Full Comment - Face it, some migrants are totally abusing our immigration system

00:00:00.000 A program to offer services for would-be refugees covered 16,000 people back in 2016 and it cost

00:00:09.100 to taxpayers $60 million a year. It now covers more than 600,000 people and costs more than

00:00:15.400 $1 billion annually. It's one of many signs that we can point to of a broken immigration system

00:00:21.680 in Canada. Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. I'm Brian Lilly, your host.

00:00:26.040 The immigration system in Canada is cracking on so many fronts.

00:00:30.160 Permanent residents, foreign students, temporary workers, foreign workers program, and yes, asylum or refugee system as well.

00:00:38.800 A second report this year from the Parliamentary Budget Office shows just how bad things have become.

00:00:44.400 79% of people on this program called the Interim Federal Health Program,

00:00:49.620 Well, they came to Canada on another form of visa, such as student or work visa, and then declared asylum once they were here.

00:00:57.520 74,000 people who are on this program who have been denied their claims and ordered deported,

00:01:02.820 and yet they're still here collecting benefits of a program that, well, gives people on it better health coverage than you would get from your provincial program if you were a Canadian citizen.

00:01:15.700 All of this costs you.

00:01:16.920 All of this undermines faith and support in our system.

00:01:20.260 How did we get it so bad?

00:01:22.840 How did we lose track?

00:01:24.520 And can we fix it?

00:01:25.760 Richard Kerlin joins me now to talk about this.

00:01:27.820 He is a lawyer and policy advocate who works in the immigration field.

00:01:31.960 Richard, great to talk to you again.

00:01:34.200 I'm sure that you went over this PBO report and were just rolling your eyes.

00:01:39.940 Did the number shock you or did you just look and say, yeah, that checks out with what I've been seeing?

00:01:45.280 Well, no shock. It's actually worse. The trend is for more of that. And no surprise, no shock, because I've been watching Ottawa for literally decades. This is the classic mind my own silo. Forget about the big picture deal.

00:02:06.040 What do you mean by that?

00:02:07.060 So if you go pinching pennies, for example, at the Immigration Refugee Board, not resourcing

00:02:17.880 the tribunal to process a lot of cases faster, guess what happens?

00:02:23.420 Giant ballooning inventory.

00:02:25.680 And we went from about seven months, eight months to four years before you see an oral

00:02:35.380 hearing at the refugee board. What did that do? Hello, not rocket science. It attracted more

00:02:42.860 people to come. I would say that there's been a bit of mismanagement on how this program operates

00:02:50.760 and we'll get into the wider immigration system in a moment, but there was a decision made back

00:02:56.960 in 2016 to change the interim federal health program. Now I broke the story in the Toronto

00:03:02.800 Sun, it would have been around 2010, 2011, that saw the Harper government look and say,

00:03:08.980 wait a minute, this program offers better health services than what Canadians get from

00:03:14.340 their provincial programs.

00:03:15.460 And they decided to change the program and say, you know what, it should match provincial

00:03:21.620 programs.

00:03:22.160 It should match what Canadians get from their health services.

00:03:26.300 Instead, I mean, this service now offers you eye care, ophthalmology. 0.82

00:03:31.520 It offers you physiotherapy and it offers you home care visits and things that the rest of us do have to pay out some pocket.

00:03:40.900 Now, the Kearney government is looking to alter this a bit, but that will only slow the growth of the program.

00:03:45.840 So the Harper government changed this.

00:03:48.300 The liberals and doctors activist group said if people only get what Canadians get in their program, then these refugee claimants will die.

00:03:57.100 And they protested it for years.

00:03:58.860 2016 the Trudeau government not only put the program back up to the gold-plated plan

00:04:04.540 but then of course 2017 comes around and Justin Trudeau puts out his infamous tweet

00:04:09.380 we welcome the world and our asylum system went crazy I think those two things have put us on

00:04:16.420 this path combined with bad management have put us on this path where we went from a 60 million

00:04:21.800 dollar program covering 16,000 people to a billion dollar program covering 600,000 and as you say

00:04:28.160 it's now four years to get a hearing and that's that's just the start of the process isn't it the

00:04:34.620 hearing yeah that's it that's day one square one so you're in the country four years and that's

00:04:42.080 the start of it how long does the process last well we're gonna find out and seven years would

00:04:48.340 not be unusual excluding the removal process so a decade or longer makes sense to me but you left

00:04:57.260 one important piece off the puzzle, which is Justin Trudeau's office, the PMO. About four years

00:05:06.160 ago, five years ago, somehow they took a secret decision, which is now public, to increase

00:05:12.520 Canada's population size to 100 million. And they couldn't use the permanent resident system to do

00:05:20.340 it because every year that immigration minister reports to parliament next year's permanent

00:05:26.180 resident numbers. Politically, a non-starter. Instead, they added literally an extra 2 million

00:05:35.660 temporary status people inside of 18, 20 months. Well, guess what? When you add that many people

00:05:43.460 and they don't want to go home, what are they going to start to do? Refugee claims. 1.00

00:05:48.400 You believe that the increase in temporary residency, foreign students, temporary foreign

00:05:55.560 workers etc that that was part of what is widely discussed as the century initiative the idea to

00:06:02.380 move us up to 100 million people well that's how they were going to deliver it so i was getting

00:06:08.000 monthly production numbers out of our visa offices overseas i had no news of this and i'm watching

00:06:14.860 these numbers spike spike spike no corresponding resourcing our visa offices so processing times

00:06:22.000 got a hand there and what the heck is going on and then federal courts started to see a huge intake

00:06:29.060 in cases the entire system was aware but they did the mea culpa after they floated their solution

00:06:37.620 of giving wait for it amnesty to everyone because it would cure the chicken and the python problem

00:06:45.540 they had. At the same time, they pushed forward to their hundred million goal. Well, they've

00:06:51.780 apologized. They said, we made a mistake. They're making decisions now to reduce intake of foreign

00:06:59.620 workers, foreign students, even visitors to bring the levels back to normal. But meanwhile, we're

00:07:06.360 stuck with the bill. For people that don't know, Richard runs a service that tracks an awful lot

00:07:14.280 of government decisions on the immigration file and sends out a monthly summary of it called

00:07:20.160 Lexbase. And a lot of this is found in there. I've used your service for years, Richard.

