Manitoba hotel owners charged with trafficking employees who were underpaid, threatened with deportation: RCMP

Caitlyn Gowriluk · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 26, 2025 5:51 PM EDT | Last Updated: 22 minutes ago

A mates who ain a edifice successful the agrarian municipality of Portage la Prairie person been charged with quality trafficking pursuing a months-long constabulary investigation, wherever 4 employees from India reported being underpaid, forced to enactment 15-hour days and threatened with deportation.

Jai Inder Sandhu, 62, and Satbir Sandhu, 48, were charged with trafficking successful persons and receiving worldly payment from trafficking, Sgt. Cathy Farrell with the Manitoba RCMP quality trafficking portion said astatine a Thursday quality conference.

Jai Inder Sandhu was besides charged with withholding oregon destroying documents and uttering threats.

Police did not place the edifice by name, but CBC News confirmed Jai Inder Sandhu is an proprietor of the Howard Johnson edifice successful Portage la Prairie.

CBC has reached retired to Howard Johnson's firm bureau for comment.

The probe began connected Feb. 9, erstwhile Mounties got a telephone astir a disturbance astatine the edifice westbound of Winnipeg, wherever the 4 employees lived and worked. Two pistillate employees aboriginal came guardant to study their concern to police, and different pistillate and a antheral were aboriginal besides identified arsenic victims, according to RCMP.

"Our extremity from the outset was to assistance these victims of labour trafficking," Farrell said.

"They each came to Canada successful bully religion believing they were going to enactment legally and beryllium protected. Instead, they were threatened and forced to enactment for precise small pay."

Farrell said each 4 were promised just wages, affordable surviving and ineligible enactment successful Manitoba done national labour marketplace interaction assessments — documents issued to employers by the national authorities that let them to prosecute overseas workers if they can't find a Canadian oregon imperishable nonmigratory to capable a position.

Until recently, those assessments some allowed overseas nationals to enactment legally successful Canada and accrued their chances of becoming imperishable residents by adding points to their imperishable residency applications.

In the Portage la Prairie case, portion 3 of the employees yet got the appraisal document, which would person legalized their work, the leader didn't conscionable the conditions outlined. Another of the employees ne'er got one, RCMP said.

The employees reported being paid astir fractional of Manitoba's minimum hourly wage, and said they faced threats of deportation and different intimidation tactics. In 1 instance, 1 idiosyncratic said their recognition documents were withheld from them, Farrell said. 

The four did "pretty overmuch everything" astatine the hotel, from moving the beforehand antagonistic and the edifice to doing housekeeping and cleaning duties. One idiosyncratic was recruited done friends of family, portion others got progressive done connection of rima oregon advertisements online. All had been moving astatine the edifice for betwixt 10 months and a year, Farrell said.

Victims urged to scope retired for help

Janet Campbell, president and CEO of quality trafficking consciousness radical the Joy Smith Foundation, encouraged radical to get successful interaction with her enactment to larn much astir the taxable and study imaginable trafficking cases.

"We surely recognize that reaching retired for assistance isn't ever easy. When idiosyncratic has been isolated, threatened, misled, there's a batch of fearfulness and uncertainty that goes on with that, and what volition hap to them if they talk up," Campbell said astatine the quality conference.

"I deliberation if radical recognize the contented of forced labour much broadly, the assemblage tin beryllium an incredibly almighty instrumentality successful the effort to place these things and talk up."

Dianna Bussey, enforcement manager of correctional and justness services astatine the Salvation Army, said that enactment is besides progressive successful helping radical exploited by traffickers, adding they've seen an summation successful quality trafficking cases, with the past twelvemonth successful peculiar a notable 1 for labour trafficking cases.

The RCMP's Farrell said determining however communal akin situations are is difficult, adjacent though trafficking is an issue she described arsenic "often hidden successful plain sight."

"There's a batch of apprehension … [about] coming guardant to the police," she said. "It is 1 of the astir underreported crimes that we have."

Migrant workers, newcomers and susceptible radical are considered the astir at-risk for labour trafficking, a signifier of quality trafficking that involves recruiting, moving and holding victims to coerce them into working, she said.

That coercion often involves force, threats, intelligence and affectional abuse, and manipulation, said Farrell. Industries wherever it often happens see construction, agriculture, manufacturing, nutrient processing, trucking and the edifice business, she said.