Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Programme was a three-fold exaggeration of its actual employment benefits:
'its success is much more limited than is suggested by gross estimates of
numbers of immigrant investors, or their gross investment' (EIC 1992, ix).
Worse was to follow, as in response to continuing complaints by investors
and critics, CIC hired a senior forensic auditor from the World Bank. After
reviewing a sample of investor statements and departmental documents, the
auditor concluded that systemic corruption existed in the programme. The
auditor did not mince his language, describing the investor programme to be
'a massive sham. The middlemen made hundreds of millions of dollars…
Claims about the benefits of the program in terms of job creation and invest-
ment have been widely inflated' (Mitrovica 1999).
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The government con-
tested the report as they had the earlier Ernst and Young assessment, and a
significant overhaul of the investor programme followed. But a former CIC
administrator concurred with the tone of the charges. I was told that the
availability of large capital funds and weak supervision led to, 'a feeding
frenzy, driven by provincial competition and hungry lawyers, a very dirty
programme that brought out the worst in our legal and business group.
There was so much money around, the Department was swamped and every
area was litigious. Former Departmental employees were leaving to become
immigration consultants.'
One of the auditor's criticisms was that the annual scorecard was largely
derived from numbers supplied by the operators who benefited from the
investment funds, creating an unaudited conflict of interest. The same self-
reporting is also evident in the entrepreneur programme, for the annual
scorecard has included a footnote in past years declaring that the statement
of investments and job gains appear 'as reported by entrepreneurs' (e.g.
CIC 1997).
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How reliable then are these statistics? Despite the appearance
of close surveillance and regular monitoring of business activities, inter-
views with government managers in Ottawa and Vancouver revealed that
resources were far too limited for anything but a superficial review process
for most files.
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One manager told me 'There was almost no monitoring.
The provinces were opposed to it, the feds didn't have the resources.' The
under-resourcing of monitoring led to a significant backlog and pressure for
file closures. I learned that only seven percent of files received site visits. 'We
can't go the whole distance to show fraud… there's a high level of creativ-
ity'. In the lifting of terms and conditions, the level of sales was a criterion
but not the profitability of the business. However, if the sales criterion was
not met, the applicant was forgiven, with a 'no further action' judgement
permitting the entrepreneur to proceed to citizenship. This has been a
common outcome, 'fifty percent or more for as long as I can remember'.
Most important of all, managers told me that applicants were not usually
asked for proof of their investment level or jobs created because of the cost
to the client: 'very rarely do CIC get audited statements'. A former federal
