More than 500 students from India, who have paid up to $15,000 to study in Quebec, claim to have been cheated because of the “negligence” of the governments of Quebec and Canada. Having exhausted their legal and political remedies, their lawyers are now trying to alert public opinion to this situation which they consider revolting.
These 502 young Indians bitterly regret having trusted advertisements describing Canada as a paradise for foreign students. They paid in advance for their first year of schooling in Quebec, as required by Ottawa — even though this contravenes the Quebec law on private education — but the federal government refused to grant them a study permit. .
To add insult to injury, it is impossible for them to obtain reimbursement: three private colleges where they had registered no longer have any liquidity and have placed themselves under the protection of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.
“Immigration Canada destroyed my future. I wonder why I chose Canada to study,” said Nisha Jindal, a 28-year-old student who enrolled in early childhood education at Collège M, with a storefront in Montreal.
She gave an interview to To have to from the town of Badhni Kalan, Punjab, northern India. This dynamic young woman says her dream of studying and settling in Quebec has turned into a nightmare under obscure circumstances.
In November 2020, Nisha Jindal began her studies online after prepaying the sum of $14,852. This is a considerable bill for an Indian family: her brother remortgaged the family apartment to allow the young woman to come and study in Montreal.
Ten months later, in August 2021, a big cloud clouded the future of Mme Jindal: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada refused to grant her the visa that was supposed to allow her to come and do her internship as an early childhood educator in Montreal.
Reason given: his school career in India would not allow him to pursue college studies in Quebec. Under a system put in place by Canada because of the pandemic, the young woman had nevertheless been authorized to begin her studies remotely – which she did diligently, every day from 3 p.m. 2 hours, because of the time difference between India and Montreal. She had also obtained her certificate of acceptance from Quebec.
“I agreed to pay my tuition in advance because I trusted the governments of Quebec and Canada. I regret it so much! Everyone has abandoned us, ”drops Nisha Jindal. She criticizes Quebec for having put her in touch with an establishment that did not deliver the services for which she had paid.
She and 501 other students can neither complete their studies nor recover the thousands of dollars paid in advance. Rising Phoenix International, which owns College M, College de l’Estrie and the College of Accounting and Secretarial Services of Quebec, in Longueuil and Sherbrooke, has placed itself under the protection of the Act respecting arrangements with company creditors.
Rising Phoenix executives face charges of fraud and breach of trust in connection with recruiting foreign students.
A Toronto company, Cestar, offered to buy Rising Phoenix Colleges, not without controversy. According to our sources, a decision from the Quebec Ministry of Higher Education is expected by the end of June.
Alain N. Tardif, a lawyer at McCarthy Tétrault, believes that this story tarnishes Canada’s reputation in the world. “The government forces foreign students to pay for a year’s tuition in advance, and when everything falls apart, they don’t respond,” he says.
The law firm was mandated to represent Indian students affected by the restructuring of Rising Phoenix International under the Creditors Arrangement Act. Lawyers tried unsuccessfully to force Ottawa and Quebec to extend visas or certificates of acceptance for hundreds of Indian students enrolled in colleges in Rising Phoenix. The Superior Court of Quebec refused this request.
Failing to grant or extend study permits, governments should reimburse Indian students for courses they did not obtain, argues Alain N. Tardif. “For Indian students and their families, it is a tragedy to lose $15,000. They are in a lot of distress,” he says.
The total bill claimed by the 502 students is $7.5 million. A considerable sum for students in India – where the average annual salary is estimated at $2,434 – but rather anecdotal for the government of a rich country like Canada, argues the lawyer.
No more post-graduation work permits
Asked about the fate of these 500 students left to their own devices, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not respond to questions from the To have to. Without commenting on the granting of study permits, which is a federal responsibility, the Minister of Immigration, Jean Boulet, however gave more details on a new measure negotiated with his federal counterpart, Sean Fraser, which will cut the grass under the feet of the 49 non-subsidized private colleges in Quebec.
As of 1er September 2023, the post-graduation work permit will now only be granted to students from subsidized colleges. Until now, students from non-subsidized private colleges were entitled to this work permit after completing very short training courses of approximately 900 hours, such as attestations of college studies (AEC) or diplomas of professional studies (DEP ), which can cost up to $25,000.
media, including The dutyhad also revealed the many problems related to the poor quality of training in these colleges as well as their dubious strategies concerning recruitment, which had been confirmed by the Ministry of Higher Education at the end of an investigation which had put ten colleges, mostly English-speaking.
In an interview, Minister Boulet did not deny the impact of his decision on these colleges. But he believes that “it was necessary”. “We could not tolerate this type of scheme allowing a person to arrive in Quebec and, after a short training period, to have automatic access to a work permit,” argued the Minister, emphasizing that good many of these students were going to Ontario or elsewhere in Canada. According to him, it is not a question of punishing English-speaking colleges. “It is the stratagem that is targeted. He also recalled that Quebec is the only Canadian province that allows access to a post-graduation work permit at the end of an unsubsidized program.