CNE says job fair tickets had ‘no monetary value’ after scam targets hopeful applicants

A person uses a Canadian National Exhibition brochure as a sheild from the sun during a Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) media preview in Toronto on Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

Job hopefuls looking to land employment at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) this year were apparently taken advantage of, as the fair says some scammers tried to sell tickets to their free job fair in July.

A spokesperson for the fair said the CNE had created a registration page through Eventbrite, a self-service ticketing platform, to encourage applicants to register in advance—but at no cost.

“People who registered received a confirmation email in the form of a ‘ticket,’ however, these have no monetary value,” Tran Nguyen, spokesperson for the CNE, told CTV News Toronto in an emailed statement.

Nguyen says they did this to gauge and manage the number of potential attendees.

“The CNE was made aware that some people were trying to sell ‘tickets’ to the job fair event on July 30th. We did post a message to candidates on Instagram ... warning people not to fall for this scam, and that anyone was welcome to attend, event without prior registration,” the statement reads.

For this year’s fair, the CNE said it received 54,000 online job applications—a record number—for their 5,000 openings to work at the Exhibition. The high number of job hopefuls reflects a time where youth unemployment rates hit 14.2 per cent, according to Statistics Canada’s latest latest labour force survey, noting that is up by 0.7 percentage points year-over-year.

This figure is significantly higher than the pre-pandemic average, with StatCan recording 10.8 per cent between 2017 and 2019.

The unemployment rate for students returning to school in the fall is even higher, at around 17.4 per cent in June. This was a marked decline from May, however, when 20.1 per cent of Canadian students were without a job.

Still, StatCan says this is the highest unemployment rate for this group since June 2009, excluding the pandemic.

The CNE says it has not been made aware of any reports to the police. A spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service says they haven’t heard of any reports related to this job scam, but urges anyone who believes they fell victim to it to report the incident to them.

Did you pay for a ticket to this job fair and later learn it was a fake? We want to hear from you.

How much did the ticket cost and what happened when you arrived? How has this made you feel about applying for future job fairs?

Share your story by emailing us at [e-mail] with your name, general location, and phone number in case we want to follow up. Your comments may be used in a CTV News Toronto story.

With files from CTV News Toronto’s Laura Sebben