Unisus School, Summerland.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK:Unisus School

A Summerland private school, that knowingly employed a foreign teacher with no work permit, has lost an appeal after it was ordered to pay compensation to the teacher for unpaid wages and a fine.

According to Dec. 20, 2022, Employment Standards Tribunal decision, Unisus School filed an appeal with the Tribunal arguing as the teacher was working illegally in Canada she shouldn't be entitled to be protected by B.C. employment laws and the earlier ruling should be overturned.

The case dates back to April 2020 when Unisus School offered Nicola Shaw a part-time job as a counsellor and art teacher.

The school learned that Shaw didn't have a work permit but allowed her to start work that September anyway as a "contractor" with a salary of $51,000.

Shaw then entered Canada on a tourist visa and started working at the school. The decision didn't say what country Shaw was from.

Three months later, the school emailed Shaw to say that it needed to clean up its business records and that she needed to either set up a foreign consulting company and receive her wages in a foreign bank account or get her partner to set up a Canadian consulting company which it would pay her wages into.

Shaw then resigned saying she couldn't work for Unisus school until her work status changed.

She then took Unisus School and Sunstream Consulting to the Employment Standards Tribunal arguing she was owed unpaid wages and vacation pay.

Shaw said she was "constructively dismissed" when the private school changed how she was going to be paid.

The school argued she was a contractor and not an employee but lost and the Tribunal ordered it to pay Shaw $1,833 in unpaid wages and vacation pay. The private school was also fined $2,000.

While the private boarding school that charges $60,000 a year for international students was happy to employ someone without a work visa, in its appeal the school's directors Peter Chu, Cindy Leung, and Jiaqiang Yang argued Shaw shouldn't be granted any legal rights.

"A foreign national cannot work in Canada unless the individual has proper and valid work permit. When such individual cannot work, he/she cannot be treated as an employee thus cannot be a paid worker," the school argued in the decision.

The school said any contract Shaw had with the school was "void from the beginning" because she wasn't legally allowed to work in Canada. The school goes on to say it's "questionable" whether Shaw should have been investigated by the Tribunal in the first place.

However, regardless of Shaw's legal status to work in Canada, the Tribunal dismissed the school's argument and ordered it to pay the unpaid wages and fines.

Nowhere in the decision does it say the private school would be penalized for knowingly giving the teacher a job when she didn't have a work visa.

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