Influential Chinese-Canadians paying to attend private fundraisers with Trudeau

ROBERT FIFE AND STEVEN CHASE

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Dec. 02, 2016 5:00AM EST

Last updated Friday, Dec. 02, 2016 9:15AM EST

The Liberal Party is employing an under-the-radar strategy that taps into the power of Justin Trudeau to generate tens of thousands of dollars from cash-for-access events at the homes of wealthy Chinese-Canadians that provide intimate face-time with the Prime Minister that can be used as business currency at home and in China.

Attendance figures suggest the party collects a minimum of $50,000 per event from donors – and up to $120,000 – in a system that revolves around rich entrepreneurs in Vancouver and Toronto, home to large Chinese-Canadian business communities with people willing to shell out $1,500 per ticket to meet Mr. Trudeau in a private setting.

Some of the guests and hosts at the intimate fundraisers are well-connected to China’s ruling Communist Party.

Globe editorial: Justin Trudeau didn't invent cash-for-access, but he can end it

Related: Trudeau defends fundraiser as effort to attract Chinese investment

Related: Trudeau attended cash-for-access fundraiser with Chinese billionaires

Former Liberal cabinet minister Raymond Chan, who was Mr. Trudeau’s British Columbia fundraiser in the 2015 election campaign, helps with fundraising activities on the West Coast, while Toronto business consultant Richard Zhou is a key organizer of these events in Ontario.

Mr. Chan was at the most recent Trudeau fundraiser, which was held on Nov. 7 at the West Vancouver mansion of B.C. developer Miaofei Pan, a multimillionaire from Wenzhou province who immigrated to Canada a decade ago. More than 80 guests got their pictures taken with Mr. Trudeau at the $1,500 per ticket event, including Mr. Chan.

Mr. Pan told The Globe and Mail he lobbied the Prime Minister to make it easier for well-heeled investors from China to come to Canada. He said he told Mr. Trudeau the program put in place by the former Conservative government was “too harsh.”

In exchange for permanent residency, rich immigrants must invest $2-million and are subject to strict audits.

“If they don’t do business over two years here, they cannot stay or they have to leave the country. So I wanted the Prime Minister to know that is not a very merciful policy towards these people because they want to invest or stay,” Mr. Pan said. “It’s all about investment that Canada needs. I have friends, and [they are] wealthy people, who want to stay and invest.”

A Chinese government agency in Mr. Pan’s hometown that builds ties with and keeps tabs on expatriate Chinese, supplied photos of the Trudeau-Pan event to media in China. The Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Wenzhou People’s Government promotes China’s interests abroad, according to former Canadian diplomat and China expert Charles Burton.

“That is an agency of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Burton told The Globe and Mail. “The fact that the photos appeared in the [Wenzhou Metropolis Daily] in China suggests that the people who participated in that activity must have been tasked by the Chinese state to try and promote the Chinese position with influential people in Canada. In this case, our Prime Minister.”

Mr. Pan is honorary chair of a Chinese-Canadian organization that is an unabashed backer of Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

In 2012, he was part of a campaign by overseas Chinese groups to rally public support for the Chinese government’s position in a dispute with Japan over islands in the East China Sea that are close to key shipping lanes, bountiful fishing grounds and possible petroleum reserves.

That year, Mr. Pan was quoted in the Macau Daily newspaper saying his organization, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations, had “declared its stand in newspapers” and that “overseas Chinese were responsible for defending China’s territorial integrity.”

In 2015, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations held a symposium at which speakers backed Beijing’s assertion of title to islands, reefs and banks in the South China Sea, and issued a statement saying it “strongly supports the Chinese government’s defence of sovereignty over the South China Sea.”

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Party kept the Nov. 7 fundraiser confidential. Neither the PMO nor the party website noted the event. At the time, Mr. Trudeau was in Vancouver to announce a new marine strategy.

“The party has … been clear that not every event is on the party’s national website, while it’s important to note that the Liberal Party of Canada is still the only major federal political party that maintains an active online events listing in any form at all,” party spokesman Braeden Caley said in an e-mail. “All fundraising by the Liberal Party of Canada fully complies with all Elections Canada rules and regulations for political fundraising.”

