Some rich foreigners seeking Canadian residency under a special Quebec program for wealthy investors couldn't point to the province on a map, while others submitted fake documents or disguised their assets — yet many of them were still accepted for immigration, former civil servants say.
The officials, charged with administering the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program (QIIP), say they were sometimes pressured into ignoring signs that applicants' fortunes were founded on corruption or other ill-gotten gains.
"The Quebec Immigrant Investor Program is a scam from start to finish. I think that everyone who's involved in the program knows that," said Ian Young, the Vancouver correspondent for Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper and a seasoned observer of immigration patterns from China to Canada. "I think that includes policy-makers, the people who facilitate it and the immigrants themselves."
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