RCMP have charged an Orthodox priest and two other people in an immigration scam in which foreign workers were allegedly lured to Alberta with false promises and fake student visas.
Police say they were then sent out to work for meagre pay while the perpetrators netted more than $1 million in profit.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada has relieved Father John Lipinski of his duties at parish communities in St. Paul and Bonnyville, northeast of Edmonton.
“We were a little taken back by it,” Chancellor Father Victor Lakusta said Thursday from Winnipeg.
Defence lawyer Robert Davidson said Lipinski plans to fight the charges, but not the church.
“Mr. Lipinski is of the opinion that it would be inappropriate to continue to serve as a priest with these allegations facing him,” Davidson said. “He does not want to bring embarrassment upon either the church or his congregation.
“He’s a principled person.”
On Monday, immigration and passport officers charged Lipinski, 43; his wife Angela, 42; and Calvin Steinhauer, 38, of Goodfish Lake, Alta. They are accused of using improper immigration documents and organizing entry into Canada by threat, deception or fraud — charges under the Immigration Refugee Protection Act. They all face an additional criminal charge of possessing the proceeds of crime.
They are to appear in provincial court in Edmonton on July 25.
Lipinski and Steinhauer were both listed as directors of the now defunct Kihew Energy Services, which operated from a post office box in Goodfish Lake.
RCMP Sgt. Patrick Webb said the company recruited welders and machinists from Poland and the Ukraine through newspaper ads and a website.
They were allegedly promised they could legally work in Canada and after six months bring their families here. They signed work contracts stating that, if breached, they could be fined $25,000 and deported, said Webb.
“They were also told, very explicitly, not to discuss their wages or the arrangements of how they came to be in Canada,” he said. “They didn’t speak and read English so they were going on what they had been told.
“It was simply a case of being exploited.”
The first of 60 workers arrived in Alberta in December 2005, unaware they were here on student visas. The visas required them to attend one of Lakeland College’s two campuses in Vermilion or Lloydminster for technical welding and English classes.
Instead, said Webb, they were contracted out to work with several northern Alberta companies. As many as nine men were crammed into three-bedroom apartments and earned much less than the hourly rate Kihew was charging for their services. Between April and September 2006, the company made more than $1 million in profit.
Webb said charges against an employee with the college who sent letters to Canada Immigration confirming the workers as students are still being considered.
The college, he added, had no idea what was going on and has since fired the employee.