Particulars of Notice of Contravention and review decision

S. 49 (1) Ontario Career Colleges Act, 2005 (the “Act”)

May 2, 2025

These particulars are published following the issuance of an administrative penalty for which a review was requested. Under Section 39 (6) of the Act, a person may require the Minister to review the notice by applying to the Minister within 15 days of the issuance of the notice. The review decision is made considering not only the information available at the time the Notice of Contravention was issued but also any newly provided evidence relevant to the request. Upon review, the administrative penalty may be upheld, rescinded, or reduced. The review decision is final.

Original service date: September 24, 2024

Arif Mahmood Toor
Toronto Centre of Excellence
Suite 202
40 Old Kingston Road
Ajax ON
L1T 2Z7

Original penalty

Description

s.38 (10) of the Act prohibits any person from hindering, obstructing, or interfering with the Superintendent or designate conducting an inquiry or examination, refusing to answer questions on matters relevant to the inquiry or examination or providing the Superintendent or designate with information on matters relevant to the inquiry or examination that the person knows to be false or misleading.

Original amount

$1,000.00

Review decision

On May 2, 2025, the review requested by Toronto Centre of Excellence Inc. was completed. In rendering their decision, the Reviewer conducted a thorough examination of the materials submitted by both Toronto Centre of Excellence Inc. and the Superintendent of Career Colleges. The findings of this review are detailed below.

The Reviewer upheld the Notice of Contravention issued to Toronto Centre of Excellence Inc. on September 24, 2024, and provided the following rationale for their decision:

The balance of evidence before me indicates that despite the attempts administered by the Office of the Superintendent of Career Colleges, including contact on the Program Approval and Registration Information System (PARIS) to disclose all businesses where you were a director or officer of any other businesses, the designates phone call on January 29, 2024, and in person meeting on March 26, 2024, you:

  1. hindered, obstructed, and interfered with the Superintendent or designate conducting an inquiry or examination, and provided the Superintendent or designate with information on matters relevant to the inquiry or examination that the person knows to be false or misleading, thus contravening s. 38 (10) of the Act.

My decision is based on the evidence provided by the ministry designate and in your request for review, which on balance demonstrates that:

  1. You did not disclose all of the businesses where you were a director or officer. When given a further opportunity to declare your connection to the businesses the ministry had identified through a corporate search, you were not honest about your role or capacity in those businesses, primarily Scholarship Council Canada (SCC).
  2. You attempted to pass SCC off as a philanthropic organization, but this was not consistent with the conversation you had with your colleague [in Nigeria]. In the conversation you had over text, you appointed him as a Marketing and Support Partner with SCC and offered a monetary bonus dependent upon a large number of paid scholarship applications. Facebook messages from prospective applicants appear to contradict the position that SCC was philanthropic, as these messages indicated that applicants who could not afford the application fee were rejected. The explanation provided was that the application fees fund the scholarship budget and continuation of the program.
  3. You misrepresented your role with SCC, which you claimed was limited. In discussions with the designate, you indicated you oversaw the business and reviewed quarterly reports, but could not provide these reports when requested by the designate or anytime afterward to date.
  4. You provided an additional submission for review 29 days after the issuance of the Notice of Contravention, which is 14 days after the prescribed time limit to do so. You did not provide any extenuating circumstances to support consideration of this late review, and therefore, I did not consider the additional submission.

Total penalty following the review

$1,000.00