Harvey Speaks Out on CBC’s QIIP Investigation: “It Helped Our Business, Believe it or Not”

Speaking to Investment Migration Insider during the Investment Immigration Summit in Hong Kong last week, Jean Francois Harvey, head of the law firm that bears his name, spoke about the practical consequences of his employees appearing on hidden camera in an investigative report by Canada’s CBC last month.

Questioned as to what was the fallout of the investigation, Harvey indicated the negative consequences had been minimal.

“Of course, it was not a pleasant thing to go through and I think the best is to face it honestly and openly with the media and with journalists […] but in practical terms there was not much fallout. As you know we are out of the QIIP, we don’t advertise it, it represents less than one percent of our business but, funnily enough, we did get a lot of requests from clients to take over their QIIP [applications] because of that,” says Harvey cheerfully, pointing out that this may be a case of “no such thing as bad publicity”.

Read also: IMC’s L’ecuyer Urges Adherence to Ethical Code Following QIIP-Investigation

But internally in the organization, Harvey concedes, was where the real fallout came.

“We’ve had to review our training practices. Sue, the one who was caught on hidden camera, is a great person and she was doing a fine job but, definitely when it came to QIIP there was a lack of training, and that I have to take responsibility for,” said Harvey.

Asked whether the woman in question was still with the company, Harvey noted that “sadly we had to ask her to go.”