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Immigration and Career Training Minister Jeremy Harrison confirmed in Tuesday’s question period the change will affect the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program (SINP) that has made it easier for some selected immigrants to gain permanent residency — a change Harrison said had to be made because the GTEC wasn’t “setting up newcomers in this business model for success in the way that we could have been in another sort of scenario.”

Credit Harrison and the government for at least that much, although that more than half of the 120 units at the GTEC remain empty suggests he might have come to his blinding conclusion sooner. And given the role Harrison, his predecessor Bill Boyd et al. played, one wonders if there has been a political willfulness to promote this development as a way to obscure other messes.

The Brightenview ribbon-cutting in 2017 was rolled out when the Sask. Party government and Harrison were claiming there was “no wrongdoing” in the GTH land flipsthat saw businessmen with ties to the Sask. Party (one with close business ties to Boyd himself) make $6 million and $5 million respectively. As such, the GTEC was, as the NDP once called it, a fig leaf to cover the much bigger GTH problem.

On Tuesday, Harrison wouldn’t talk about allegations that prospective immigrants were misled or defrauded because “there probably is going to be litigation from tenants that would be coming out of that towards companies.”

Harrison should be worried about the courts, given that it’s this government that encouraged investors to sign up, and it’s this government that’s now shutting down this aspect of the SINP program.

Hmmm? Settled in the courts. Sound familiar? Anyone want fries with that?

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post.