The head of the company suing the province over a controversial immigration program says Nova Scotia's new immigration minister is either misinformed or playing the blame game.

In an e-mail to CBC News, Cornwallis Financial Corp. president Stephen Lockyer suggests Len Goucher is trying to protect the Office of Immigration.

"Either the minister is misinformed or this is part of a deliberate, ongoing attempt by the province to deflect attention away from the Office of Immigration's mismanagement of the [program] by erroneously blaming Cornwallis for its own failings," Lockyer wrote.

The province took over control of the business mentorship program from Cornwallis in June 2006, prompting the company to file a lawsuit.

Immigration Minister Len Goucher has refused to release financial statements related to Cornwallis's work, saying he doesn't have the company's permission to make the statements public.

But Lockyer said it's "ridiculous" to suggest the company's permission was required, and he included the audited statements from 2002 to 2005 in his e-mail.

The documents show Cornwallis collected $1.7 million in fees the first year it ran the program, in which immigrants paid $130,000 for a six-month internship in Nova Scotia and a fast-track ticket to Canada.

That number ballooned to $35.5 million in 2005, the last full year the company ran the program.

Lockyer said the company has never resisted releasing the audited financial statements.

"Cornwallis has been keenly interested in having that information before the public, because it discloses that the government's statements about Cornwallis's management of the [program] are misleading," he wrote.

Lockyer has refused interviews with CBC News, saying he cannot talk while a lawsuit is pending.

Cornwallis is suing the province over $1.4 million in interest that had accumulated in the program's bank account by the summer of 2006.

This fall, provincial officials quietly offered a $100,000 refund to up to 600 people who were accepted into the program but never matched with a company. Another 200 graduates of the program are ineligible, though many have said they never got their money's worth.

Nova Scotia's auditor general agreed to look into the program after opposition critics demanded answers about why the government was phasing it out and offering refunds.