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For years, cash-strapped Quebec school boards have approached international student enrolment as a promising revenue stream.

But it has also been lucrative for one Montrealer who has been paid millions of dollars to recruit students in China for six of the province’s nine public English-language school boards at the same time as they all compete for a piece of the international student jackpot.

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International enrolment in Quebec school board vocational programs has surged since the province launched an accelerated immigration program for international students and specialized foreign workers in 2009. The program allows foreign students who complete a vocational, CEGEP or university course in Quebec to qualify for permanent residency without work experience.

Cui Wen (Cindy) Yao has been paid nearly $6.5 million since 2013 by two of the anglophone boards alone — the English Montreal School Board and the New Frontiers School Board, south of Montreal — to recruit in China for their vocational education programs in Quebec. The boards’ payments are going to Yao’s company, Can-Share Connection Inc., which has a contract with the EMSB and a fee-for-service “arrangement” with New Frontiers.