March 28, 2024

Injunction application against Chinese miners to resume Friday

A Federal Court judge may rule Friday on a request to keep hundreds of Chinese miners from travelling to BC until a decision is made on whether they were legally hired to work here.

Charles Gordon is the lawyer for two unions seeking that interim injunction (The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115 and Construction & Specialized Workers Union local 1611).

“The only real concern of the unions is that these jobs have been offered to temporary foreign workers –potentially thousands of temporary foreign workers– before Canadians were given an opportunity to have those jobs, even though there are qualified Canadians that are here and would like to have those jobs.”

Lawyers for HD Mining have described ads seeking only Mandarin-speaking employees as ‘rogue,’ but Gordon says he can prove they are real.

“I don’t think they’ve said that they didn’t run those ads. Those ads are publicly available. They’re in our materials. They’re run under HD Mining and I haven’t heard them say that they didn’t put those ads in. I’m not really sure what they mean by they’re ‘rogue’ ads.”

Lawyers for the federal government say temporary permits are set to expire in May of 2014 and 2015.

At least 60 more Chinese workers are slated to arrive next month.

CKNW Vancouver News

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