Rerportage original: 20 septembre 2018

Rich foreigners seeking to gain Canadian residency through a controversial Quebec program are being advised to hide questionable assets, lie about their intention to settle in the province and even adopt a new identity, reveals a hidden-camera investigation by Radio-Canada’s investigative program Enquête.

The revelations pose troubling questions for the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program (QIIP), a special immigration track under which foreigners with at least $2 million in assets can get Canadian residency for themselves and their family if they agree to loan $1.2 million to the Quebec government.

Several current and former civil servants in Quebec spoke to Enquête on condition of anonymity, revealing what they see as major flaws in an immigration program that has granted permanent residency to tens of thousands of people since it began in 1986.

Some former officials say they were sometimes pressured into ignoring signs that applicants’ fortunes were founded on corruption or other ill-gotten gains. Many 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.

Producer: Francis Plourde
Reporter: Frédéric Zalac
Editors: Bernard Lapointe, Éric Tremblay
Cameramen: Eric Carbonneau, Eric Careau, Charles Dagenais, Harold Dupuis,
Jean-Pierre Gandin, Alex Lamic, Lynda Paradis, Jean-François Potvin, Muhammad Hud Bin Mahadi, Asiaworks (Singapour)
Sound recorders: Eric Celton, Marc-Antoine Fournier, Louis-Gilles Chartrand
Hong Kong crew: Thinkplus TV (Hong Kong)
Produced by Société Radio-Canada

source