FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, June 24, 2020 9:15am
(Ottawa) – The Ottawa Police Organized Fraud Unit is requesting the public’s assistance to identify a man and a woman in relation to an identity theft investigation.
On January 27, 2020 the victim’s identity was used to obtain a replacement debit card within a bank in the Kanata area. The PIN was changed and the subject went on to withdraw over $8,000.00 from the victim’s account at three banks in the Kanata area. The suspects also gained access to the victim’s online banking, passwords and security answers.
The suspect man is described as having medium complexion, dark hair, unshaven, medium build, wearing a black Asics jacket, burgundy sweater and blue jeans (see photos).
The suspect woman is described as having medium complexion, dark wavy hair in a bun, wearing a black winter coat with fur on the hood (see photos).
Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the Ottawa Police Service Organized Fraud Unit at 613-236-1222, ext. 5433.
Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477 or at crimestoppers.ca.
Health Canada is warning Canadians to be careful about buying products — including drugs, natural health items, homeopathic products, and medical devices — that make “false or misleading claims” to prevent, treat or cure COVID-19.
The agency said it has received reports about health products that make false or misleading claims and has issued letters to several companies directing them to immediately remove these claims from their websites and advertising materials.
The products include some masks, colloidal silver, some disinfectants, plant-based elixirs and formulas, hand sanitizers, Chaga mushroom blends, ultraviolet lamps, and oregano oil.
The federal government has published a list of hand sanitizers and disinfectants that meet Health Canada’s requirements, and provides guidance on the use of masks and respirators during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The department continues to monitor websites for false claims and is working with online retailers to ensure that products making unauthorized claims are removed from their websites. Health Canada is also coordinating with other government departments such as the Competition Bureau to address the issue of false and misleading claims related to COVID-19.
Selling or advertising health products that make false or misleading claims is illegal.
Health Canada has these suggestions:
If you have purchased products that claim to prevent, treat or cure COVID-19, stop using them immediately. Consult a health care professional if you have any concerns.
Check the product for an eight-digit drug identification number (DIN), natural product number (NPN) or homeopathic drug number (DIN-HM).
If you have any information on potential false and misleading advertising or the sale of products that have not been approved by Health Canada, report it.
Avoid buying health products from questionable websites. If you’re not sure if an internet pharmacy is legitimate, contact the pharmacy regulatory authority in your province.
Report any health product adverse events to Health Canada.
More information about buying health products safely is available on Health Canada’s website.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, June 12, 2020 3:17pm
(Ottawa) –The Ottawa Police Service Organized Fraud Unit is currently investigating numerous cases of fraudulent Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) applications.
Fraudsters are using stolen identity information to access the online Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) accounts of their victims and apply for the benefit. They are then changing the direct deposit information in the CRA account to a bank account that they have opened in the name of the victim.
We ask Ottawa residents to log into their CRA accounts and ensure that all of the information is accurate; and ensure they have a secure password on their account. Please use a password that you do not use on any other account. Follow these tips for a strong and secure password.
If you access your CRA account and see that your information has been changed or that you are unable to access your account because the password has been changed, you should:
contact the CRA immediately to have the information rectified at 1-800-959-8281 or online
If you discover that your direct deposit information was changed, you should also contact the bank where the account was opened in your name and tell them that you did not open the account.
If you discover that a cheque was issued in your name that you did not apply for, you should report it to police. You can file a report online or call 613-236-1222 ext.7300.
Colliers Project Leaders president and CEO Franklin Holtforster says the company had 'the best of intentions' when it asked employees to 'surrender' their vacation time. (Colliers Project Leaders)
Several workers of a high-profile company say they were pressured into giving up paid vacation days, then told to lie about it on their timecards — or risk job losses during the height of the pandemic.
In an internal company video provided to Go Public, Franklin Holtforster — president and CEO of Ottawa-based Colliers Project Leaders — asks employees to "surrender" vacation time if they want to save their own jobs and those of their coworkers.
"I'm asking everyone to work a full week and to record an additional eight hours of vacation onto your time sheet every week in April and May," Holtforster says in the video released to employees on April 24.
"This reduces our compensation costs and permits us to avoid mass layoffs … Now if we all surrender a bit of future vacation, we can keep our co-workers and ourselves employed."
Holtforster tells Go Public the project management company tried other ways to cut costs — reducing expenses and compensation for dozens of managers by up to 20 per cent — before asking workers to voluntarily give up vacation days.
WATCH | Holtforster asks employees to give up vacation days:
WATCH | Colliers Project Leaders President and CEO Franklin Holtforster, internal company video issued April 24.
6 hours ago
1:00
Franklin Holtforster, President and CEO of Colliers Project Leaders, calls on workers to give up vacation days "to avoid mass layoffs" 1:00
Go Public spoke with a number of employees; all had similar experiences and all say they don't believe it was voluntary.
One employee tells Go Public workers who refused to give up vacation days were pressured by managers to change their minds — and their timecards — receiving frequent calls from higher ups, asking if they planned to comply.
"It's not a choice … there's so much fear that if you don't do this, you're going to lose your job," said the employee, who works on infrastructure and revitalization projects for the company.
"The scary part is if you're going to get fired, say next week, you have no vacation time to show."
Go Public is not identifying the workers who contacted us, as they fear losing their jobs.
According to two employment lawyers Go Public spoke with, it's against provincial labour laws to take away or reduce vacation time that's required by law and to produce false or misleading vacation time records.
Another insider said many workers were afraid to complain or refuse the request, especially given the impact of COVID-19 on the job market.
"I know that a lot of my colleagues are struggling," said the employee.