00:07:25.800 To give folks an example, in the Harper years, it would be common to have a few hundred people

00:07:35.340 from India who would claim asylum on an annual basis. So 2013, 2014, you might see two, 300 people

00:07:44.900 come in, they're on a visa and they declare asylum. In 2024, we had 32,563 Indian nationals

00:07:56.040 declare asylum in Canada. And there's a 44,000 asylum claims backlog for India, or there was

00:08:04.300 at the end of 2025. We were having similar numbers, not quite, I think it's about 24,

00:08:10.100 25,000 Mexican nationals declare asylum until they put the visa requirement back in for visitors

00:08:17.820 from Mexico. And it's, you know, so that's caused some of that. Did we just incentivize people to

00:08:27.040 come here and declare asylum of course it's pure common sense some of these people literally bet

00:08:36.540 the farm on a future in canada the parents sell the farm allowing the kid to come to canada pay 0.56

00:08:44.220 foreign student fees and get onto a path for pr but when that path is not available the foreign

00:08:52.440 student is going to go to the airport tarmac with an empty wallet, a broken heart, and a flight of

00:08:59.040 shame back home. Instead, they opt to remain on the possibility of obtaining refugee status. And

00:09:06.740 as I said quite publicly, before it began to happen, you're going to see those Indian nationals

00:09:12.980 and colleges and universities suddenly get the bug for domestic politics back home. They're going to

00:09:19.400 start supporting these separatist groups, independence groups in India, and concoct

00:09:25.040 effectively a refugee claim. And so that's what happened. In some cases, of course,

00:09:34.060 got to be true. But the numbers demonstrate that this is a claim of opportunity.

00:09:41.240 That's it. It's the numbers. I'm not doubting that there are some people, especially if you're

00:09:46.040 involved in calistani politics which is the separatist movement in the punjab region of india

00:09:51.000 that you may face problems back home but 32 563 in one year from an ally a trading partner a

00:10:03.520 fellow democracy seems a bit high to me well it is and and i proposed when the government did not

00:10:11.700 listen, what I had proposed during the Harper era, when we witnessed in Canada an influx of

00:10:18.240 refugee claims from Western Europe, Hungary, Romania, citizens who had the legal right there

00:10:25.340 to live and work in adjacent countries. Instead, they were taking planes to Canada to make refugee 0.97

00:10:32.060 claims. Solution? Give them business class treatment. Put them at the front of the processing

00:10:38.120 queue so that they're done in four months you remove the incentive and that's what the harper

00:10:45.520 regime did the numbers went down problem over and that's what we have to look at again i remember

00:10:52.240 when jason kenney who was then immigration minister um flew to hungary to we we had we

00:11:00.620 had an influx of people that we were told we had to call roma um colloquially uh people would say

00:11:07.300 they were gypsies, but we had to call them Roma because a gypsy is a pejorative term. You can't

00:11:12.440 use it. But who did Jason Kenney have to go see? A guy whose literal title is the Gypsy King.

00:11:18.400 And he had to negotiate with him and talk to him about the fact that, look, you can't have all 1.00

00:11:24.120 these people coming to Canada. What can you do on your end? Hungary, by the way, was, I'm just

00:11:31.340 bringing up the numbers now, they were going up again. Now it's down to a couple hundred a year.

00:11:37.300 um 2025 we dropped to 17 000 from india as we try to impose some uh some changes mexico as i said

00:11:46.020 had been 25 000 now it's about 5 000 you know there you have to have these processes in place

00:11:54.260 and and yet often richard i talk to people and in particular this is a problem that i have with

00:12:00.220 liberals, is that they don't seem to get that people will game the system. They seem to believe

00:12:07.540 that everyone, especially, oh, it's touching on immigration. I mean, these people are the salt of

00:12:12.540 the earth. This is good. This is pure. I come from an immigrant background, immigrant family.

00:12:19.560 The fact that you're an immigrant doesn't mean that you are automatically good. People are going

00:12:24.900 to game the system and it seems like some folks just don't want to understand that and so we put

00:12:31.200 in place a system that incentivizes you to lie to game to cheat and then we're shocked when people do

00:12:39.360 yeah and that's for one simple reason what is more important than taxpayer money to the federal

00:12:49.100 liberals in ottawa votes and if you can squander bucks and capture marginal swing constituencies

00:12:58.520 in 416 905 it's worth the price of course you're not paying the bill that's for the taxpayers but

00:13:05.760 you'll do what's necessary to get those votes and in the context of minority government

00:13:10.900 lying in bed with the sweetheart federal ndp that was the logical outcome of that political

00:13:17.860 arrangement. Never mind how much it costs. We want votes. We're going to sacrifice on the altar some

00:13:24.120 common sense. We should not be surprised when the numbers balloon and a billion dollars in

00:13:29.720 taxpayer money goes out the window. I have to ask you, are we able, I don't know if it's

00:13:37.140 international law, Canadian law, policy, are our officials able to just say,

00:13:46.580 no, you're not a refugee. You can't claim asylum. I'm looking at the stats here,

00:13:52.740 and we've got 634 people from the United States claimed asylum last year.

00:13:59.500 None from the United Kingdom, but in the past, we've had people show up from the United Kingdom

00:14:03.840 and claim asylum can't we just look at them and say you've got to be joking get back

00:14:10.060 well yeah you're absolutely right and the thing is that um i think i even intercepted a memo

00:14:17.240 from our frontline guys at the canadian border requesting permission to ask the hard questions

00:14:25.640 because they didn't believe a word and the answer came down from the higher ups

00:14:30.260 that's for the refugee hearing well what refugee hearing in four years and here's the other thing

00:14:37.320 they started to do not even provide refugee hearings because they would make a paper based

00:14:43.400 decision and then it got out that these refugee claims at the border were being concocted with

00:14:50.480 AI so a paper a paper thing goes in you don't get an oral hearing to test the border guys are told

00:14:57.980 to back off and wait for the hearing and there's no hearing that was our system and by the way i

00:15:02.880 just pulled it up france 57 french nationals declared asylum in 2025 you're you're fleeing

00:15:10.680 macron you're fleeing croissants i'm sorry i'm not buying it these are not for it by the way

00:15:18.960 the way that it is documented by the canadian government these are not people who are fleeing

00:15:23.860 war and transit to us through france through the united states this is their citizenship

00:15:29.620 and we are giving legitimacy to the idea that we have to take refugees from france

00:15:35.440 so just to go back on that the border guards were told not to ask questions why

00:15:44.360 in writing by the way so the the why is that's not your role your role is just process them

00:15:54.140 the role of the irb is to do the questioning even though our border guys have the experience

00:16:00.760 decades of experience the knowledge and have human radar like no one else to separate wheat

00:16:08.260 We have all sweated in front of CBSA officers from time to time.

