Full Comment - Trudeau did ‘almost everything wrong’ on immigration. It’s about to get worse

00:00:00.000 Ontario. The wait is over. The gold standard of online casinos has arrived. Golden Nugget Online

00:00:06.420 Casino is live, bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience right to your

00:00:11.940 fingertips. Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and simple.

00:00:17.380 And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots and

00:00:22.060 top-tier table games. Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots

00:00:27.220 that can turn any mundane moment into a golden opportunity at Golden Nugget Online Casino.

00:00:32.820 Take a spin on the slots, challenge yourself at the tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the

00:00:37.920 thrill of real-time action, all from the comfort of your own devices. Why settle for less when you

00:00:43.140 can go for the gold at Golden Nugget Online Casino? Gambling problem? Call ConnexOntario,

00:00:49.320 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over, physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See

00:00:56.340 goldennuggetcasino.com for details. Please play responsibly.

00:00:59.940 While other money managers are holding, Dynamic is hunting. Seeing past the horizon. Investing

00:01:08.280 beyond the benchmark. Because your money can't grow if it doesn't move. Learn more at

00:01:14.260 dynamic.ca slash active. Dynamic. Actively different.

00:01:19.860 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering,

00:01:25.500 is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:01:31.320 Are those from Winners? Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings? Did she pay full price? Or that leather

00:01:37.140 tote? Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high boots? That dress? That jacket? Those shoes?

00:01:42.460 Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners. Find fabulous

00:01:49.240 for less.

00:01:55.020 Immigration is the issue that appears to be central to everything happening in Canadian politics right

00:02:00.740 now. Hello, my name's Brian Lilly and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. Whether we're talking

00:02:05.340 about problems with housing supply. Our health care system being under duress. The Trump tariff

00:02:12.560 threats. Immigration is at the center of it. Now, for the longest time, Canada had a fairly robust 1.00

00:02:18.620 immigration system and widespread acceptance of high-level immigration numbers. Things have

00:02:24.060 definitely changed when you look at the polling from groups like Leger for the Association of Canadian

00:02:28.580 Studies. But why is immigration central to all of the stories I just mentioned? Thankfully, we've got 1.00

00:02:34.520 a guest with us today who knows the system well. He was immigration minister in the Harper government

00:02:38.960 for many years. He's been involved in politics for decades. Former Premier of Alberta. Former Federal

00:02:44.520 Cabinet Minister. All-around good guy, Jason Kenney. Jason, thanks for the time.

00:02:48.900 Good to be here, Brian.

00:02:49.980 So, let's just back up a second and find out where you're at these days because you've been

00:02:57.720 in the public eye for a long time and then you weren't. And last time I saw you, you were sporting a Ted Cruz

00:03:03.780 beard and looking fine and relaxed. You're clean shaven now. Where are you at and what are you doing?

00:03:09.360 Wow, the Ted Cruz beard. I mean, you've got to be a political junkie to think of it that way.

00:03:14.540 Yeah, somebody was telling me that the beard made me look prematurely old, but I am getting older.

00:03:20.560 I am, I'm happily in the private sector. I have something like normalcy in my life for the first time,

00:03:26.760 maybe just about ever, because Brian, I was in elected life for 25 years. And you know that I was

00:03:34.260 always kind of hard-charging, 90-hour-a-week kind of guy. And before that, I had helped to start and

00:03:40.660 found the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in my 20s, in the 1990s. And that was a wild ride as well.

00:03:49.120 So since leaving public office almost exactly two years ago this week, I have been building up a lot

00:03:58.340 of different interesting things in the private sector, in business, corporate boards, some advisory

00:04:04.980 work. I'm also involved in think tanks like the C.D. Howe Institute. But I am starting to get to the,

00:04:11.020 you know, I had the view, I had spent 25 or 30 years where one of the most dangerous places to

00:04:19.360 be in Canada was anywhere between me and a microphone. I wasn't shy about my views. And

00:04:24.500 my, I thought, you know, I've had my say, let other people have theirs. But I am starting to make,

00:04:28.940 do some more public commentary and issues that really matter to me. And one of those is certainly

00:04:34.240 immigration.

