What this site is
This site has two linked databases, both sourced from Government of Canada open data:
- Violations — employers the government's own inspection process has formally found non-compliant under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) or International Mobility Program (IMP). Every entry is a final compliance decision, not an allegation.
- LMIA Database — every employer approved for a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment since 2014. Appearing here only means an LMIA application was approved — it is not evidence of wrongdoing. Entries that also appear on the Violations list are flagged, so you can see the (currently 771) employers where approval and a later compliance finding both apply to the same business.
What "approved" does and doesn't mean
The LMIA Database only shows positive (approved) decisions. The federal government does not publish a list of pending or refused LMIA applications — that information isn't public from any source, so there is no "application status" tracker beyond "this employer has, at some point, had at least one LMIA approved." An employer can appear here with a large number of approved positions and have never been found non-compliant; the reverse is also possible. Treat the two databases as separate facts, cross-referenced by name only where both independently exist.
Data sources, licensing & architecture
Violations data is pulled from canada.ca/.../non_compliant.json, which backs the official page Employers who have been found non-compliant. LMIA Database data is aggregated from every quarterly/annual release (2014–present) of the Positive LMIA Employers List open dataset. The Map page's location circles use postal-code-area (FSA) centroids from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0), matched to each employer's postal code — this gives neighbourhood-level, not exact-address, positioning. All of this is reproduced here in part under the Canada.ca non-commercial reuse terms / Open Government Licence – Canada, with attribution and a link to the original. This site is independently run and has no affiliation with, and is not endorsed by, the Government of Canada.
Because the LMIA dataset alone covers roughly 400,000 historical
records, the site ships it as a single indexed SQLite database
(data/site.sqlite) that your browser downloads once and
queries directly using sql.js
(SQLite compiled to WebAssembly) — rather than as a giant JSON
file, which would be too large to load or search efficiently. The
violations list is small enough to stay in the same database. Both
datasets are updated by re-running the import scripts in this project's
GitHub repository; see the timestamp on each
database page for the last snapshot.
Why this exists
Reporting and court records show that abuse of the TFW program is a real, documented problem, not an isolated one:
- A Calgary restaurant case resulted in jail sentences after workers were charged $8,000–$24,000 in supposed "government fees" against an actual LMIA processing fee of $1,000 (HR Reporter).
- CBC's investigation found LMIA-linked job offers being resold for upwards of $27,000, despite employers being legally prohibited from charging foreign workers recruitment fees (CBC).
- ESDC's own compliance review for fiscal 2025–26 found 12% of inspected employers non-compliant, with penalties exceeding $10.2 million and 30 employers banned from the program.
This site's purpose is to make the government's own enforcement record easier to search and browse — not to accuse any specific business of wrongdoing beyond what the government has already formally found and published. If you believe an entry is inaccurate, it should be raised with ESDC/IRCC directly, since this site only mirrors their published data.