00:16:13.200 I mean, not that I'm doing anything wrong when I'm coming back into Canada,

00:16:17.860 but they get the training to look at you, to grill you,

00:16:23.280 to ask you questions that, I mean, it is a skill set.

00:16:30.600 And you're not going to get that with some guy sitting in an office that never sees you.

00:16:34.640 So they're told not to ask the questions.

00:16:36.660 And then we move to a non-hearing system.

00:16:41.100 How prevalent is that?

00:16:42.840 The non-hearing asylum hearing?

00:16:47.840 Well, we're, we're waiting to see.

00:16:50.300 And, uh, the one I'm keeping an eye on is the quote unquote Gaza program.

00:16:57.300 So individuals from, uh, Hamas governed, uh, areas in the middle East are being allowed 0.57

00:17:05.540 into canada with temporary status visitor and then surprise surprise they're going to be making 0.97

00:17:12.260 these refugee claims to save money government's going oh well they must be refugees and they 0.99

00:17:19.300 sorry palestinians the united nations already considers them refugees 1.00

00:17:23.600 yeah that's good like even though they've been living in the same place for decades

00:17:29.180 and it's intergenerational they're refugees i mean i may as well declare myself a refugee at 1.00

00:17:34.760 this point my irish ancestors were driven out yeah yep yep and and it's uh fortunately i'm glad 0.96

00:17:43.640 the family made it out we benefited in the long term and and that's the thing uh security is 0.99

00:17:51.660 priority one compassion is priority two uh and part of our broken refugee determination system

00:17:59.120 is giving compassion over security.

00:18:02.300 That's a big no-no.

00:18:03.980 And we're going to pay for it in the long run

00:18:05.860 as you witness problems that are coming 0.83

00:18:08.700 from outside Canada taking root inside Canada

00:18:12.940 from all over the world.

00:18:14.340 I haven't seen any of that outside

00:18:15.280 of a Montreal Canadiens game recently.

00:18:18.220 People that don't know, Montreal for Palestine

00:18:22.500 handing a effigy of a Jewish man wearing a kippah

00:18:25.920 while chanting, go, hebs, go.

00:18:29.120 uh it's disturbing as can be richard look after the break i want to move on to stuff outside of

00:18:37.420 that but you mentioned compassion and the idea of the interim health pro interim federal health

00:18:43.440 program is about compassion but it's also about practicalities until you are processed and

00:18:49.180 declared a refugee or have your claim accepted you can't go on a provincial or territorial program

00:18:56.980 And so that's why the federal government has this.

00:19:00.000 And I accept that.

00:19:01.740 And that is fine.

00:19:03.820 As I said, though, a decade ago, it was 16,000 people and it cost 60 million.

00:19:08.120 Now it's more than 600,000 and it costs a billion.

00:19:11.460 I want to go back to one of the stats that was in the PBO report that just came out.

00:19:15.980 Well, two of them.

00:19:17.360 That 79% of the people on this program who came to Canada arrived on another form of

00:19:23.400 visa, such as student or work visa.

00:19:25.340 and then that 74,000 people on this program have already had their claim denied and been ordered deported.

00:19:36.940 At what point do we just cut things off and say, look, I'm sorry, this doesn't work out.

00:19:42.900 I have no compassion for people that are lying to me and our country. 0.99

00:19:47.800 By comparison, people who are resettled refugees spend three months in this program. 1.00

00:19:54.640 The people that I just mentioned are spending four years and up on this program. 1.00

00:20:00.540 We are being abused by people who are economic migrants, and I get it. 1.00

00:20:05.980 As I said, my parents were economic migrants. 1.00

00:20:08.960 Tons of people want to come to Canada.

00:20:11.200 But you are abusing a system that is there to help the most vulnerable,

00:20:15.740 and you're being allowed to do it.

00:20:17.900 Are we just dupes in this system?

00:20:20.200 well trudeau the elder said what's a billion and so you know uh a billion a year for that

00:20:31.260 health deal instead of spending a billion this year next and next i don't know why don't you

00:20:38.300 take an extra 100 million 150 million from that billion give it to the refugee determination board

00:20:45.980 to reduce a four-year pipeline into a nine-month pipeline.

00:20:50.800 That billion shrinks because you're not carrying the inventory.

00:20:54.200 Did we cut the IRB budget at some point

00:20:58.660 or do something that made this a longer process,

00:21:03.140 or is it just volume?

00:21:07.880 It's Justin Trudeau's 100 million person plan.

00:21:13.900 it's volume volume volume with no corresponding increase in resources it's as simple as that

00:21:22.360 it was that secret decision not a public decision made by the advisors that's the root problem they

00:21:30.260 took a gold medal system where we used the human capital model which was the envy of the western

00:21:36.480 world even to be adopted by president trump's crew and threw it out the window for political

00:21:43.820 interest short-term temporary foreign workers in you know the businesses and allowing uh large

00:21:51.700 numbers of foreign students uh to come in to pay subsidize the college university carrying costs

00:22:00.240 for their provincial education systems uh they just forgot what's going to happen when you tell

00:22:06.560 two million extra people to come on down but now you can't stay here these people are going to look

00:22:12.940 for options because they're human and we're canada one of the best places on the planet of

00:22:18.580 course they're going to want to stay and if they don't qualify the regular way they're going to

00:22:22.840 look for other options the one of the most recent um dispatches from your lexbase um

00:22:32.560 missives was about how we have started a transgender pilot program

00:22:39.500 to bring in people from other countries who are transgendered and are experiencing persecution.

00:22:46.960 Now, I live just a couple blocks from Toronto's gay village.

00:22:51.100 It is incredibly ethnically diverse.