00:04:35.380 And that, that's why I wanted to reach out to you as well. I was looking at everything that's been

00:04:39.560 going on the last little while. And, and for people that don't know how hard charging Jason's

00:04:44.480 life was when he was in office, every now and again, I would send you a private message or email

00:04:50.200 trying to find something out. And I would get a reply in the middle of the night. And that would

00:04:55.580 often be you going to bed. So, I mean, that's the, that's the type of life.

00:04:59.400 Yeah. My, my poor staff used to complain about the texts they would get from me at for two,

00:05:03.140 three or four in the morning. I said, you don't have to reply then. Relax.

00:05:05.540 You'd send Jason an email and two days later at 3am, you get a reply. So let's talk about the,

00:05:15.480 the state of immigration just from a 40,000 foot viewpoint. Where do you think our, our system is

00:05:24.620 not now compared to where it was, you know, just wide angle view.

00:05:29.760 So Brian, Canada used to be regarded as having the best immigration system in the world or one of

00:05:36.380 the best. In fact, when I, you know, I was Canada's longest serving immigration minister in history,

00:05:40.620 five years in that role, but also 10 years, almost 10 years as a minister for multiculturalism,

00:05:45.940 which is kind of immigration adjacent. And so I think I got a pretty good insight into the system

00:05:52.380 and also led very deep and broad reforms. And I can tell you almost every week, I had delegations

00:05:59.120 of political leaders or think tankers coming from Europe and around the world to say, how have you

00:06:06.140 got this right in Canada? I also had political leaders coming from all around the Anglosphere

00:06:11.380 saying, how come you conservatives in Canada have done so well electorally amongst immigrants to your

00:06:17.060 country. So I think the answer is that we had, you know, if you look at that post-war immigration to

00:06:25.460 developed countries like Europe, for example, in the post-war period, they brought in a lot of guest workers,

00:06:31.640 what we here would call temporary foreign workers, typically to work in lower skilled trades, occupations in

00:06:39.620 primary manufacturing. And they often came from former colonies of those countries, like people from, you know,

00:06:46.460 Bangladesh and South Asia coming into the northern British manufacturing cities, peoples from the

00:06:51.780 former French colonies of North Africa, the Maghreb coming into parts of France. Unfortunately, not a really

00:06:58.100 brilliant experience where many people ended up in those communities stuck in ghettos, arriving with modest 0.58

00:07:06.880 levels of education, little or no European language proficiency, and modest levels of skills. And so there was not

00:07:15.800 much social mobility. And I would also say maybe those were less welcoming societies than Canada with

00:07:20.520 their own tradition of pluralism. Here in Canada, post-war, we developed under Dievenbaker in the late

00:07:27.140 50s, and then in 1968, the points system, what we call a human capital model, that selected economic

00:07:34.120 immigrants, at least in part based on having higher levels of education, English, or French language

00:07:40.820 proficiency, and other criteria that we knew would lead to success. And we had, I think, instead of

00:07:47.040 bringing large numbers of people from one or two countries, or one or two cultures, we had quite a

00:07:52.560 good international mix. That led to better integration, higher levels of education, more social mobility,

00:07:59.340 and generally a positive experience. I'm not saying the immigration situation in Canada was perfect,

00:08:04.520 but I would, you know, every scholar around the world, the data said we were doing very well.

00:08:11.020 Well, I can tell you that when my parents came here in 1968, it took them about

00:08:14.980 four to five years, and they were able to buy a house. They were able to move upwardly in ways that

00:08:21.680 they weren't back in the old country. And that was the story of my whole neighborhood, and they came from 0.99

00:08:27.800 all over in my neighborhood. Exactly that. And in fact, it used to be that selected economic

00:08:35.060 immigrants to Canada were making, in terms of their income, higher than average incomes within 10 years

00:08:43.080 of their arrival, which is pretty amazing social mobility. And also, by the way, I've always said

00:08:48.140 that immigrants are by nature entrepreneurial. The very decision to come to a new country, leave behind 0.98

