This petition asks Parliament to amend the Criminal Code to make intentional wage theft — when employers deliberately withhold or underpay wages — a criminal offence, similar to laws already in place in Australia and New Zealand.

A historical legal precedent exists in Canada, where from 1935 until 1955, the Criminal Code of Canada explicitly criminalized intentional wage underpayment to protect vulnerable workers from severe economic exploitation;

Following the 1955 consolidation of the Criminal Code, this critical protection was removed, leaving the enforcement of deliberate wage withholding exclusively to provincial civil and administrative frameworks;

Important modern international precedents have been set, as comparable Commonwealth jurisdictions, notably Australia and New Zealand, have recently enacted legislation criminalizing intentional wage theft to hold non-compliant employers criminally accountable;

Current provincial employment standards mechanisms in Canada are structurally limited to civil remedies and lack the criminal investigative authorities, such as search warrants, necessary to counter deliberate asset concealment and the willful obstruction of statutory payment orders; and

Under the Constitution Act, 1867, the exclusive jurisdiction to legislate criminal offenses and to authorize corresponding criminal investigative powers required to close this enforcement vacuum rests solely with the federal Parliament.

We, the undersigned,citizens and residents of Canada, call upon theHouse of Commons in Parliament assembledto urge the Government of Canada to amend the Criminal Code to reintroduce and modernize federal provisions that criminalize intentional wage theft and the deliberate concealment of assets to evade statutory wage orders, thereby protecting the economic security of Canadian workers.