00:22:54.740 You walk down Church Street and it is unbelievably diverse and you see men of all, you know,

00:23:02.400 it's mostly men, of all races and backgrounds walking down the street holding hands and

00:23:08.120 you think, wow, I bet you were persecuted in your home country. And so that is a real thing.

00:23:13.780 And I am sure it's the same in the transgender community. But we know from experience that

00:23:21.020 declaring that you were gay was abused for getting in as a refugee. And I was speaking to a politician

00:23:28.220 a little while ago who was talking to someone who had claimed asylum, and they were part of a work

00:23:35.320 program. And they had said, you know, early in the conversation with the politician, oh, yes,

00:23:41.140 well, I came to Canada because I'm gay. I don't want to be persecuted. And then that person got

00:23:46.600 more comfortable talking to the politician and eventually said, and soon I'm going to bring my

00:23:50.600 wife and children with you. And of course, we've also had people arrive at the border and say,

00:23:56.420 I'm here because I'm gay and their wife and five kids are behind them. We allowed that. 0.99

00:24:02.260 Are, have you seen any signs that there's going to be guardrails on this so that it's

00:24:07.120 not just abused?

00:24:08.260 Because I mean, the number of people declaring themselves gay to become asylum seekers in

00:24:15.520 Canada might be bigger than the gay population of Canada.

00:24:19.060 Well, there's that. 0.51

00:24:19.860 And, and the, the, the two sources for guardrails, you got Fox TV waiting for the story to break

00:24:27.520 there and you got president Trump's crew.

00:24:29.840 um it's low-hanging fruit for him it like they will be upset at this or bingo yeah those canadians

00:24:37.880 the liberals these leftists these extremists this is what they're doing up there so that's no good

00:24:43.840 we have to control it now we have to be more vigilant of canadians seeking entry to the united

00:24:48.840 states it's not going to be good but so so basically there are no guardrails on this pilot

00:24:55.940 program it's tested in bogota it's once it's a pilot project and uh if it gets any media

00:25:05.240 attraction they're gonna expand this uh to other needed areas so to speak as i said i i understand

00:25:15.120 that there are people persecuted it's just going to become another way for people to abuse the

00:25:22.480 system. And because those CBSA officers will be told, don't ask any questions. Yeah. Well,

00:25:29.960 that's the thing. I mean, it's, you know, our obligations are to the people physically present

00:25:37.220 in Canada. We, even if we would like to save the world, we don't have an obligation to scout the

00:25:46.520 planet for deserving refugee cases we have a sufficient number the volumes are good for those

00:25:55.660 who manage that darwinian uh don't come to canada maze find themselves here we get we process them

00:26:03.600 and we meet our international obligations we don't get more meeting international obligations

00:26:10.180 by hunting and searching for would-be refugees that's not how our system should work you're 0.94

00:26:18.400 going to end up with a resentful canadian domestic population instead of the segment of the population

00:26:26.380 that cries because we opened our hearts the welcome mat out to deserving people in need

00:26:33.380 of protection because of their fear of persecution and it's a credibility of that system which is

00:26:40.580 being washed out by i don't know some people with a different political agenda all right we need to

00:26:48.100 take a quick break when we come back we will discuss the fact that judges are helping to

00:26:52.780 undermine the faith in the immigration system by giving lighter sentences based on people's

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00:28:25.180 Paid for by the Government of Ontario

00:28:26.920 There were so many missed opportunities to catch this

00:28:36.220 before the devastating thing happened

00:28:39.120 A third of them we found literally in the phone book

00:28:42.400 These people were not afraid

00:28:44.440 They knew that nobody was effectively hunting them

00:28:47.720 They knew they had escaped justice

00:28:49.660 that they were going to die in their beds.

00:28:52.300 When I give talks at law schools

00:28:53.280 is that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority

00:28:55.940 and it's empowering a minority that's a guild

00:28:57.660 across the country

00:28:58.580 and it's a fairly elite guild

00:29:00.160 and the guild is lawyers.

00:29:01.140 Families who were split by a referendum

00:29:03.880 and brothers and sisters

00:29:06.260 who never talked to each other for years

00:29:08.200 after the referendum

00:29:09.120 because they were so angry at each other

00:29:11.120 because of the emotions on both sides.

00:29:13.900 The reason he was assassinated

00:29:15.300 was not because he was trying

00:29:16.980 to put a satellite into space

00:29:18.580 but because the gun that he was creating had other applications

00:29:24.660 that made him and the gun very dangerous.

00:29:28.960 It's finally here.

00:29:30.520 A new season of Canada Did What?

00:29:32.780 Host media podcast that revisits the big Canadian political events

00:29:36.520 you might think you remember and tells you the real story you never knew.

00:29:41.340 I'm Tristan Hopper.

00:29:42.600 The voices you just heard are from our brand new season two.

00:29:46.100 We will unpack some of the pivotal moments that helped define our country,

00:29:50.260 often without a vote, usually without a plan,

00:29:52.920 and sometimes without anyone admitting what they'd done.

00:29:56.660 We'll find out how Canada became a welcoming paradise 0.70

00:29:59.740 for untold numbers of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War. 0.85

00:30:04.340 We let them build monuments to their wartime exploits

00:30:07.120 and even ended up honoring a Nazi fighter in the House of Commons.

00:30:11.160 And I'm sorry to say that none of that happened by accident.

00:30:14.680 We'll bring you the little-known story of a troubled Canadian rocket scientist

00:30:18.580 who turned to a sinister life of selling giant guns to terrible people.

00:30:24.040 And if that sounds like a spy novel, it ends like one too.

00:30:27.400 You'll hear the behind-the-scenes story of Quebec's attempted secession from Canada

00:30:31.200 and how very close we came to a political crisis that would have made Brexit look like a picnic.

00:30:37.600 You'll hear about how the much-celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms

00:30:41.480 turned into something its creators never wanted, and how many of the most extravagant warnings

00:30:46.820 about the document were all quickly proven true. And you'll even hear about how authorities

00:30:52.640 bungled multiple chances to stop the deadliest terrorist attack in our country's history

00:30:57.040 and then proceeded to pretend it never happened. These aren't dusty history lessons. They're

00:31:02.960 stories about power, ambition, madness, and the things about Canada that a lot of people

00:31:08.060 would rather ignore. But not you. You won't want to miss an episode. Subscribe to make sure you get

00:31:14.200 all of season two starting March 2026 anywhere you get your podcasts.

