Canada

Ontario's Ministry of Labour published a news release in late May alerting the public that a Toronto businessman and his private school were fined $410,000 for failing to comply with orders to pay wages.

At the time, those fines were already two weeks past due with the courts.

Anchuan Jiang and his company Ontario International College were convicted under the Employment Standards Act (ESA) in March for not paying nearly $185,000 in wages owed to 14 employees as ordered. On top of the fines, there was also a 25 per cent victim surcharge. Both were supposed to be paid in Toronto's provincial offences court by May 12.

But they weren't.

As of last week, Jiang hadn't paid a cent of the $580,730 in fines and surcharges, according to Toronto's court services division.

Kaitlyn Braun was sentenced to three years in prison in a Hamilton court room Monday after she faked being pregnant and conned two women into providing her with doula support while she was on house arrest for similar crimes.

Braun had previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced for 21 charges including fraud, indecent acts, false pretences and mischief, after pretending to have experienced pregnancies and stillbirths between June 2022 and February 2023.

“Some of the detection technology employed by the CBSA includes ion mobility spectrometry, x-rays and Narcotic Identification Kits. These tools, in combination with the officer’s knowledge, experience, training, enable successful enforcement actions.”

In other words, they found it by pure luck.

According to a release, the federal Competition Bureau says its investigation found that consumers ended up paying more than was advertised on the DoorDash website and mobile applications due to additional “mandatory fees at checkout.”

The bureau says this practice is commonly known as “drip pricing,” and calls it “deceptive” because the process lacks transparency.

In some cases, the bureau says the additional “fees” may be misclassified to customers as “taxes.”

“Parliament has made it clear that businesses must not engage in drip pricing by advertising unattainable prices and then adding mandatory fees,” commissioner of competition Matthew Boswell said in a statement.