If the reason you're "stateless" is that you're in Canada, then your answer is that this practice is not only legal in Canada, it's encouraged by lawmakers, who have created a separate minimum wage specifically for bartenders and busboys (just like the one for servers) on the assumption that bartenders and busboys get tipped out by servers.
This is a very common practice in Canada, and if you really are in Canada, I'm very surprised that you haven't come across it before.