00:31:21.140 So above and beyond the fact that the asylum system is broken, the overall immigration system

00:31:26.220 is broken, we were moving towards 500,000 permanent residents a year. And now the Kearney

00:31:32.420 liberals have said, well, we're going to take it back. We're cutting things dramatically.

00:31:37.860 I think the number, Richard, is about, what, 380,000 this year?

00:31:43.380 That's still well above historical norms, is it not?

00:31:48.120 Yeah, basically.

00:31:49.320 It's within the range.

00:31:51.780 But these are people already in Canada.

00:31:55.760 Gone are the days where you applied from outside,

00:31:58.820 you waited outside until you got your permanent resident visa,

00:32:01.860 and then you come look for your apartment and your job.

00:32:04.740 Now the integration and selection is for people already here, already working, already studying, so that it's seamless.

00:32:15.640 It costs less to do it.

00:32:17.320 In some ways, I understand that.

00:32:18.740 Like that was part of the Canadian experience program.

00:32:22.340 Yeah.

00:32:22.800 Of, okay, you've done advanced skills training, advanced degree program work in Canada.

00:32:29.420 You're already here.

00:32:30.880 You understand Canada.

00:32:32.220 okay, that kind of makes sense, but doesn't that leave an awful lot of people on the waiting list

00:32:37.720 on the outside who, like my parents, applied? I think, I remember asking my mother, I think it

00:32:44.400 took her four months between applying and moving here back in 1968. Yep. And my folks came that way

00:32:55.100 as well. And it did take very little time. Things changed. The planet grew, the economies

00:33:02.860 intermingled, technology, capital, and people were able to have greater mobility. And that meant that

00:33:10.940 things that took very little time in the past needed a lot of time because many more people

00:33:19.200 were interested. So it's all about the number of temporary status people, not the number of

00:33:25.920 permanent residents. That's a constant. All that happens is that the Band-Aid on the forehead 0.95

00:33:32.480 gets ripped off that said temporary status and a new Band-Aid goes on that says permanent resident.

00:33:38.820 But your neighbor could be here eight years with temporary status. You'll never know it,

00:33:44.200 But they're here.

00:33:46.620 That's the point.

00:33:47.560 And that number of people here kept growing and growing and growing.

00:33:53.860 That was the root cause.

00:33:55.660 Well, you know, let me read to you some numbers.

00:33:58.300 So there's been several polling firms or groups that have tracked this over the years.

00:34:06.160 Environyx, since the 1970s, has been asking, are there too many people?

00:34:11.100 Just about right.

00:34:12.740 Not enough.

00:34:13.460 uh before 2023 so between 2020 uh 2016 and 2022 is about a quarter in 2022 about 27 percent said

00:34:26.200 yeah there's too much immigration 2023 middle of this big rise that you were talking about

00:34:32.400 44%, that's too much. 2024, 58% said there's too much. And by 2025, 56%. That's more than double

00:34:46.380 prior to the big sweep. Immigration and Refugees and Citizenship Canada runs a similar survey.

00:34:54.780 They would get the same numbers, about 15% to 28% saying too many prior to 2022.

00:35:00.660 Then their tracking said 35% said too many in 2023.

00:35:06.700 And in November 2024, 54% said too many.

00:35:11.960 Angus Reid, similar numbers.

00:35:15.320 You and I have talked for a long time about these issues.

00:35:19.100 If I had told you 10 years ago, the Liberals are going to break the immigration system

00:35:23.780 and people are going to become anti-immigrant in Canada, you would have laughed at me, wouldn't you?

00:35:29.240 Well, never at you, but I get the point. If I had to unpack it, just follow the loose hanging thread back to Justin. When he brought in 2 million extra people, they didn't think it through.

00:35:47.320 tell me where are 2 million extra people gonna live it means they're chasing the same housing

00:35:57.800 supply in the same unaffordable areas of urban canada rents for canadians go up it means the

00:36:07.400 foreign students the huge increase that are allowed to work off campus are competing with

00:36:15.460 are young Canadians and permanent residents for the same entry-level jobs. Who gets hit?

00:36:23.320 The Canadians and permanent residents for affordable housing and for work. And so, 0.56

00:36:30.040 surprise, the numbers in polling reflect that maybe immigration is not working out for us.

00:36:37.780 Well, to quote Steve McKinnon, the Liberal House leader, why are conservatives against providing

00:36:45.020 health care to some of the most vulnerable people on earth. That's what he said in response to the

00:36:49.980 PBO report. And that's the kind of response that they get when you ask. They denied for the longest

00:36:55.740 time that the rise in rents had anything to do with adding in those 2 million people. But if

00:37:03.560 you're not adding housing stock, and we haven't been, you know, housing stock, Pierre Paulyev

00:37:09.700 I've had a great point about this, and I believe it was 2024,

00:37:14.980 we added about as many houses as we did in 1971 when we had a fraction of the population.

00:37:22.060 So where are they going to live?

00:37:24.620 Well, you end up with things like nine people to a two-bedroom home,

00:37:29.780 a two-bedroom apartment.

00:37:31.600 It's unbelievable conditions.

00:37:34.060 And I don't think that's what the people living in those conditions came to Canada for.

00:37:38.340 No, they did not. And the thing is that they could have, sorry, Brian, they, they, they could have shared, they could have shared the information with something called CMHC or the private sector housing industry to say, oh, by the way, heads up, we're bringing in an extra 2 million units. Why don't you start your marketing and construction today?

00:38:04.060 Yeah, it is unreal what they've done. And yet it took until April 2024 for Trudeau to finally say, we're bringing in people faster than we can absorb them. But then he didn't do anything.

00:38:19.360 you know i i will grant carney this they have pulled back a bit i don't think enough i don't

00:38:25.780 think the numbers are in balance um you mentioned trudeau the elder earlier pierre trudeau used to

00:38:32.000 raise and lower the immigration numbers based on things like i don't know unemployment yeah um and

00:38:41.000 You know, we've got about 14 to 15% youth unemployment in Ontario and Alberta.

