The Montreal School Services Center (CSSDM) has paid more than $6 million to private partners over the last five years so that they can recruit students abroad and in Quebec for its professional training programs.
In total, 13,749 students (out of 111,000 in the entire CSS) were thus recruited for programs intended to train workers in sectors affected by labor shortages. For each of these registrations, private companies received a commission equivalent to 15% of the training costs.
The duty obtained the amounts paid to recruitment partners through a freedom of information request. In this, the CSSDM separates the contracts into two calls for tenders and links each of the sums to “contract numbers”, which are alphanumeric codes. The CSSDM did not want to provide its list of its recruiting partners.
The duty therefore relied on a source, tender documents and minutes of meetings of the executive council and general management of the CSSDM to find out which companies receive commissions, and why.
Over the last five years, the CSSDM has paid 6.2 million to its partners. The CSS ensures that the use of these companies is at “zero cost”. “The objective of using these organizations is to have enough students to launch training programs aimed at meeting labor needs in Quebec. These organizations aim to reach customers who are difficult to reach for us,” wrote its media relations department to Duty.
The press relations manager, Alain Perron, affirms that the CSSDM is re-evaluating this practice. “As currently 73% of our international students have registered with the CSSDM without going through recruiting partners, a reflection is underway on this subject. This situation is explained by the significant resumption of immigration and the efforts made in Quebec to alleviate the labor shortage,” he underlines.
A referral for a commission
For the most part, the dozens of CSSDM recruiting partners are small private colleges, language schools or immigration consultants.
Maikel Pavel Rodriguez Sanchez, who teaches part-time at CSS de la Pointe-de-l’Île, is one of them. He is also the owner of Collège ELC, a company that recruits for the CSSDM. “For professional training, the only thing [qu’on fait], is that we refer the person. If anyone is interested in the programs [du CSSDM], we refer it. That’s all,” he summed up Duty. For this, Mr. Sanchez receives a sum equivalent to approximately 15% of the cost of training, provided that the students are sent to one of the programs targeted by the CSSDM.
Azria Alon, associate director of the company New Life International, does business with the CSSDM, but also with the CSS de la Pointe-de-l’Île and Marguerite-Bourgeoys, in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent . He explained to Duty that he recruited students in the “French-speaking market”: in France, Morocco, Ivory Coast or Cameroon, in particular. The idea is to direct students towards professional training leading to “jobs in shortage”, he stressed.
His company supports students throughout their training. She receives from the CSSDM the equivalent of 15% of the cost of the training in various payments, “as and when” the students progress in their studies. “The French do not pay tuition fees” in Quebec, recalled Mr. Alon. The commission is therefore calculated on the basis of the fees charged to international students who are not French, he clarified. These fees vary from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of dollars. “If a student stops training, we no longer receive anything. So, our interest is for the student to complete it,” said Mr. Alon.
Training that is not virtual is more popular, according to his observations, because foreign students find there “a pathway to immigration” through post-graduation work permits.