00:08:52.700 what's familiar, is a risk-taking entrepreneurial decision. So I'm not surprised that historically

00:08:58.860 new immigrants are twice as likely as native-born citizens to start a small business or start a

00:09:04.560 business. Now, having said that, you know, one other point, one other point. Because of that generally

00:09:10.680 positive experience, and I'll be honest, because of our geographic remoteness, which is limited

00:09:17.200 illegal migration that we're seeing huge waves of into the U.S. and Europe, because of those factors,

00:09:24.700 we had a broad public support for immigration. We really stood out in the democratic world,

00:09:29.980 in the developed world, as having the most broad pro-immigration consensus across the political

00:09:35.600 spectrum. Unfortunately, that's over. And that's over because Justin Trudeau took the best system in the

00:09:42.960 world and essentially turned it on its head. He did almost everything wrong on this. And I'm sorry

00:09:47.600 if that sounds partisan, but I, you know, he was my critic. And by the way, when I was immigration

00:09:52.260 minister, he was my liberal critic. And I could tell he never paid any attention to the details.

00:09:58.540 He found that, he found the policy side of this stuff boring. He just would always repeat these

00:10:03.960 liberal cliches and bromides about diversity being our greatest strength. And I think he came to office

00:10:09.800 with the idea that because immigration is good, more must be better. And so he took off the idea

00:10:18.880 that we should have reasonable levels attached to Canada's absorptive capacity, by which I mean your

00:10:25.460 ability to find people good jobs and housing, healthcare, schools for their kids, infrastructure

00:10:30.780 to support growing population. He paid no attention to that, opened the floodgates, doubled the target and

00:10:36.940 the intake on permanent residents and increased by almost 800% the intake of temporary residents who

00:10:43.520 are primarily foreign students and temporary foreign workers. He's now basically shredded the old

00:10:48.160 point system. I can explain how that's happened. Undone a lot of our reforms for integrity, like the

00:10:53.800 asylum system, for example, refugee determination system. We had those numbers down to like, I think,

00:11:00.820 an intake of 10,000 a year. It's now going to be 180,000 refugee claims this year. We had the backlog

00:11:07.900 there down to like a working inventory. We were processing claims in three months. It's now back up

00:11:13.440 to like a three, four year wait time with a quarter of a million people in the backlog. We basically turned

00:11:18.300 the system on its head. And I'm only concerned it's going to get worse with Trump's commitment to

00:11:24.440 mass deportations and up to 20 million illegal foreign nationals in the US. We could see a huge 0.99

00:11:30.700 wave of those trying to make it a Hail Mary pass by coming north.

00:11:36.140 Just to give people an idea of where support was and where it is now, it's not as if everyone thought

00:11:41.880 our immigration system was great. There were still some people that thought, some thought too many,

00:11:47.340 thought some thought too few. But a study by Leger for the Association of Canadian Studies at McGill

00:11:54.460 University in 2019 found that 65% thought that we were bringing just about the right number of

00:12:00.420 immigrants. Now, the same study just done a couple of months ago, same question, same pollster,

00:12:05.560 same organization, 35%. 35%. That's what support has gone down to, from 65% supporting the system

00:12:14.720 to 35%. That's a disaster.

00:12:17.820 Yeah. Perhaps one of the worst legacies of this government will have been taking the most

00:12:23.840 pro-immigration consensus in the developed world, something that was unique, and turning it on its

00:12:28.240 head. And I think that's almost unforgivable. And by the way, what Trudeau has tried to do,

00:12:36.260 in particular in the left in general, is to say, if you ever question immigration policy or super high

00:12:41.560 levels, you're a racist. They call people names. And unfortunately, what that does is push people,

00:12:51.360 it suppressed a real proper debate on the issue, for starters. But secondly, Brian, I can tell you,

00:12:57.500 and the polling proves it, that it is immigrants who are most likely to say they're opposed to high

00:13:04.800 levels of immigration. Why? Because they're the folks who struggle most with, they're at the bottom 1.00

00:13:12.480 of the housing market, right? They don't have an equity stake in the Canadian real estate market.