The Liberal Party would not provide The Globe and Mail with a list of attendees. Mr. Pan said all the guests were his friends, and all are Canadian citizens.

In Toronto, Mr. Zhou is the chief Liberal ambassador to deep-pocketed Chinese-Canadian business executives. His web biography says he is also a consultant to the state-supervised Beijing International Chamber of Commerce. He did not respond to phone calls or e-mails, but Mr. Caley confirmed that Mr. Zhou is a “volunteer fundraising co-chair in Ontario.”

Mr. Zhou helped arrange a May 19 fundraiser at the home of Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce chair Benson Wong at which Mr. Trudeau was the star attraction, an event attended by Chinese billionaire and Communist Party official Zhang Bin. A few weeks later, Mr. Zhang and his business partner donated $200,000 to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and $50,000 to erect a statue of Mr. Trudeau’s father.

Insurance mogul Hong Wei Winnie Liao has hosted several Trudeau fundraisers in Toronto. The most recent was on April 14, but no details are available from either the Liberal Party or Ms. Liao.

Reached by telephone, Ms. Liao said: “I will not accept any interview.”

“It may not be convenient for me to comment,” she added before hanging up. She did not respond to text messages asking about the fundraisers at her home.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly told the House of Commons the Liberal Party respects the “values that Canadians expect in terms of openness, accountability and transparency.”

New rules Mr. Trudeau set out when he won political power last year appeared intended to end cash-for-cash fundraisers. Those rules state “there should be no preferential access to government, appearance of preferential access” in exchange for political donations.

With reports from Xiao Xu, Kathy Tomlinson and Nathan VanderKlippe

rfife@globeandmail.com

schase@globeandmail.com

The source:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/influential-chinese-canadians-paying-to-attend-private-fundraisers-with-trudeau/article33131597/

Comment:

What happens when failed immigration policies

      meet insane political financing rules?

I feel sorry for legitimate politicians having to waste time and reputation dealing with our crazy political financing rules.

Can anyone justify a process which forces a Prime Minister to beg for money at dinners that he would rather avoid?

Can anyone believe that a national political party will change public policy in return for a $50,000 dinner?

On the other hand:

Can anyone deny that consultants serving the Asian market are the tail wagging the immigration dog as they lurk in the political financing shadows?

Can anyone deny that less legitimate politicians are sharing the cash with the consultants as they game, and drive, the immigration process?

   

Our legitimate desire for financing “transparency” has backfired. Instead of controlling corruption, the rules have tied the hands of legitimate lobbying of honest politicians while unleashing the slime balls, both consultants and politicians, who play the immigration angles.

The cost of this dysfunction is high. It is on track to fundamentally change the country without Parliamentary or Constitutional approval."

Richard Boraks, December 2 2016

Canada’s Global Skills Strategy

Canadian workers are among the most highly educated and highly skilled workers in the world. The goods they produce and the services they provide are respected the world over. That said, Canada needs to be able to access the skills and expertise of talented workers from around the world to enable Canadian firms to succeed in the global marketplace.

To grow Canadian businesses, create more Canadian jobs and compete among the best in the world, we must also attract the best minds in the world. Perhaps more than any other country, Canada has drawn strengths from its diversity and openness to change.

Faster Processing for Global Talent

Canada’s Global Skills Strategy will make it easier for Canadian businesses to attract the talent they need to succeed. 
Whether they need to bring in professionals to train Canadian workers, or to hire global talent with highly specialized, in-demand skills, the proposed new Global Skills Strategy will set an ambitious two-week standard for processing visas and work permits for low-risk, high-skill talent for companies doing business in Canada. This initiative will target:

• High-growth Canadian companies that need to access global talent in order to facilitate and accelerate investments that create jobs and growth. This will include companies that can demonstrate labour market benefits, such as increasing investments, knowledge transfer and Canadian job creation; and
• Global companies that are making large investments, relocating to Canada, establishing new production or expanding production, and creating new Canadian jobs.