"Any colleagues that haven't been here a year are now in the negative" — meaning they have given away so many vacation days they owe the company time.
The pandemic has hammered companies and workers, according to the latest Statistics Canada numbers. The survey found from February to April, three million Canadians lost their jobs. An additional 2.5 million remained employed but worked less than half their usual hours.
"In two months alone, that's more job losses than we've seen in the last three recessions combined," said Steven Tobin, the executive director of the Labour Market Information Council, an Ottawa-based non-profit research institute.
Steven Tobin, executive director of the Labour Market Information Council, says the job losses from the COVID-19 crisis were unprecedented. (Labour Market Information Council)
Colliers Project Leaders asked employees if they would give up vacation days after revenue declined significantly and layoffs loomed, Holtforster said in a statement to Go Public.
The company has 620 employees across the country. It has landed federal government infrastructure contracts worth over $260 million in the last five years, according to data published by Public Works and Government Services Canada.
The company has also been awarded millions more in municipal and provincial government contracts over the years and is a subsidiary of Colliers International, a massive global real estate and investment management company that reported over $3 billion USD (about $4 billion Cdn) in revenue last year.
The company has since apologized, and offered to return those vacation days after Go Public's inquiries.
Unethical and illegal
But labour lawyers say what Colliers Project Leaders was asking its employees to do was not only unethical but illegal.
"On every single level it's offensive," says lawyer Howard Levitt, who practises employment law in eight provinces and is the editor-in-chief of the Dismissal and Employment Law Digest — which covers notable dismissal and employment law cases across the country.
"Encouraging workers to create fraudulent time cards is a violation of employment standards legislation in every single province across Canada, leaving employees with no official record of what the company owes them and no official guarantee they'll ever get their time or money," he says.
Employment lawyer Howard Levitt says what Colliers Project Leaders was asking of employees was unethical and broke labour laws. (Submitted by Howard Levitt)
Levitt also refutes the suggestion workers had a choice.
"There's nothing voluntary about it if you're essentially suggesting to employees that if you don't do it, there could be consequences down the line," he says.
Many Canadians are having their rights trampled on at work during COVID-19, according to labour and human rights lawyer Aaron Rosenberg. The Toronto-based attorney says he's seeing cases where employers are using the pandemic as an excuse to "throw labour laws out the window."
"What we're seeing across the country, is nothing short of anarchy. Employers are exploiting workers' rights for the purposes of expediency and saving the bottom dollar," Rosenberg says.
He says he's seeing employees being laid off without severance packages and only a promise they'll get their jobs back "sometime" in the future, while other employers are demanding workers accept pay cuts or reduced hours.
Some companies are going even further, Rosenberg says, by using COVID-19 as a cover to get rid of employees they think are a problem.
"What we do see is that employers, in some cases, are really taking advantage of the current crisis to exploit fundamental working rights."
Employment and human rights lawyer Aaron Rosenberg says he's seeing many cases where employers are breaking labour laws under the cover of COVID-19. (Submitted by Aaron Rosenberg)
'Dark side of labour markets'
Because workers are afraid to speak up these days, companies are more likely to get away with breaking the rules, says Sylvia Fuller, a University of British Columbia sociology professor whose research centres on "the dark side of labour markets" including insecurity in the workplace.
"There's an incentive to try and make their bottom line better any way they can, and if that's on the back of their workers, and they can get away with it, there's certainly a motivation to do that," she says.
"The flip side is the workers are particularly vulnerable right now. This isn't the time that anybody wants to be taking a stand and going out and trying to find a new job because you don't like what's happening in your workplace … it's a perfect storm."
After hearing from Go Public, Colliers Project Leaders said it was "sorry for our part in how the initiative was initially communicated and rolled out."
UBC sociology professor Sylvia Fuller says the tough job market due COVID-19 has created 'a perfect storm,' where employees are afraid to speak out about abuses in the workplace. (Submitted by Sylvia Fuller)
The company declined a request for an interview, but in his statement to Go Public, Holtforster said they had "the best of intentions."
"Despite this … we understand that some employees felt pressured to participate and wound up working during their time-off.
"That is not what was intended, and it is certainly not what is right. We respect our employees' well-deserved time off," wrote Holtforster.
He said the company consulted with dozens of staff members beforehand, adding the "initiative" was intended to be a "voluntary effort to preserve jobs" in which more than 90 per cent of staff participated.
One of the workers calls the reversal "damage control."
"There is no way the vacation hours would be given back until someone started shaking the tree," the employee said.
There is still uncertainty for workers at Colliers Project Leaders. Employees say they are on pins and needles, waiting to see if the company's reversal on vacation time will revive the risk of job losses.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, June 3, 2020 1:30pm
(Ottawa) — The Ottawa Police Fraud Unit is requesting the public’s assistance to identify two men in relation to an identity theft investigation.
The victim’s name was used to apply for a credit card online. Between April 2 and 5, 2020, two men used the issued card to purchase items in the 500 block of Ogilvie Road and on Du Plateau Boulevard in Gatineau (Québec).
The first suspect is described as dark-skinned man, muscular build, facial hair covered with a surgical mask, black hair. At the time of the purchases, he was wearing a black t-shirt with white “Armani” printed across the chest, blue jeans, black shoes, watch on left wrist, bracelet on right wrist, chain on neck, sunglasses on top of his head (see photo 1).
The second suspect is described as a Black man, balding with a black beard. At the time of the purchases he was wearing black pants, black t-shirt and black shoes, wearing white latex gloves (see photo 2).
Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the Ottawa Police Service Organized Fraud Unit at 613-236-1222, ext. 5433.
Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477 or at crimestoppers.ca.
