evidence and the lack of evidence is the reason why they want to not investigate your case, then that is a very twisted way. The government is trying to deal with the backlog.

[Host]: With that being said, Jared, what policy changes would have a meaningful result to protect workers from wage theft?

[Jared Ong]: So for me, there are like three main things, right? If I could sum it up, I would say one, actually enforce the law, use all the tools necessary to actually get the money back. Two, I would say close the loopholes so that misclassification doesn't happen for workers and subcontractors franchises. Temp agencies are all jointly and severally joint and several liability. And the third thing I would say is protect workers that actually stand up for their rights right now. If you stand up for your rights, you're going to get fired, you're going to get punished, you're going to always be in court. So on paper, reprisals are illegal. In practice, you're going to get fired in any way, and you're going to take one year to actually push back. So that is the three policy solutions that I would suggest.

[Host]: We are going to have to leave it there. But Jared, Ghada, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me about this very important story. Thank you so much.

[Ghada Al Sharif]: Thank you for having me.

[Jared Ong]: Thank you for having me.