The Short-Duration Work Permit Exemption

The government will introduce a new work permit exemption for short-duration work terms. The exemption will apply to work terms of fewer than 30 days in a year, or brief academic stays

Date modified: 

2016-11-01

The source:http://www.budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2016/docs/themes/skills-competences-en.html

Comment:

"

Is the trades sector included?

Our Immigration Minister did the right thing by coming up with his `Global Skills Strategy`. The idea of this strategy to help Canadian business grow by making work permit issuance faster for skilled workers.

Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that Ottawa will help high tech companies but continue to screw the skilled trades employers.

Hopefully, I`m wrong.

But if I`m right, which I probably am, then three things will happen:

1. More illegal workers from Europe

2. More legal immigrants from Asia

3. It`s game over for Trudeau

Richard Boraks, December 1 2016

John Ivison: Liberal cash-for-access events aren’t just ugly, they may be illegal

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John Ivison | November 28, 2016 | Last Updated: Nov 29 10:41 AM ET
More from John Ivison

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred ChartrandFinance Minister Bill Morneau

The government’s cash-for-access scandals are multiplying like zebra mussels, as more ministers are revealed to have rented out their public office to anyone prepared to stuff hundreds of dollars into the Liberal Party’s coffers.

The case for the defence is that the government does not offer preferential access to donors and there is no conflict of interest, either real or perceived. All Canadians have equal access to ministers, said Marco Mendicino, the Liberal MP who drew the short straw and had to defend the scheme on CTV’s Question Period.

The Conservatives heard clunking sounds in the Trudeau electoral juggernaut even before the prime minister lauded one of the world’s great dictators and found himself being booed at Sunday’s Grey Cup.

“They are breaking their own code of ethics and are close to breaking the law,” said Candice Bergen, again on Question Period.

Bergen had it half right. Five-hundred-dollar-a-ticket fundraisers in private homes, such as the one attended by finance minister Bill Morneau and the chief executives of companies that lobby Finance Canada, clearly breaches the Liberals’ open and accountable government guideline on preferential access for donors.

Fred Chartrand / The Canadian PressEthics Commissioner Mary Dawson prepares to appear at Commons committee, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday June 10, 2014.

But the fundraisers go beyond that. There is a strong case to make that they violate the federal Conflict of Interest Act.

The problem here is not lack of legislation — it’s want of enforcement.

Section 7 of the federal act says: “No public office holder shall, in the exercise of an official power, duty or function, give preferential treatment based on the identity of the person or organization that represents the first mentioned person or organization.”

It’s clumsily worded but it effectively says the same thing as Trudeau’s “preferential treatment” guideline.

The Liberals might argue that no preferential treatment has been proffered, even if it was the expectation of being treated preferentially that motivated most donors.

But if section 7 is deemed not to have been contravened, other portions of the Act are clearly being violated — such as section 16, which says, “No public office holder shall personally solicit funds from any persons or organizations if it would place the public office holder in a conflict of interest.”

Is this rule null and void just because it is party bagmen who are passing the hat at private gatherings, not the minister?

Canada has a conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, though you may not have heard of her, since her modus operandi is to create as few waves as possible.

Mary Dawson has released only 34 public reports on the 219 cases she has investigated since 2007, finding just 10 people guilty in all that time.

Dawson’s term is up in January but she won’t say whether she hopes to be reappointed and she didn’t return calls for comment for this article.

The ethics commissioner has called the pay to play fundraising activities of the Liberals “unsavoury” but has said she cannot pass judgment on whether they breach Trudeau’s own rules because the prime minister gave that mandate to the Privy Council Office.

Yet it is not Trudeau’s guidelines she should be enforcing, it’s the Conflict of Interest Act — her raison d’etre, a function so central to her office it makes up part of its name.

She might argue that Morneau and the others were not exercising “official power, duty or function” at the fundraisers.

But ministers did not attend these events as private individuals — they were there in their official capacity and in Morneau’s case, it was said to be part of his budget consultation outreach.

In fact, Dawson hasn’t said much, beyond pointing out that political activity is beyond her remit. But rich donors are not shelling out $1500 as a show of democratic philanthropy — the expectation is that they will enjoy future favours. As such, the suspicion must be that political activity is indivisible from public policy.

