Copyright thestar
Angry as you may be at the United States right now, there’s at least one lesson Canada could learn from its southern cousin: consequences. Recall Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of a cryptocurrency exchange called FTX. In November 2022, FTX was pushed into bankruptcy when allegations began to pile up that he had appropriated corporate funds. Bankman-Fried was arrested the next month and convicted of fraud in a New York federal court in November 2023. To everyone operating in the shadows of the crypto world, the message from the U.S. criminal-justice system was clear: break the law, and the consequences will be swift. I yearn for that mentality here in Canada. The $250,000 involved in the Star’s “wage theft” investigation may pale in comparison to the sum appropriated in the FTX debacle, but to 13 former employees of various Sunrise Caribbean Restaurant franchises, it could be all the money in the world. Imagine being Taofeek Olajide, a 55-year-old Nigerian refugee; or Gursaab Singh, a 24-year-old international student from India. Both were fired after simply asking to be paid. Olajide said he’d started working at Sunrise in December 2023 and wasn’t aware that $12 per hour was below the legal minimum wage. Olajide’s story exposes what many believe is a key driver of the recent, massive growth in Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program and international-student community: unsavoury business practices. It’s been several months since the ministry’s “final and binding rulings” against the Sunrise franchisee in question, Marcus Davenport — yet the wages still haven’t been paid, according to Star reporting. If the Ford government truly “has zero tolerance for wage theft,” as its labour ministry professes, where are the arrests in the Sunrise case? It’s not as if the food chain went bankrupt. Theft is theft. Olajide’s $30,000 is just a fraction of the nearly $200 million in unpaid wages that have been formally assessed as “outstanding” over the past decade. If law enforcement had made an example of one or two bad actors some years ago, shady business types would have no reason to think wage theft was a crime with no real consequences. And this goes beyond unscrupulous financial dealings. Take the case of 37-year-old Brampton resident Manoj Govindbalunikam, who recently pleaded guilty to abducting a nine-year-old boy in Thessalon in 2023. The Crown attorney is seeking a two-year jail sentence, plus probation — well shy of the 10-year maximum. The defendant’s lawyer asked Justice Michael Varpio to consider that any sentence longer than six months minus a day “would trigger an automatic deportation.” Canada has 8.3 million landed immigrants and permanent residents. Would we miss Govindbalunikam if he didn’t step foot in this country ever again? Should Varpio gerrymander the sentence so that Govindbalunikam avoids any further consequences, the message to every other potential child predator would be clear: Canada is afraid to inflict serious consequences on criminal non-citizens, even when young kids are involved. Speaking of a disconnect between crime and punishment, when did it become optional to pay for booze at the LCBO? Hardly a day goes by without an angry customer videotaping someone shoplifting hundreds of dollars’ worth of productfrom our liquor chain. One television producer took to social media to complain that when he’d pointed out a shoplifter to the LCBO’s third-party private security guard, a store staffer told the guard they’d get “in trouble” if they tried to stop him in the parking lot. That’s the opposite of how Premier Doug Ford personally dealt with a suspected shoplifter at a Home Depot last July. According to the Star’s Robert Benzie, Ford warned the man that he would “‘kick (his) ass all over the parking lot’ if he tried to flee.” Every dollar of stolen liquor that wanders out the door is a dollar that doesn’t go to our health-care system. You’re the victim of these boozy crimes. The TV producer said he felt “stupid” paying for his purchases, and I sympathize. If the province doesn’t see shoplifting as a crime worthy of consequences, let’s channel our inner “Trailer Park Boys” and declare this Saturday to be Liquor Day. If Ontarians refuse en masse to pay for our LCBO products, Queen’s Park may be shamed into action. Who’s with me?
