Recent news
Archives

Canada - RCMP investigating immigrant fees

By David Jackson

The Chronicle Herald, October 2, 2008

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1082271.html


The RCMP is reviewing five files from an ill-fated provincial immigration program, including payments to a lawyer who apparently didn’t do any work on behalf of some immigrants, and how the program operator seems to have used immigration fees to buy into a business.

The revelations were in auditor general Jacques Lapointe’s second report on the economic stream of the provincial nominee program, released Wednesday. Mr. Lapointe said his office investigated some matters as far as possible, then sent the five to the RCMP last month.

Other concerns were the use of 'phantom agents' who worked on the immigrants’ files, a businessman with two companies who collected money even though immigrants who were supposed to work there did not, and the transfer of $190,000 from a trust account holding immigrants’ fees.

Mr. Lapointe said the audit turned up many problems.

'Our audit into this area discovered a significant number of irregularities, inappropriate payments and other flaws,' Mr. Lapointe told a news conference.

The province established the economic stream in 2002 when it signed an untendered contract with Cornwallis Financial Corp. to administer it.

Immigrants paid $130,500 in fees to be fast-tracked into Canada. The biggest chunk, $100,000, was for a six-month mentorship in a middle-management position at a Nova Scotia business. The immigrant was to receive at least $20,000.

Another $20,000 fee was to pay an agent, though Mr. Lapointe said many immigrants weren’t aware of that.

The report notes that a Halifax-area lawyer was listed as an agent for at least a handful of nominees. Of seven interviewed, two weren’t aware of the lawyer’s name, and the other five thought his name appeared as a technical requirement.

But in each case, they said the lawyer didn’t do any work on their behalf, and they didn’t know he received an agent commission of $18,000 to $20,000 a person.

Mr. Lapointe found the lawyer received $116,000 in payments between May 2, 2003, and March 20 of this year. But in January and April, $79,935 was returned to immigrants. Mr. Lapointe said the lawyer refused to speak with him, so he couldn’t explain why the lawyer received the fees and returned a portion of them.

Sources said the lawyer is Brian MacLellan of the firm Wickwire Holm. Mr. MacLellan said he had no comment.

'Any involvement that I have ever had with the program is one where I would have been a lawyer for various parties and I can’t comment on anything due to solicitor-client privilege,' he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Lapointe’s office also examined a contract Cornwallis had with an unnamed Moncton firm that would give Cornwallis a 'master franchise' that would allow Cornwallis, with the co-operation of the Moncton firm, to sell franchises throughout Atlantic Canada.

The contract said Cornwallis was to forward $100,000 to the company via the nominee program.

Cornwallis president Stephen Lockyer said on the telephone that he couldn’t comment on the report but he e-mailed a short statement later in the afternoon.

He said Mr. Lapointe had accepted the province’s assumptions and ignored the terms of the deal between Cornwallis and the province, as well as industry norms.

'The auditor general’s report is full of misstatements of fact and misunderstanding of the circumstances,' Mr. Lockyer said. 'This matter is before the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia and Cornwallis will present its case before the court.'

Cornwallis sued the province in 2006, after the province ended the contract with Cornwallis in June that year.

Mr. Lapointe also had concerns with the use of 'phantom agents' — people who weren’t lawyers or members of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants but did work on an immigrant’s file. He said he wasn’t sure if the arrangements between phantom agents and lawyers met the spirit of federal immigration rules.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Mark Gallagher said Mounties are reviewing the information Mr. Lapointe provided and it would take a couple of months or more to respond.

New Democrat MLA Graham Steele, a member of the public accounts committee that examined the report Wednesday morning, said he’s never seen a more poorly managed program.

'The deficiencies listed in your report are stunning,' he said during the meeting. 'And the best analogy I can use for what happened here is like a feeding frenzy, where a bunch of people smelled money and took shameless advantage of immigrants to this province, and it’s a shame of our government they allowed it to happen by setting up a program with weak controls and poor oversight.'

The report said there were brokers who charged companies $3,000 to $20,000 for lining up an immigrant, while some immigrants paid extra fees on top of their $130,500.

Liberal MLA Diana Whalen said the least the government could do to start rebuilding the province’s reputation as a welcoming place is to apologize for the program’s problems.

Premier Rodney MacDonald did that later in a media scrum, saying he was sorry for the immigrants who had a bad experience with the program, which he said was 'obviously flawed.'

'Of course we apologize to individuals,' he said. 'When government does something wrong in a program or has issues in a program, then we have to accept responsibility. And as premier, in any program that we have in government, it is important to recognize if there is an issue with a program, then you deal with it.'

Mr. MacDonald said his government did not renew the Cornwallis contract, cancelled that stream of the program and supported the idea of an auditor general’s review. He also pointed out the report did not point blame at government staff.

Immigration Minister Len Goucher dismissed suggestions the program failed and noted there have been successes in its goal of attracting immigrants.

Of 829 people the province recommended to Ottawa for fast-tracking, 633 were in the country as of Aug. 31. Of those, more than 400 are in Nova Scotia, Mr. Goucher told reporters in the afternoon.

'Whether the program was an ultimate success or whether it was a dog, you can call it what you want. I personally believe that this program has served its function.'

Ms. Whalen wasn’t buying it.

'This government is clearly out of touch,' she said. 'I’m telling you a child could develop a better program and would have attracted more immigrants to this province than we’ve seen.'

New Democrat immigration critic Leonard Preyra said the government seems to be in a serious state of denial about the program.

'The fact is the government created this cesspool of incompetence and some corruption,' he said.

'I think it’s reprehensible that the government is now saying that the program achieved its purposes.'




| XHTML | CSS | WCAG AAA |
Web design and programming by Eve Design