As far as we know, Dawson hasn’t even investigated to see whether preferential treatment was extended to top-level Liberal Party donors precisely because they were donors

As far as we know, Dawson hasn’t even investigated to see whether preferential treatment was extended to top-level Liberal Party donors precisely because they were donors.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said there are plenty of reasons found in the Conflict of Interest Act for Dawson to say to ministers that they are in violation. “If she was actually a watchdog who was fulfilling the main purpose of the Conflict of Interest Act, she would rule that ministers can’t participate in these events,” he said.

It constitutes rank hypocrisy by the Liberals. They came in claiming to wash whiter than other brands. Now their defence is built on the fact that the other guys did it too.

I have chatted over cocktails with a number of members of this government. They are, for the most part, witty and interesting people.

But it’s not as if it’s an evening with Louis C.K. — and you can get decent seats to see him at Madison Square Garden next month for a hundred bucks.

People seeking favours from Liberal ministers will continue to pay for access until we have a government that appoints a watchdog that barks. My advice — don’t hold your breath.

The source:http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-ivison-liberal-cash-for-access-events-arent-just-ugly-they-may-be-illegal

Comment:

"The End of Members of Parliament being Paid to Play

Back in the early 1990’s the Speaker of the House of Commons made a terrible mistake by allowing Members of Parliament to take money to cover the cost of their offices processing constituent’s immigration paperwork. This decision opened the door for exploitation by unscrupulous MP’s and their staffs.

Since the 1990’s, consultants with Asian clientele have paid to ensure that paid for Members of Parliament lobby for Canadian immigration quotas being dominated by Asians. Immigration statistics confirm that the consultants get value for their money.

Thankfully, after 20 years of Parliamentary corruption, Canadians are now showing concern that our legislators are being paid for access.    

Canadians want to believe in diversity and fair play, not special status purchased through selective, orchestrated, expensive, very successful, and probably illegal political lobbying. “Paying to play” no longer passes the smell test.

Many Canadians feel that the immigration system is rigged against families and businesses from the large European community. They feel that Italians, Portuguese, Poles etc. become undocumented while the documents go to Asians who systemically finance a political lobbying system. The data backs up these concerns.

Many in our Italian, Portuguese, Polish and other communities feel frustrated with both the perception and reality of a double standard. Our Federal representative’s find  time and money to lobby Minister McCallum to visit the Golden Temple in the Punjab. Our representatives find time and money to lobby Minister McCallum to go to the Chandigarh visa office . There, our Minister  enquires about overseas parents, grandparents and university educated immigration applicants from the Punjab. These are applicants who have not yet proven their commitment to Canada. (The fact is that Canada has a dismal retention rate with Asian immigrants).The data backs up these concerns.

It is difficult for many Canadians to accept that our representatives can send Minister McCullum to commit visas to strangers in India but not to neighbors in Ontario.

Meanwhile, John McCallum wants to deport the tens of thousands of committed, non-Indian residents who are building the homes for the new strangers. Overseas consultants and their MP clients succeed where Canadian employers and families fail.

  

When considering quotas and diversity, we ask that our elected representatives consider the entire community, not justice based on paid access.     

Ignoring these concerns, as with Brexit and Trump, could prove economically, politically and socially problematic. "

Richard Boraks, November 29 2016

Nationalist movements could smother 

Justin Trudeau: Paul Wells

The Trudeau government is built entirely on the driving assumptions 

of the era. And yet the Trudeau government finds itself operating in a 

world that’s sprinting away from these assumptions.

Justin Trudeau, with Argentine President Mauricio Macri and his wife Juliana Awada in Buenos Aires, now leads a government in crisis.It’s not a crisis Trudeau made, but he’s stuck with it — the crisis of globalization, writes Paul Wells.  (SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS)  

By PAUL WELLSNational Affairs

Fri., Nov. 25, 2016

It’s way too early to guess how this will turn out, but it’s becoming clear that Justin Trudeau now leads a government in crisis.

It’s not a crisis Trudeau made, but he’s stuck with it. How he responds will go far toward making or breaking his career as prime minister.

I’m talking about the crisis of globalization: the broad challenge to the gospel of open borders, free trade and elite accommodation that was viewed, by many Western leaders, as synonymous with progress from at least the late 1980s until the financial crisis of 2008.

