Judge blasts Red Deer couple while sentencing them for human trafficking

“You have no one to blame but yourselves, shame on you both.”

Judge David Plosz gave quite the scolding to a couple sentenced in Red Deer Provincial Court on Thursday for human trafficking violations.

In June 2014, Alberta Employment Standards called RCMP to look into the alleged abuse of seven temporary foreign workers at the Econo Lodge in Gasoline Alley.

Ravinder Sidhu and her husband Varinder were arrested the following April.

This past March, Ravinder, 48, admitted to using false or misleading information to bring in immigrant workers.

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She was given a conditional sentence for two years minus one day. She will spend the first 12 months under house arrest followed by an overnight curfew for the second year, and was ordered to carry out 120 hours of community service.

Mrs. Sidhu was pinpointed as the mastermind behind the questionable operation, with Judge Plosz saying she willingly and knowingly violated the terms of the Temporary Foreign Worker contracts with each of the seven workers.

Court heard that she was paying the workers as little as $10/hour, sometimes $7.50/hour for overtime. One worker was tasked with doing chores at the couple’s farm, which is a contract violation, while others were paid just $50 for working at a cultural event in Red Deer.

As well, she would house up to four workers in the same room while charging each of them the full monthly amount of $400 for accommodations.

All the while, the workers found themselves in a hostile situation, under constant threat that they would be deported if they told authorities about what was taking place.

Mr. Sidhu, who is 51, pleaded guilty to failing to keep proper employment records and was handed a $5000 fine. He was deemed to be complicit with his wife’s operation by not keeping proper track of hours worked, wages and overtime pay, deductions and other cash payments the workers forfeited to the Sidhus.

The couple was previously ordered to repay over $91,000 in wages to the workers after the violations were brought to light.

Plosz added in his remarks that he has no sympathy for any business or personal fallout the couple has experienced as a result of their actions, which he described as “greedy” and “dishonest.”

When given the chance to speak, the Sidhus said nothing other than they were sorry for what they’d done.

“The sentence that we have is very much in line with other cases where there are similar numbers of victims who were involved,” Crown Prosecutor Kent Brown said afterward, adding he hopes it sends a message to others who may be involved in similar questionable activity.

Defence lawyer Hersh Wolch says his clients were simply following bad advice.

“There was an immigration expert, supposedly, who set this whole thing up,” he explained. “My clients never intended to go into the [TFW] program. It was brought to them and that expert was never charged. My client is guilty because she followed that advice. Why that person was not charged, I have no idea.”

The sentences handed down Thursday were based on a joint submission from the Crown and defence.

In exchange for their guilty pleas, several other counts against the Sidhus were dropped.