A giant calf in trouble

Quebec’s largest veal production company used the labor of a Saint-Jude farmer suspected of operating a network of undeclared foreign workers, invoices and time sheets seized during a raid show. search.

Fontaine meats and Délimax farms, brands well known to Quebecers, are just some of the thirty or so companies belonging to the Fontaine family in Saint-Hyacinthe.

Several of their businesses have come to the attention of border services investigators as part of a criminal investigation into Jean Lemay, alias “el patrón”. The Saint-Jude farmer was banned for life from the temporary foreign worker program in October 2021.

Piles of seized documents

During a search, sleuths discovered many links between the Fontaine family and the empire of Jean Lemay, who is suspected of employing black people and then hiring their services through an employment agency.

According to the mandates:

• The agency managed by Lemay issued numerous time sheets and invoices on behalf of Délimax Leathers, Napierveau, Transport Dofax, Bunny Farm and Fabien Fontaine Farm. More than 400 pages of documents were confiscated by investigators.
• They also found in Jean Lemay’s office folders identified as “Veauxpert” and “Silo Delimax”, also linked to the Fontaine family, which contained other invoices and time sheets.
• In March 2022, a Sûreté du Québec patrol officer intercepted two foreigners without a work permit who said they worked in a Délimax slaughterhouse. According to the agent’s checks, they would be employed by Jean Lemay, which they confirmed to him verbally.
• The following month, the same patrolman checked a car with two strangers on board who said they worked for Jean Lemay and who were wearing clothes bearing the effigy of the “Fontaine Family”. One of them did not have a work permit.

Note that the allegations in support of the search warrants executed by border services have not yet been proven in court.

Two for 50 cages

Our Bureau of Investigation also tracked down a Mexican who spent long hours at Délimax cleaning cattle transport cages soiled with excrement this winter, via Jean Lemay.

“It was really painful, we were only two for 50 cages”, says in Spanish the one who never obtained his work permit in Canada and who wishes to preserve his anonymity.

Our Bureau of Investigation also discovered that:

• Via a numbered company, the Fontaine family has partly owned Jean Lemay’s former farm since 2015, together with his sons, Jean-Philippe and Alexandre. The Délimax logo is also clearly visible on the facade of one of the agricultural buildings.
• During the search, 30 of the 40 people identified at the farm did not have the right to work in Canada.
• Together, the Fontaine brothers and the Lemay brothers hold several plots of land in the region.

Questioned by our Bureau of Investigation a few days ago, Fabien Fontaine first claimed to ignore the activities of Jean Lemay, to whom he rents a house and buildings on his huge agricultural complex.

More links

Then yesterday, Mr. Fontaine, whom we recontacted, assured that he had cut all ties with the suspicious placement agency, which belongs to a certain Robert Blanchard. He also claimed never to have done business directly with the manager of this agency, Jean Lemay.

“Since our discussion, […] I stopped everything. I no longer have any checks going out. There are no more people, it’s over. We solved the problem, ”said the businessman on the phone.

“Agencies, we [utilise] a lot. The papers are in good and due form. The guy guarantees it and shows us the evidence. How do you want us to know, as a farmer, that the guy is scheming backwards? ” he added.

Who are the Fontaine brothers?

• Fabien, Donald and Alexandre Fontaine are at the head of around thirty agricultural companies whose turnover was close to $600 million in 2021.
• They employ over 1,200 people “of more than 51 different nationalities”.
• Their veal, marketed under the Famille Fontaine brand, is available in just about every supermarket in Quebec.

Who is Jean Lemay?

The disputes with the authorities of the farmer, who has become in a way the king of illegal workers in Saint-Jude, go back a long way:

• In 2012, Service Canada investigated his farm for trading in unlicensed foreign workers to a landscaping company in the area, according to a CBC article.
• In 2021, he becomes the first Quebec employer banned for life from the federal temporary foreign worker program. He was also fined $198,750.
• Revenu Québec imposed several fines on his company for false declarations, including one of $63,000 in 2012 and another of $52,000 in 2020.
• Revenu Québec seized $2.2 million in property from his old farm last year.
• On June 15, 2023, the Canada Border Services Agency conducted searches at his former farm, where he still lives.

➤ Do you have information of public interest about Jean Lemay or his companies? Contact us confidentially at (438) 701-4273 or by email at ⁠nora.[email protected] or [email protected].