In Europe, this strong consensus around a few simple ideas led to the rapid expansion of the European Union into the continent’s post-Communist east, the unification of Germany and the creation of the common euro currency. In the United States, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton brought in NAFTA.

Later, in Britain, it was the era of Tony Blair. In Germany, it was Angela Merkel.

The Trudeau government is built entirely on the driving assumptions of the era. That’s why a former foreign correspondent and CNN talking head like Chrystia Freeland is the trade minister, why the former bank economist John McCallum is in charge of accelerating immigration, and why if you’re wondering where the prime minister is on any given day, you’d do well to seek out the nearest gathering of foreign CEOs and pension fund managers.

And yet the Trudeau government finds itself operating in a world that’s sprinting away from these assumptions. The biggest warning shots were the U.K.’s vote in June for Brexit, and Donald Trump’s election this month to the U.S. presidency. Smaller signs abound, from the nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland to the near-certainty that Marine Le Pen of the anti-immigrant Front National will make it to the second round of next spring’s presidential election in France.

The nationalist counter-revolutions don’t want open borders. They view outsiders as trouble. They see free trade as a scheme for shipping good jobs out. And they’ve grown to despise the eggheads and the swells who’ve spent the last 30 years coming up with these schemes.

Not all the new nationalists are on the political right. Tom Mulcair spent the last two weeks of the 2015 election campaign running full-time against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the same trade deal Donald Trump says he’ll kill on his first day as president. Opposition to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), in Canada and in Europe, comes mostly from the labour left.

For decades pro-globalization elite leaders commanded substantial benefit of the doubt from voters. But a lot of voters aren’t sure the doubt has been repaid in better lives. That doubt is leading to one electoral upset after another.

So this is the burden Trudeau carries. What’s remarkable is that he kind of predicted this crisis. “The growth we have seen over the past three decades has been the product of a broadly supported agenda,” he told a Liberal convention in Montreal in 2014. “Investments in education, fiscal discipline, openness to trade. All of which the middle class voted for, repeatedly.”

But “the original promise of that agenda was that everyone would share in the prosperity that it creates. That hasn’t happened,” he added. “If we don’t fix it, the middle class will stop supporting a growth agenda.”

That’s pretty close to what’s happening now in a lot of countries. Which is why Trudeau’s peculiar relationship with money matters. The Conservatives have already developed a shorthand critique of his governing manner. The PM, Rona Ambrose says, “likes hanging out with billionaires.”

A lot of what Trudeau’s government does is designed to ensure that the middle class keeps supporting his agenda. It’s why the biggest spending item in his first year was on an enhanced tax benefit for parents. It’s why his election platform and his finance minister’s first budget carried titles that referred to the middle class.

But when Trudeau comforts the caricature of an out-of-touch elite governing for its own ends, not the public’s — when he meets Chinese billionaires at a stately private home in Toronto, when his time seems dedicated to advancing their interests, or his party’s — he plays into the very narrative that has shaken the European Union and his Democratic allies in the U.S. this year. Given the stakes, that’s a problem Trudeau should take very seriously indeed.

Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

The Source:https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/11/25/nationalist-movements-could-smother-justin-trudeau-paul-wells.html

Comment:

Trudeau in trouble

Is it “immigration “or “corruption”?

When the Toronto Star says that Trudeau is in trouble, then Trudeau is in trouble.

The Star takes the predictable line that his defence of economic globalization and immigration is Trudeau’s Achilles heel. They point to Brexit and Trump.

The Star, like Hillary and David Cameron, is dead wrong.

The problem is not public revolt over fair immigration. The problem is that voters are tired of the extreme corruption which has destroyed fairness in the immigration system. Trudeau, Hillary and David Cameron call it “business as usual”. Trump calls it “paying to play”. Trump won. Brexit won.

On immigration, Trudeau has a choice. He can either allow CBSA to clean up the most blatant systemic corruption or else he can join Hillary and David and return to his Foundation.

Few Canadians are opposed to diversity and visa fair play. Our families and businesses are so inter related that few can afford to be bigots.  We don’t need  lectures from Trudeau on the subject.   

