Juno News - Ontario College Under Police Investigation for OSAP Fraud

00:00:00.040 Released court documents obtained through a freedom of information request by Canadian

00:00:12.400 press journalists have just revealed a staggering fraud scandal taking place in Ontario's education

00:00:20.080 system. This fraud centers around OSAP payments. These are Ontario student aid payments to private

00:00:28.240 career colleges and we're talking to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Now on its face

00:00:35.640 you might say well these students went to school and so they were eligible recipients of OSAP but

00:00:41.800 here's the thing the documents that have now been released to the public reveal that students

00:00:47.180 enrolled at a school called the Academy of Learning for example one of 10 of these private

00:00:53.300 career college is now under police investigation. Students at the Academy of Learning, in some

00:00:58.880 cases, were completing their entire course, exams, quizzes, the whole lot, in 15 minutes.

00:01:07.380 Final exams taking six minutes to complete. Entire courses being done on the same day.

00:01:12.380 One student's login credentials being used to access school material from 211 IP addresses.

00:01:19.220 The Ontario Ministry of Colleges contacting students enrolled at the Academy of Learning

00:01:24.300 and most of these students being unable to name the college they were attending,

00:01:28.600 the program they were enrolled in, and even to communicate in English.

00:01:32.360 Scratch the service was a little bit deeper on this fraud scandal

00:01:34.740 and you will uncover immigration firms being co-located or co-owned

00:01:40.140 by these private career colleges and the owners of these private career colleges

00:01:46.220 living multi-millionaire lavish lifestyles with money that was allegedly obtained by defrauding

00:01:54.340 the Ontario taxpayer. We're going to get into the details of the Academy of Learning,

00:01:58.760 the Opulence Education Group, and the owner of the Opulence Education Group,

00:02:04.460 Gurinder Singh Bhatti, because this alleged fraud is mind-boggling. But first, I want to

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00:02:50.900 to every episode of this show, ratioed, as well as exclusive Juno News reporting that you won't

00:02:55.420 find anywhere else. As always, before we get into it, be sure to like this video, subscribe to the

00:02:59.360 Juno News YouTube channel, and the comment question for the episode is this. Will anyone be held

00:03:04.820 accountable for this OSAP fraud scandal? Let me know your answer in the comments below, and let's

00:03:09.660 get into it. All right, work with me here as we start small and we build up to the bigger picture

00:03:14.880 because you really need to get the entire picture for this story. The Ontario government shut off

00:03:19.800 OSAP payments going to students enrolled at a college called the Academy of Learning, which

00:03:24.940 operated three locations, one in Brampton, one in North York, and one on Bay Street in downtown

00:03:30.600 Toronto. The Academy of Learning enrolled 14,800 students. They saw OSAP applications

00:03:39.320 at the Academy of Learning jump 500 to 600 percent in just two years. The three Academy

00:03:46.840 of Learning locations were three of 10 private career colleges that obtained more OSAP grants

00:03:54.020 than all publicly funded colleges across the province of Ontario.

00:03:58.860 The three Academy of Learning Career Colleges alone,

00:04:03.480 they received more than $219 million in OSAP grants.

00:04:10.180 The distinction is important because an OSAP grant is direct money from the Ontario taxpayer, not alone.

00:04:17.160 To put it into perspective, the amount of money that was received through OSAP grants

00:04:22.340 to students enrolled at publicly funded colleges, real colleges in Ontario, was $385 million.

00:04:29.460 So three private career colleges got $219 million in OSAP grants. This decision by the Ontario

00:04:36.640 government to shut off OSAP payments to these three private career colleges followed an

00:04:42.340 investigation that uncovered the following. One student's account showed all of their quizzes and

00:04:48.360 final exam in their business writing essentials course were completed on the

00:04:51.860 same day with the final exam taking six minutes. Another Brampton student's

00:04:56.340 account shows their final exam for a business course was completed on the

00:04:59.580 first day they accessed the course. Yet another student viewed all of their

00:05:03.400 business writing essentials modules and completed all quizzes on the same day in

00:05:07.560 less than 15 minutes. The credentials of a student at the North York campus were

00:05:11.560 used to log into the school account from 211 IP addresses. At the Bay Street

00:05:16.900 location, 39 out of 42 student files examined by inspectors had IP addresses that were used to

00:05:22.580 access accounts belonging to other students, who were all referred to by the same recruiter.

00:05:27.340 So, this was uncovered through a Freedom of Information request published last week.