00:38:49.020 Might be a bit better where you are in British Columbia, but it's still double digits across the country.

00:38:56.040 That's the generation that is paying the price for poor decision-making by Justin Trudeau.

00:39:03.800 I'm being blunt, but that's it.

00:39:06.500 And for the first time, we're seeing polling that that younger generation that got caught in the teeth of the politics of Justin Trudeau are going conservative.

00:39:17.840 And I'll tell you that it's also like we got the, I mentioned the polling that said there are too many people coming.

00:39:27.420 That doesn't necessarily mean that you're anti-immigrant or racist.

00:39:31.260 That's, you know, likely just means that you're noticing reality.

00:39:35.100 we're bringing in too many people. But there is an increasing anti-immigrant and racist sentiment

00:39:41.980 growing. And I was speaking to a friend who's quite public, who Indian heritage, born and

00:39:50.660 raised in Canada, loves this country like no other, defends this country and Western civilization

00:39:57.080 like no other and yet has told me he is repeatedly getting now Indian go home that's heartbreaking

00:40:05.640 um I mean it's not the only form of racism that we're seeing out there but this this is the result

00:40:12.760 of people being bad managers and having bad policy this was not happening to him five ten years ago

00:40:20.820 That's it. And it's exacerbated by the commuter runs in Ontario in the evenings because of the newfound talent that engages in public demonstrations, blocking highways, all sorts of facilities.

00:40:39.720 that never happened five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago you didn't have these demos about

00:40:46.600 problems outside canada uh gumming up your ride home no uh so that's another irritant you might

00:40:55.960 have those protests but they didn't they didn't mess with the commute no let me if it doesn't

00:41:02.400 mess with my commute i'm i'm there you go less inclined to complain let me ask you about the

00:41:07.360 Temporary Foreign Workers Program, Tim Hortons, they have received an awful lot of vitriol

00:41:14.860 over this. I'm sure you've seen online what they have been called. St. Hortons is one of the

00:41:22.360 regular nicknames that they've had because they've really used the Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

00:41:27.380 Not to pick on them, but they are one of, if not Canada's largest, fast food restaurants.

00:41:33.940 They're not alone in this.

00:41:35.540 I mean, A&W franchises in Baie-Comeau, Quebec said, oh, if we can't bring in foreign workers, we couldn't possibly serve burgers in Baie-Comeau.

00:41:45.300 And so we've had an abuse of this.

00:41:48.500 And now, perhaps simply because of Dunkin' Donuts announcing that they're going to come back into the Canadian market, Tim Hortons is saying, oh, we're going to back off the temporary foreign workers program and we're going to hire 10,000 locals.

00:42:01.380 was this a planned abuse was this part of the the two million secret plan that you're talking about

00:42:11.300 was this big business in canada just being able to bend government's ear and say look we need

00:42:18.940 cheaper workers these kids won't work hard enough for us we don't want to pay them that much

00:42:23.880 well you know we have supply and demand what's wrong with paying an extra dollar an hour

00:42:33.120 uh to young people to take entry-level jobs until you get your supply adjusted the ease

00:42:41.980 and facilitated entry of foreign workers for entry-level jobs it's it's more than timmy's

00:42:48.920 It cuts across a lot of industries, but what I track is something a little different.

00:42:56.800 I track the political donations made by the companies that bring in significant numbers of foreign workers. 0.99

00:43:07.000 Wait a minute, they're not allowed to. 0.92

00:43:08.980 Well, I don't know if they're not allowed to, because it's been happening.

00:43:12.740 uh, and, and, uh, even at the level of, um, uh, all, well, I shouldn't say all the conservatives

00:43:22.480 and the, and the liberals, not so much NDP, but if you, I, I followed very carefully the leadership

00:43:30.120 structure administratively within those parties. And I looked for connections between the senior

00:43:35.340 political managers and those companies. The one that went on record, uh, I think your colleague,

00:43:41.740 godfrey tom godfrey did it a long time ago judy scrow uh a long time ago her i think it was her

00:43:50.880 uh she had a family uh member that was very senior in the conservative party um if they

00:43:59.560 might be mixing them up would be the liberals yeah liberal liberal one and that's how suddenly

00:44:05.100 there were these pools of foreign workers that I had never seen before taking entry-level jobs in

00:44:11.940 Canada. So you got to watch those political donations because at the end of the day,

00:44:18.140 the decision to allow into Canada entry-level foreign workers is a political one. And that's

00:44:26.120 driven again by the politics of the marginal swings in 416-905-604. The conservatives have

00:44:33.880 called for the temporary foreign worker program outside of agriculture to be abolished. Would

00:44:41.100 that be a good move or a bad move? Well, I've had some discussions expressing some minor opposition

00:44:49.220 to that because, okay, in principle, it sounds good. In practice, Canada has signed international

00:44:58.240 agreements, free trade agreements to facilitate the importation of foreign labor, not necessarily

00:45:05.360 at the entry level, but at the higher ups, the engineers, IT specialists, intra-company

00:45:12.420 transferees, managers, and the like, specialized knowledge people.

00:45:16.440 We need them, but we can slam down using something very simple.

00:45:23.960 If your hourly wage is under $30 an hour, you're not coming here on one of those things.

00:45:32.600 April 2022, the Trudeau Liberals announced a policy change.

00:45:38.060 And I can't remember if this was Mark Miller or Sean Fraser at the time.

00:45:42.020 I think it was likely Fraser.

00:45:43.780 They announced a policy change on temporary foreign workers and they took the guardrails off.

00:45:48.880 This is as we're coming out of year two of the pandemic.

00:45:53.960 and CERB is still being given out,

00:45:56.680 and so young people, I guess, aren't going out for those entry-level jobs,

00:45:59.900 and I guess some people are still concerned about leaving their home.

00:46:03.980 And so there used to be guardrails such as,

00:46:07.360 if unemployment in your region is above 6%,

00:46:10.240 you cannot get a labor market impact assessment

00:46:14.280 to get a temporary foreign worker.

00:46:16.560 They got rid of that. 0.63

00:46:18.980 They went from 10% of your labor force can be temporary foreign workers

00:46:23.400 to 20%. But if you're in hospitality and some other things where there's a lot of entry-level

00:46:29.420 labor, you could have as much as 30% of your labor force. Those are just the types of policy

00:46:39.020 decisions that put a program like that on steroids, is it not? Yeah, that's exactly it. And there was

00:46:45.060 no public discussion, no consultation with external stakeholders on the impact of this.

