Potential Immigrants; Caveat Emptor

"They took our money in the name of business investment, but there was no business. They deprived us of money and opportunity for survival. Since we sold our business in China, there is nothing to return to if things go wrong in Canada."

Canada, eager to encourage immigrants to make Canada their home, all the more so if they are well educated, entrepreneurial, and monied, has established a class of immigrants for whom visas and landed immigrant status can be expedited on their basis of their willingness to invest in Canada, to launch new businesses. They constitute a preferred class of immigrants.

Canada has a large Chinese-Canadian population. They have generally settled in Canada's larger cities, like Toronto and Vancouver, although there are sizeable Chinese-Canadian populations in other cities which also boast their own "Chinatowns". In the 19th Century, Canada treated its oriental populations shamefully; Canada was a racist society. A head tax was imposed, and the Chinese were treated as sub-citizens.

A government-issued apology has since gone to the Chinese community, and financial reparations offered. Chinese-Canadians represent a highly-motivated demographic of people devoted to education; academic and business accomplishments. And the country has an ongoing agenda of encouraging emigration from many countries, accepting up to a quarter-million immigrants annually.

The Maritime Provinces of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia felt they could improve their economic standing by buying in to a recently-launched federal-provincial nominee program aimed at giving provinces greater control to attract business investors and skilled workers to improve the provinces' economic positions.

The immigrant investor program looked as though it was tailor-made to encourage wealthy immigrant investors with their international business experience to increase their lagging population bases, and improve their economies. With the new federally launched nominee program provinces could set their own immigration criteria and examine potential immigrants before sending their nominations on to Citizenship and Immigration for processing.

What resulted from the initiatives of these provinces has been damning auditor-general's reports, RCMP investigations, allegations of corruption and bribery and a Chinese-immigrant protest, demanding their investment money be restored to them. And immigrants began to leave, to settle elsewhere in Canada. Although the provinces hoped immigrant-cash-infusion and skills would help them, they had no follow-up program in place to ensure the immigrants received due value.

Nova Scotia's auditor-general found "Most of the mentor companies ... were not qualified to be mentors", with the appearance of a "virtual office", in one instance. Immigrants were in too many instances unable to ascertain whether local business partnerships were real; some companies found to be ineligible were being approved for immigrant investor money regardless. One business was facing bankruptcy.

New Brunswick's auditor-general noted that despite business plan approvals of almost 400 companies, the government "was not able to give us an example of a successfully established business under this program." Rod Gillis, a Saint John lawyer representing 10 lawsuits relating to the Chinese investor program where immigrants discovered they had invested in shell companies explained: "The whole thing was nothing but a figment of somebody's imagination."

"The problem really is one of greed. The program is good for the province of New Brunswick. It's good for the serious Chinese entrepreneurs that want to come set up a business. But to take advantage, to squeeze money out of them is just wrong and it sends the wrong message back to China because they all talk and it sends the wrong message into the community here and people like us are left here trying to clean it up and say not everybody is like that."

As for corruption of another kind; a chief of staff to former P.E.I. premier Pat Binns and a former deputy minister of the department that had oversight of the provincial nominee program benefited from the provincial nominee program. Both of whom had little choice but to return the investment money they received on order by Premier Robert Ghiz.

"It was just the drive for the money. The immigrants wanted to come to Canada and pay their way in. Money spoke for them. The businesses wanted the money and the government wanted the money on the island. I think the whole idea was probably good to start with, but I think the money was just too easy."

The federal government is left now to examine the provincial nominee program for "economic outcomes and mobility of provincial nominees".

"There's just far too much economic mismatch taking place. We have some very talented Korean and Chinese exporters and importers that either end up running a B&B at the end of a very lonely highway or find that there is absolutely no place for them in the Atlantic economy right now."