NJN Network

What kind of public sector employer pays extravagant bonuses to employees who are already well paid?

Richard Brown and Robert Ghiz were clearly trying to implicate as many civil servants as possible in their crooked scheme to milk money from the PNP program. Frankly, most people would jump at the chance for luxury travel to foreign countries. You don’t have to pay unless you want their silence, hush money.

Apparently that attracted all the right kinds of employees some of whom charged the immigrants a double interview fee, according to accusations at the Public Accounts Committee hearings.

Well there is no honor among thieves they say.

Theresa Wright keeps coming up with great stories – Stephen Pate

TERESA WRIGHT
The Guardian

Almost $700,000 in immigrant money was paid out in bonuses and for multiple trips to Hong Kong and Dubai for employees of the Crown corporation that administered the Provincial Nominee Program, according to numbers revealed by the department.
These amounts were tabled in the legislature last week at the request of the Opposition.
The employees of Island Investment Development Inc. (IIDI) were paid the bonuses in recompense for overtime they worked while processing 1,877 PNP applications between March and Sept. 2 of this year. The trips were taken to facilitate more interviews with potential PNP immigrants.
But these bonuses and trips have become a hot topic among many Island residents and in the legislature over the last few weeks. That’s why Opposition MLA Mike Currie wanted the exact amounts paid to the IIDI employees and exactly how much was spent on the interview missions overseas.
Currie said he was shocked to see IIDI staff were sent on eight week-long interview trips to China and Dubai between April 26 and July 30. These trips cost almost half a million dollars altogether.
This money came from the $2,500 interview fees charged to each potential PNP immigrant during the overseas interviews. Over $1 million was collected through these interviews.
Innovation Minister Richard Brown says he believes the total $424,684 spent on the interview trips was money well spent because it brought more immigrants to P.E.I.
“If we didn’t go to those areas to interview (the immigrants), we wouldn’t have been able to get the applications through,” Brown told The Guardian.
That’s because the federal government had informed the provinces a few months earlier it was changing the regulations on Sept. 2 for all provincial nominee programs. These changes essentially shut down P.E.I.’s immigrant partner program.
Since the PNP requires a face-to-face interview for nomination, travelling to the countries to interview applicants saved those potential P.E.I. immigrants the time it would take them to apply for a visa to come to the Island for the interview, Brown said.
“It would take months to get their visas and by Sept. 2 we had to have our nomination papers into the embassy, we had to have the interview done, so we went to them.”
But Currie, who was the former minister in charge of the PNP under the Pat Binns Conservative government, said he believes this goes against the whole spirit of why that interview was included as part of the process.
“The visit (to P.E.I.) was important, it was part of the spirit of the agreement with the federal government — it encouraged (potential immigrants) to want to come to P.E.I.,” Currie said. “It appears to me what they have done, they said, ‘Heck, you’re cancelling my agreement, I’m going for the money’.”
But Brown said he had to push as many applications through before the Sept. 2 deadline because the new agreement costs significantly more for immigrants to access the PNP for citizenship.
“If we were forcing them to come to P.E.I. first we would have 1,000 less immigrants. And I need to get our population up,” Brown said.
“I know (Currie) is saying, ‘Maybe he should have went with less.’ But that’s easy for him to say. We’ve got a declining population. I have a great concern about the declining population and the decision was made to go out and nominate as many immigrants as we could.”
The Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) offered Canadian visas to immigrants who invested $200,000 into an Island company. It was established to encourage more immigration directly to the provinces.
The program has become highly controversial over the past few months as questions have been raised about which Island business owners benefited from the funds raised and why so many applications were done in the last six months before the program ended.
The provincial auditor general is currently investigating the program.

By the numbers:

Island Investment Development Corporation paid out $211,000 in bonuses to employees for processing PNP applications.

Here’s how that amount breaks down:

1. — Three directors received $19,000 each;
2. — Ten program officers received $9,500 each;
3. — Three administrative assistants received $9,500 each;
4. — A financial analyst received $9,500;
5. —A program coordinator received $9,500;
6. — A promotion and program officer received $9,500;
7. — One program officer received $2,000, but only received this little because this staff member left in July, prior to when most of the bonuses were paid out.

The money paid out in these bonuses was collected from a $2,500 fee charged to immigrants who had their PNP interviews conducted overseas.