00:46:52.380 and instead what they could do is say oh you you want a study permit um okay we're only giving

00:47:00.260 those out to people who can afford to study in canada without working that's the type of thinking

00:47:07.520 so it was later that year i think it was november 2022 that they said uh we're going to get rid of

00:47:14.320 the restrictions on temporary students working and bingo and then suddenly we had a youth

00:47:21.600 unemployment crisis bingo and so what's going on i i didn't understand it i couldn't trace it

00:47:30.360 uh through the paper trail of bureaucracy using access to information but it all seemed to flow

00:47:37.680 from just one seat it's it's justinville yeah okay before we get into the issue of judges

00:47:46.560 and giving out lighter sentences i do want to ask you about marriages of convenience because

00:47:51.500 Oh, boy.

00:47:52.500 You recently uncovered more on that.

00:47:55.200 I remember writing about a group out of China that would offer you a full wedding package.

00:48:02.260 And they were caught because you'd go to this company, this group of people, and I don't know what you would pay them back then.

00:48:13.620 This would be about 2012, 13 I was writing about this.

00:48:16.520 But they would provide you with the wedding photos and the fake family to be with you in the wedding photos.

00:48:23.520 And they only got caught because a bureaucrat noticed that the same red velvet suitcase was in the back of all the photos.

00:48:32.880 And that brought down this attempt at marriage of convenience.

00:48:38.080 But you're saying now that there are also marriages of convenience that people are arranging once they're in Canada on these study permits.

00:48:48.900 And what is it, like $10,000 or more that people are paying for this?

00:48:53.540 It's 50 US. 0.71

00:48:55.440 and there's no guidebook but the telltale is um you know you have um young people living as a

00:49:07.160 couple in an apartment they they may be in different rooms they may be cohabiting but

00:49:13.560 they're certainly not in a spousal relationship it's not conjugal let's say yeah not conjugal

00:49:20.900 that's a good way to do it. And then it's up to immigration to figure it out. 17% of the pool of

00:49:33.000 students find their way into a spousal sponsorship. In the past, the marriage of convenience stats

00:49:41.500 weren't horrible. They always existed. But now with the pressure on the people who were part of

00:49:49.180 that two million and I want to stay group, uh, the pressure to engage in, in marriage of

00:49:55.200 conveniences is there. Uh, and, um, how are they going to afford to come up with that money? And

00:50:01.780 it's a good deal unless you're caught and it's illegal. Uh, the, the other spouse gets their, 0.68

00:50:08.220 uh, university education paid for. Uh, so, and then the, uh, foreign national ends up with 0.94

00:50:16.100 permanent resident status the day you get accepted you're allowed to leave and pretty much no

00:50:22.160 questions asked you had an argument things were said marriage yep okay so i had a friend i used

00:50:30.660 to work with who met his wife while she was a foreign student at u of t they got married

00:50:37.880 they went through they were put through the ringer for her to be able to stay are they still

00:50:43.880 doing that or is it like the refugee thing don't ask too many questions they had to prove i mean

00:50:50.180 outside of doing the conjugal act in front of the immigration officer they had to prove that this

00:50:55.240 was real and legit yeah and the limit is the number of cases that the officer can do in a year

00:51:05.900 because that's carefully controlled so you're only given a finite number of cases in a year

00:51:13.000 And if the pool of MOCs, marriages of convenience exceeds that limit,

00:51:18.380 hello, you got a problem. 1.00

00:51:21.180 We had the audit report a little while ago about the number of people who were

00:51:28.800 lying to get into the country and we could only examine 2,000 a year.

00:51:37.640 Yeah. 0.94

00:51:38.660 Same system.

00:51:39.980 Same system.

00:51:40.560 I mean, this is not working.

00:51:42.060 And Jason Kenney, when he was immigration minister, I hate to keep going back to him, but he seemed to have a handle on the system. 0.60

00:51:49.620 He would tell you that the greatest source of finding out information about people trying to game the system, about the frauds, about the marriages of convenience, this red suitcase mafia, all of this, the best source was he would go around to visit different immigrant communities and they'd always pull them aside.

00:52:07.040 Mr. Jason, Mr. Jason, I have to tell you about this.

00:52:09.880 The immigrant community wanted to root out the fraudsters.

00:52:13.940 I don't think that if Lena Diab, our current minister, went to an event like that and was told all of these things, that she would do anything. 0.98

00:52:22.540 She does not appear to be competent enough to fix all the problems that you and I have spent the last 45 minutes discussing.

00:52:31.960 She's no Eleanor Kaplan, for sure. 0.84

00:52:34.760 And that is a hole in the submarine, as far as I'm concerned, for the Canadian immigration system.

00:52:43.260 Her testimony before parliamentary committees demonstrates an astounding lock of knowledge of the Canadian immigration system, to the point where even on the floor of the House of Commons in question period, other people stand up to answer in her place.

00:53:03.380 I have $20 riding on, she's out in the next cabinet shuffle, but we're going to wait and

00:53:10.720 see how that plays out. If it's weak at the top, it percolates down and you end up with more abuse, 0.94

00:53:18.680 more problems, more expensive problems to solve. Yeah. People like to discount the role of

00:53:25.380 politicians, but if a cabinet minister doesn't have a good handle on their department,

00:53:28.860 things fall apart. Let's talk about judges giving lighter sentences to people so that they don't

00:53:37.060 get deported. This started in 2013. It was a Supreme Court decision called FAM. And my

00:53:43.840 understanding of that decision, Richard, and you're the lawyer, I'm not, I don't even play one

00:53:47.980 on TV. My reading of that decision was you could take immigration status into account,

00:53:55.140 But it was basically saying you should not be giving people a harsher sentence because of their immigration status, nor should you be giving them a lighter one if they have a serious crime.

00:54:09.000 And I've spoken to different judges about this who are mortified that they said actually the original decision wasn't bad, but the application of it since has been horrific.

00:54:20.920 And so a man in Calgary sexually assaulting a woman in a bar, given a lower sentence so that he is not removed.