00:05:33.040 Just two days ago, the provincial government referred this investigation to police for a

00:05:39.800 criminal investigation into OSAP fraud. Now I want to take a step back and look at the business model

00:05:46.640 that is slowly being revealed here through independent media investigations, like this

00:05:52.140 one completed by Juno News journalist Melanie Bennett. Let me introduce you to Gurinder Singh

00:05:57.420 Bhatti, a multi-millionaire Indian real estate developer, the founder of Opulence Education

00:06:03.240 Group, and the owner of the Academy of Learning. Gurinder Bhatti has an interesting business model

00:06:07.960 here. Besides his real estate ventures in Punjab, he obviously owns 18 colleges, several in Canada

00:06:15.220 and also several in Australia. He also owns a study abroad consultancy in Punjab, India. Bhatti

00:06:21.900 is the director of Express Student Services. And in this interview, which he posted to his

00:06:27.720 Instagram account, he explains that he has been involved in moving 50,000 to 60,000 students out

00:06:33.580 of India into Canada and Australia, and that his entire plan was to sit at both ends of the table

00:06:39.160 to make money off of the immigration side and of owning the colleges on the education side.

00:06:44.280 He doesn't even try to hide it. Look at this.

00:07:14.280 A lot of students' intake started to differ.

00:07:17.160 And they started to increase that gap.

00:07:19.960 I said, now, this is it.

00:07:22.280 We have to sit on both sides of the table.

00:07:24.160 I want to send this to my college.

00:07:27.040 Fortunately, we got the opportunity to acquire one college.

00:07:31.640 Did you have to buy that college?

00:07:33.440 So you took so much money.

00:07:35.600 The kick was to sit on both sides of the table.

00:07:37.600 The journey started.

00:07:38.840 The staff was with us today.

00:07:41.440 From one college to 18 college,

00:07:43.600 I'll have been just 10 years.

00:07:44.880 On Bhatti's Instagram account, you can see him displaying his lavish lifestyle,

00:07:49.440 showing off his luxury watches, his luxury vehicles, and even flying around in private jets.

00:07:56.600 He's even made hype edits of himself on his Instagram account,

00:08:00.460 saying that his goal is to create thousands of jobs. Take a listen to this.

00:08:04.660 This message is for the entrepreneurs. My name is GB. I build businesses.

00:08:10.640 while others are trying to take your job away i want to create thousands of them

00:08:15.980 the opulence education group also owns like i said several other colleges including granville

00:08:22.560 college in vancouver which operates two campuses one in surrey and one in vancouver interestingly

00:08:28.660 if you look at the british columbia student aid website granville college is eligible to receive

00:08:34.640 british columbia student assistance meaning that what has allegedly taken place at the academy of

00:08:40.240 could be happening right now in British Columbia. Now we need to look at the politics behind this

00:08:46.220 because, again, this makes the story look even crazier. At the Academy of Learning Brampton

00:08:52.280 East Campus grand opening, you can see several conservative politicians, including Ontario

00:08:58.840 Transportation Minister Prabhmeet Sarkaria, Progressive Conservative Member of Provincial

00:09:03.640 Parliament, Amarjot Sandhu, as well as Conservative MP, Amarjit Gill, at this ceremony. But there's

00:09:11.380 a couple of things that need to be clarified here. OSAP payments, the Ontario Student Aid

00:09:16.140 Program, is only eligible for Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or people under special

00:09:21.940 designation, like refugees, for example. The original CBC and Canadian Press investigation

00:09:27.700 uncovered that the Academy of Learning was often co-located and co-owned by Immigration

00:09:33.040 service firms. Students could have a one-stop shop, file their permanent residency applications,

00:09:38.380 file for OSAP, and immediately be put into schools which were owned by the immigration firm

00:09:44.980 to provide these students with Canadian qualifications. The students receiving OSAP

00:09:49.660 are permanent residents or refugees. They're not on student visas. But let's just step back once

00:09:54.780 more to realize that Gurinder Bhatti is flaunting his luxury lifestyle in India and Canada.

00:10:04.060 He is the owner of a company that has been credibly accused and is now under investigation

00:10:07.880 for major fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The owner of his school,

00:10:12.600 the operators, the programs, they have deep political connections in Canada with crown

00:10:17.280 ministers showing up and celebrating the opening of these campuses. And who are the real victims

00:10:22.540 here. The real victims are Ontario and Canadian students. Students that were looking to receive

00:10:29.600 financial support to study at real colleges, real programs, who were undercut by a fraud scheme,

00:10:36.260 an alleged fraud scheme, to divert hundreds of millions of dollars to what appears to be a fake

00:10:41.360 school. It's frankly unacceptable. My heart goes out to students who didn't receive OSAP or were

00:10:47.700 unable to receive a higher amount of osap because stuff like this was going on and i for one look

00:10:54.260 forward to seeing what the police can uncover and hopefully we can get some real answers

00:10:58.580 and accountability for once it feels like let's get some accountability all right everyone that's

00:11:03.700 gonna do it for us this week on the show thank you so much for tuning in a reminder that you

00:11:06.500 can use my code junonews.com slash harrison return to get a discount on a juno news subscription a

00:11:12.020 further reminder to answer the comment question of the video will there be any accountability

00:11:16.900 over this scandal let me know your answer in the comments below my name is harrison faulkner

00:11:21.220 and this is ratioed

Juno News - October 09, 2026

Ontario College Under Police Investigation for OSAP Fraud

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