Machiavellianism: Deceit in the Regulation of Immigration Consultants

Machiavellian is defined as "cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous especially in politics or in advancing one's career." Machiavelli justifies the manipulation and deceit of people for the purposes of exercising and consolidating political power.  

How does Minister Kenney exercise power over immigration consultants?  By labeling them all "Crooked consultants", indicating immigrants should distrust immigration consultants regardless of whether they are a ghost consultant, or a regulated professional immigration consultant.  Minister Kenney essentially leads immigrants to believe they should not trust an immigration consultants, and if something goes wrong in the immigration process the immigrant should blame the "crooked consultant", not his department, Citizenship & Immigration Canada (CIC) or the immigrant themselves for the problems that arise.  The Minister thus appears, in his own narrative, to be free from blameworthiness for any problemd encountered in the immigration system.

Turning to another example of Machiavellianism in regulating immigration consultants, Phil Mooney is President/CEO of the proposed new regulator of immigration consultants.  He has exercised his machiavellian power by blaming CSIC and John Ryan for every problem associated with regulating immigration consultants, to divert attention from the role CAPIC, the immigration consultant advocacy group that has consistently hindered any attempts to regulate their conduct in the public interest.  

For example, as CAPIC President he continuously attacked CSIC rather than promoting the improvement of the immigration consulting profession.  He questioned high membership fees, using misrepresented numbers that failed to distinguish between fees, insurance, and payment for continuing professional development (CPD) programs.  The "high" fees of $5,000+ thus were in fact the combination of fees, insurance and CPD programs.  The ICCRC's proposed "lower fees" exclude insurance or costs for CPD, thus the lower fees of $1500 are a misrepresentation; the illusion will be further challenged when ICCRC realizes the fees are not sufficient to fund a fully functioning regulatory body.  ICCRC is not a functioning regulatory body, and hence can offer lower costs to those of a robust, fully-operational regulatory body.

Both Minister Kenney and Phil Mooney suggest that CSIC has failed to effectively regulate it's members.  Yet there are 21 ongoing disciplinary hearings, publicized on CSIC's website, all of which will be shut down as a result of the proposal to replace CSIC with ICCRC.  Hence, who can be properly identified as failing to effectively regulate immigration consultants?  Under the circumstances, we can conclude that Kenney and Mooney are failing to effectively regulate immigration consultants.  Interestingly, Mooney's ICCRC has publicly advised that they intend to go after ghost consultants rather than their members.  Since ghost consultants are outside of the jurisdiction of the regulator, there will be no disciplinary hearings by ICCRC whose resources will be used to chase ghosts rather than their own members.

Deceit and duplicity for the purpose of consolidating power; Machiavelli's Prince lives on in the regulation of immigration consultants through Minister Jason Kenney and Phil Mooney.