Trudeau’s problem is that Canadians, like Brits and Americans, are no longer prepared to accept politicians either running or protecting the lucrative visa scams that will:

• Bankrupt this country
• Turn neighbor against neighbor
• Destroy diversity by effectively banning most Europeans into Canada

If he wants to stick around, Trudeau can start by simply allowing CBSA to do its job and deal with the massive visa corruption in:

• The Ontario construction industry’s foreign worker mess and

• The World Sikh Organization’s pollution of the Punjabi/Ottawa  immigration process  

Richard Boraks, November 26 2016

CBC INVESTIGATES

Clients of convicted immigration consultant facing deportation for lying

500 more people under investigation for falsely obtaining permanent residency and Canadian citizenship

By Eric Rankin, CBC News Posted: Nov 25, 2016 9:10 PM ET Last Updated: Nov 25, 2016 9:39 PM ET

Pei Jia Li peeks through the doors after his hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board this week in Vancouver. He was ruled 'inadmissible to Canada' for having fraudulent entry and exit stamps in his passport. (Harold Dupuis/CBC )

One by one, many of the 1,200 former clients of an unlicensed Richmond, B.C., immigration consultant are getting the bad news — they're no longer welcome in Canada because they lied.

CBC News has learned 320 immigrants, who each paid thousands of dollars to New Can Consulting and owner Xun (Sunny) Wang, are now facing deportation to China.

One year ago, Wang, 47, was convicted of one of the biggest immigration scams in Canadian history — making $10 million by filing fraudulent immigration applications for his clients.

In one of his ploys, Wang falsely used his own home in Richmond as an address for 114 of his clients who didn't live in Canada. 

Convicted immigration fraudster Xun (Sunny) Wang used his own home in Richmond as a fake address for at least 114 of his clients. (Mike Zimmer/CBC )

His appeal of his seven-year prison term and $900,000 fine was rejected last month.

Three of his former employees will be sentenced in January and three more are awaiting trial. At least three others have warrants out for their arrest.

Now the Canada Border Services Agency says of Wang's 320 ex-clients facing review of their immigration status, approximately 200 could be stripped of their citizenship and 120 could lose their permanent residency status.

Hundreds of other former New Can clients could also be in trouble.

500 more cases being investigated

In an email to CBC News, the border agency said it is continuing efforts to "uncover fraud on approximately 500 cases remaining to be investigated".

That means out of the 1,200 clients of New Can, over 800 could ultimately be sent back to China.

Guo Liang Lin is one of them.

At his recent hearing before the Immigration Refugee Board (IRB), the clean-cut man in his late 40s was ruled "inadmissible to Canada due to misrepresentation."

Immigration consultant Eric Leung, left, and client Guo Liang Lin. Lin admits he signed documents that said he lived in Canada three times longer than he actually had to obtain permanent residency. Lin was working with a different immigration company at the time, which he blames for falsifying records. (Manjula Dufresne/CBC )

Lin was issued an exclusion order, banning him from re-entry into Canada for five years unless he gets permission from immigration officials to come back sooner — something an immigration and refugee spokesperson says rarely happens.

Lin immediately launched an appeal on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, a move that will allow him to remain in Canada for nine to 12 months until his case is reviewed by the Immigration Appeal Division.

Passport 'falsified'

To obtain details of Lin's case, CBC News attended his IRB hearing on Nov. 23.

The board adjudicator heard that Lin, who received permanent resident status in 2010, had spent just seven months in Canada over five years — not the minimum two years required by law.

This allowed him to live and work in China, while keeping his wife, son and daughter in B.C.

But his passport was altered by New Can Consulting, his IRB hearing heard, with entry and exit stamps falsified to make it appear Lin had spent 980 days, or just over 2½ years, in Canada.

Permanent residents are entitled to most social benefits in Canada, including health care.

A page of a passport showing entry and exit stamps that were falsified to meet residency requirements to maintain permanent residence in Canada. (CBSA)

Despite his prolonged absences in the past, Lin says being forced to return to China will unfairly separate him from his wife and children.

"[My] family members are all in Canada," he told CBC News outside his hearing, "So me alone in China, this is a hardship".

