Province facing lawsuit over immigrant nominee program
Posted Dec 17, 2009 05:58:08 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A businessman from Great Britain has launched a class action lawsuit against the province over its failed immigration nominee program.
Peter King moved to Halifax from England in 2006 after paying $130,500 to participate in the program that was supposed to provide immigrants with on the job training.
One-hundred thousand dollars went to the provincial government in trust – but King never got a job, forcing him to accept a position in B.C.
Now he wants his money back.
The province has refunded other immigrants involved in the failed program but its refund doesn’t apply to King because he moved away.
His lawyer, Peter Driscoll, says that’s not right.
“In order to get the $100,000 back, the province had the residency refund program that said, ‘Okay, if you stay for 12 months, you get the $100,000 back,'” he said. “That’s unfair in that it expects an individual who may not have any income to stay in the province without employment to get their own $100,000 back.”
Driscoll says there could be as many as 200 others eligible under the class action suit.
Immigration minister Ramona Jennex says the NDP government does not plan to revisit the refund program’s eligibility.
In 2008 the province’s auditor general reported a number of problems with the immigration program, including examples of what he described as inappropriate payments and that a lawyer took fees without providing a service.
