A Langley-based forestry company that once operated a sawmill and a remanufacturing plant in Port Alberni has been fined $429,000 and banned from hiring temporary foreign workers for two years after federal inspectors found multiple rule violations. San Industries Ltd., better known as the San Group, broke five sections of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations at its former local operations, the penalty decision shows.
Federal inspectors determined that pay and working conditions at the Port Alberni facilities did not match what the company advertised when bringing in workers, according to a decision made public in late May 2026. The company also could not show that the jobs lined up with its approved hiring plans and was not engaged in the business the workers were hired for.
The penalty is the second largest on record in British Columbia for temporary foreign worker violations, just behind a $435,000 fine issued to Surrey’s Kanwar Walia Farms earlier this year.
The decision comes nearly two years after complaints surfaced in July 2024 that 16 male workers from Vietnam were living in a small trailer with no running water on the company’s Port Alberni property. At that time, RCMP and local fire officials went to the site after complaints about substandard housing conditions.
After those allegations became public, Port Alberni Mayor Sharie Minions described the worker treatment as “incredibly disturbing” and “disgusting.” The San Group then sued the city for defamation over the mayor’s comments, a case that remains in dispute alongside the company’s broader financial troubles.
By November 2024, the San Group had filed for creditor protection with nearly $200 million in debt. Its Port Alberni assets, including the Coulson Mill and a remanufacturing plant, were later sold as part of insolvency proceedings.
NDP MP Gord Johns for Courtenay-Alberni says the $429,000 fine doesn’t go far enough. “It should be a permanent ban, and it just doesn’t seem to be a deterrent for bad actors,” Johns told a local news outlet. The penalty and hiring ban were handed to the company itself, which is now undergoing court-monitored restructuring. The federal government named Kamaljit Singh Sanghera, Sukhjit Singh Sanghera, and Iqbal Deol as the company’s founders and controllers.
