TORONTO

These millionaires were led to believe that money would buy their way into Canada — and now they’re suing Ottawa for millions more for not letting them in.

They are more than 1,460 super wealthy investors, 1,350 from Hong Kong, stuck in immigration limbo after the federal government quietly announced the cancellation of its 25-year-old Immigrant Investor Program — the popular ticket for rich foreigners to buy citizenship and fast track access to our health and education resources as long as they had a net worth of $1.6 million and willing to lend their new province $800,000 interest-free for five years.

The controversial program, with a backlog of more than 19,000 files, was cut during the February budget following criticism that it let foreigners buy their way into Canada without doing much for this country in return.

Now these millionaires had their lawyer in federal court Wednesday asking the judge to force Ottawa to deal with their outstanding files before scrapping the immigrant investor program and wiping out the thousands of applications stuck in the queue when the budget bill is passed later this month.

And to add threat to their pleadings, they are seeking $5 million in compensation for every applicant and their dependents unless the ministry agrees to assess their cases.

“Our rough estimate is that would amount to $16.5 billion for all the litigants that we have right now,” says their lawyer Tim Leahy.

Leahy said these aspiring migrants were initially told it would take 18 to 24 months to process their applications. Instead, some have been waiting since 2009. One woman in China sold her hair salon in anticipation of moving to Canada. “Now she says, ‘I don’t have a visa, I don’t have a hair salon and I don’t have an income.’”

Another applicant in China sent his son to an English school to prepare him for entrance to a Canadian university. All these years later, they are still there and his son doesn’t have the proper credentials to get into a Chinese university.

“They changed their lives in the belief that they were coming to Canada,” says Leahy. “Now the minister says, ‘So long, Charlie?’”

Canada has long been the insurance policy for wealthy Hong Kong residents who wanted a safe place to relocate should life turn sour under Chinese rule. Many have staked a second home here, sent their kids to school here — often leaving them behind in those otherwise empty homes — all in return for an $800,000 loan that is fully paid back, though without interest, after five years.

But the investor plan, created in 1986, has come under increasing fire as a cheap way for rich foreigners to buy citizenship and property in Canada while living and doing their business abroad, rather than investing and paying taxes here.

The government closed the program to new applicants in July 2012 to help clear the growing backlog. But with the budget announcement, the entire scheme is being scrapped and those still waiting are out of luck.

In the court case argued Wednesday, the federal government insisted it is their prerogative to shut down the investor program or as Leahy paraphrased, “You’re a foreigner and you have no right to tell us what to do.”

The lawyer agrees the government can end an immigration scheme they don’t believe is working, but argues that Ottawa should at least deal with all those who have applied and been waiting for years in good faith. “For god’s sake, it’s only 20,000 millionaires. Let them in. Let’s keep our integrity and move on. You could even increase the investment to a million dollars and 90% would say fine. They could process all of them in a year and a half,” Leahy says.

“It’s just so un-Canadian, what they’re doing. They’re destroying our credibility.”

Changing the rules midstream hardly seems fair, that is true. But holding this country’s taxpayers up for ransom and asking that we compensate millionaires, well that’s pretty un-Canadian, as well.