Seized passports and stamps used in the immigration scam by New Can Consulting are displayed by the Canada Border Services Agency. (CBSA)

Lin's new immigration consultant, Eric Leung, who is helping Lin with his IRB case, blames the deceptive practices of New Can consulting, saying Lin was an innocent victim who signed documents that were in English, not his native Mandarin.

"My client did not understand English, so they trusted the agent. The agent asked [him] to sign, and [he] signed."

$7-million home

CBC News attended an IRB hearing for another former client of New Can Consulting, Pei Jia Li.

Li, 51, lives in a $7-million Kerrisdale home and drives a luxury SUV.

A permanent resident, he also had fraudulent entry and exit stamps in his passport, his IRB hearing heard — and he, too, was quickly ruled inadmissible to Canada on grounds of misrepresentation.

Pei Jia Li, a permanent resident who has fraudulent entry and exit stamps in his passport, lives in this $7-million home in Kerrisdale, an affluent neighbourhood in Vancouver. (Harold Dupuis/CBC )

Like Lin, Li has filed an appeal.

Li pulled a hoodie over his head and later roared off in his SUV when approached by CBC News.

But his lawyer, Andrew Wlodyka, also blames New Can Consulting for the possible deportation orders now facing 800 of the company's former clients.

"The consultants were absolutely dealing with people who are totally ignorant. They didn't even realize that the consultant was not even licensed," says Wlodyka.

Lawyer Andrew Wlodyka, who represented Pei Jia Li at his admissibility hearing, says the clients of the convicted consultant are victims and should be allowed to stay in Canada. (Harold Dupuis/CBC)

"A lot of these people have actually made a significant contribution to Canadian society. They laid roots here, they've bought property, they've established businesses. So it's a really tragic situation."

"All of the circumstances have to be looked at to determine whether booting them out of Canada is the right thing."

Both Li and Lin have indicated they will argue they weren't responsible for the fraudulent tactics of New Can Consulting. But they could face an uphill battle.

The federal court has ruled that misrepresentation in immigration cases can be direct or indirect. If a consultant misrepresents a client, the client is ultimately responsible for that misrepresentation, since the immigrant has a duty to ensure their information is complete and accurate.

More needed to stop 'ghost consultants'

Still, Lin's immigration consultant Eric Leung maintains his client isn't at fault.

He says the Canadian government hasn't been keeping other immigration consultants honest.

"The problem is there must be somebody doing something to manage those we call ghost consultants or those licensed consultants doing something not right," he says.

Leung believes that while New Can has been shut down and owner (Sunny) Wang thrown in prison, other dishonest consultants are still busy filing fraudulent claims on behalf of clients.

"We should not stop the investigation. We have to find all of them. I personally do think there are always non-stop cheating issues around our country, around B.C. province. Definitely."

If Leung's suspicion is followed up by Canadian immigration officials, it could mean many more permanent residents and Canadian citizens who obtained their status through dubious consultants could be looking over their shoulders in the months to come.

With files from Manjula Dufresne

The Source:http://www.cbc.ca/news/investigates/clients-of-convicted-immigration-consultant-facing-deportation-for-lying-1.3868330

Comment:

The Integrity of the Immigration system

Too little … too late

I’m glad to see that Ottawa is finally cracking down on past “pay to play” visa scams run by Chinese con artists.

It took 25 years for the politicians to allow CBSA to do what had to be done with the Chinese.

CBSA will make a belated show of taking away a few hundred visas and passports. Meanwhile, political complicity has assured over a million non-resident Canadians in Asia. They all got in by lying to a government that wanted to be lied to.     

Will it take another 25 years of political complicity before CBSA is allowed to turn the flashlight on a couple of other even more massive criminal immigration operations?

• Ontario’s multi-billion dollar construction foreign worker scam
• The corrosive Punjabi-World Sikh Organization visa scam

Maybe Europeans (including Italian and Portuguese workers) should ask CBSA Minister Ralph Goodale for advice as to which foundations or politicians are in the rigged “pay to play” visa game? After all, we don’t want to make the same mistake as the Chinese and miss someone.    

Richard Boraks, November 26 2016