00:54:31.840 A man in New Brunswick under a no-contact restraining order, given his sentence reduced to a discharge so that he's not deported from Canada.

00:54:41.540 um the recent one just this week national post added a woman not a not a not even a permanent

00:54:49.260 resident temporary worker in canada stealing thousands of dollars from the walmart well

00:54:55.500 you know we we wouldn't want to see her deported as she's stealing from the walmart she's working

00:55:01.100 in national post has done incredible work on this they of course have been protested by

00:55:07.280 various lawyers groups saying you're bringing the system of justice into disrepute

00:55:11.400 I would argue these decisions might be doing that. Is this the justice system bending over backwards, you know, bastardizing what the law actually says in ways that will not only hurt the country, but again, undermine faith and support in the immigration system?

00:55:34.220 and that's key and as well our judicial system so it seems to me that it may be a question of

00:55:42.580 training on sentencing guidelines it's like a toothpaste tube you're going to squeeze it

00:55:47.880 stuff's going to come up the top so if you're going to say on the one hand take into account

00:55:53.320 the immigration situation it should not stop there what you do is you can balance a lesser

00:56:00.780 sentence based on the immigration consequences, but you double or triple the other penalties.

00:56:09.220 So volunteer work. Probation. Probation or other things like that. So you don't end up

00:56:18.340 scot-free or with a lesser penalty because of your immigration status. You should still pay 1.00

00:56:26.160 premium uh but just not with uh the thing that's going to nail your immigration status

00:56:32.520 make it hurt make it painful and other sentencing tactics uh to make up for what you're not doing

00:56:41.520 because of the immigration thing it feels like two-tier justice um it it stinks to high heaven

00:56:49.240 you know my cousin you know never took out sitting you know could didn't become a citizen

00:56:55.320 could get a lighter sentence so they don't get deported um and i'd get a stiffer sense that

00:57:00.900 seems wrong yeah well i don't think the court system uh is designed to provide that compassionate

00:57:10.620 humanitarian relief tied to an immigration issue that's the job of the immigration department

00:57:17.660 the guy's been living here 20 years he's got three kids or whatever the reasons are that's

00:57:23.460 an immigration decision. It shouldn't go to a sentencing judge because they're not trained

00:57:29.120 to engage in that type of analysis. That's for the immigration department. Instead, the judge

00:57:35.320 can be given guidelines saying, all right, if you're going light because of this immigration

00:57:40.800 thing, go heavy on the other penalty tools we got in the toolbox. Richard Kerland, we have not

00:57:48.120 solved all the immigration problems in the country yet, but we've had a good chat about them. And I

00:57:52.240 hope people have been educated uh so thank you so much for your time today it's an honor and a

00:57:58.920 pleasure dealing with an experienced veteran of journalism who has contributed to the fabric of

00:58:04.840 canadian democracy for decades now you're buttering me up well thanks so much richard you're welcome

00:58:12.060 full comment is a post media podcast my name is brian lily your host this episode was produced

00:58:17.840 by Andre Pru. Theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. Thanks for

00:58:23.580 listening. Make sure that you share this on social media. Hit that subscribe button and

00:58:28.220 tell your friends about us. Thanks for listening. And until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:58:35.960 There were so many missed opportunities to catch this before the devastating thing happened.

00:58:42.280 A third of them we found literally in the phone book.

00:58:46.180 These people were not afraid.

00:58:48.400 They knew that nobody was effectively hunting them.

00:58:51.040 They knew they had escaped justice, that they were going to die in their beds.

00:58:55.460 When I give talks at law schools, it's that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority.

00:58:59.280 And it's empowering a minority that's a guild across the country.

00:59:02.300 And it's a fairly elite guild, and the guild is lawyers.

00:59:04.300 Families who were split by referendum and brothers and sisters

00:59:09.420 who never talked to each other for years after the referendum

00:59:12.300 because they were so angry at each other because of the emotions on both sides.

00:59:17.060 The reason he was assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space,

00:59:21.760 but because the gun that he was creating had other applications

00:59:27.840 that made him and the gun very dangerous.

00:59:32.140 It's finally here.

00:59:33.700 A new season of Canada Did What?

00:59:35.560 a post-media podcast that revisits the big Canadian political events

00:59:39.680 you might think you remember and tells you the real story you never knew.

00:59:44.520 I'm Tristan Hopper.

00:59:45.820 The voices you just heard are from our brand new Season 2.

00:59:49.720 We will unpack some of the pivotal moments that helped define our country,

00:59:53.440 often without a vote, usually without a plan,

00:59:56.020 and sometimes without anyone admitting what they've done.

00:59:59.820 We'll find out how Canada became a welcoming paradise 0.72

01:00:02.920 for untold numbers of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War. 0.85

01:00:07.520 We let them build monuments to their wartime exploits

01:00:10.280 and even ended up honoring a Nazi fighter in the House of Commons.

01:00:14.340 And I'm sorry to say that none of that happened by accident.

01:00:17.860 We'll bring you the little-known story of a troubled Canadian rocket scientist

01:00:21.760 who turned to a sinister life of selling giant guns to terrible people.

01:00:27.200 And if that sounds like a spy novel, it ends like one too.

01:00:30.120 You'll hear the behind-the-scenes story of Quebec's attempted secession from Canada,

01:00:34.620 and how very close we came to a political crisis that would have made Brexit look like a picnic.

01:00:40.760 You'll hear about how the much-celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms turned into something its creators never wanted,

01:00:47.800 and how many of the most extravagant warnings about the document were all quickly proven true.

01:00:53.620 And you'll even hear about how authorities bungled multiple chances

01:00:57.240 to stop the deadliest terrorist attack in our country's history

01:01:00.200 and then proceeded to pretend it never happened.

01:01:03.720 These aren't dusty history lessons.

01:01:06.020 They're stories about power, ambition, madness,

01:01:08.500 and the things about Canada that a lot of people would rather ignore.

01:01:12.620 But not you!

01:01:13.980 You won't want to miss an episode.

01:01:15.920 Subscribe to make sure you get all of Season 2 starting March 2026

01:01:19.920 anywhere you get your podcasts.

01:01:23.040 Thank you.

Full Comment - June 01, 2026

Face it, some migrants are totally abusing our immigration system

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