00:13:18.020 So they're trying to rent and then save, and they can't afford a house. They're at the bottom of the

00:13:23.320 job market. They don't get there. It's harder for them to get their credentials recognized.

00:13:26.380 Or, I'll give you an example, a woman that I work with, immigrant from Lebanon. Her kids were born 0.71

00:13:32.320 and raised in Canada. They're graduating school. One's graduated a year or so. Now, her son's about

00:13:38.100 to graduate. They can't get jobs. They can't get jobs. Youth unemployment through the roof. They

00:13:44.480 can't afford to move out on their own, as many of us did when we either were in school or finished

00:13:49.520 school. And she, you know, I regularly talk to either people that came five years ago, 10 years ago,

00:13:56.360 30 years ago, who are complaining. They screwed up the system. They screwed up the system that brought me

00:14:01.820 here. Brian, even when I was minister, and levels were much lower, like 250,000 permanent residents

00:14:09.140 and one-eighth as many temporaries, I remember doing a big news conference at the Royal York Hotel

00:14:14.780 in downtown Toronto about some of my big immigration reforms. And there must have been 40 journalists.

00:14:19.600 It was on live TV. First question went to the editor of a South Asian newspaper from Brampton.

00:14:27.040 And he said to me, Mr. Kenney, I think he was from Pakistani origin. He said, Mr. Kenney,

00:14:31.060 my 20-year-old son can't find a job. Why are you bringing so many newcomers to Canada when my son can't 1.00

00:14:37.680 find a job? Now, you should have seen, to coin a phrase, the lily-white CBC and Torstar reporters just

00:14:45.820 about needed smelling salts. They were going to pass out. But here's my point. You know this,

00:14:51.600 because you grew up in an immigrant, working-class neighborhood. New Canadians are those who are 0.99

00:14:58.960 most sensitive to unreasonably high levels of immigration. They're the last people to find a 0.96

00:15:04.420 family doctor. It's toughest for them to get housing. It's toughest for them to get a good job.

00:15:10.200 And so they're the most likely to say that numbers should be more manageable. I always used to say,

00:15:16.280 Brian, that Canada is a welcoming and generous country, but there are obviously practical limits

00:15:22.640 to our generosity. We cannot be the world's hospital. Last year, Trudeau added about 1.5 million people

00:15:32.920 to our population in a country that built 220,000 housing units. Now, even if you, I think on average,

00:15:40.520 you say it's 1.5 people in those housing units. So let's say, I don't know, that's, or excuse me,

00:15:49.520 it's 2.3 people per housing unit. So let's be generous and say we're able to, we're building

00:15:54.880 an incremental 500,000 beds. That's, he's still adding three times more to the population than

00:16:02.500 incremental beds in a country that was already facing a housing crisis. This is not actually

00:16:07.880 complicated. This was gross incompetence driven by a, this kind of, kind of gauzy headed liberal

00:16:18.900 ideology. Secondly, I actually think that by running these super high numbers, they imagined they were

00:16:26.440 creating a partisan trap for the conservatives. The conservatives would step in and object to these

00:16:31.060 numbers and the liberals would call them racist. And, and they think we always win that argument when

00:16:35.980 we frame the, our adversaries as racist. Well, guess what? It's new Canadians are saying this is out

00:16:42.700 of control. And many of them are going back to their countries of origin because they can't afford to

00:16:46.960 live in Canada. The GDP per capita numbers are just out. And again, six quarters in a row, I think it's

00:16:54.500 eight out of the last nine quarters. Our GDP per capita is down. This was totally predictable. Brian,

00:17:01.080 let me say in every country that has very high levels of sustained, lower skilled immigration,

00:17:07.800 you see declining per capita GDP. Now I know that sounds like a fancy economic stat that's irrelevant

00:17:15.040 to some, just to some people maybe don't understand why this is important. Per capita GDP means you take

00:17:20.940 the entire size of the Canadian economy. You divide it by the number of people here. And when you have

00:17:26.320 declining, sustained declining per capita GDP, it means you are getting poor as a country. Because of

00:17:32.560 that, we are now at the level of per capita GDP as Mississippi, the poorest of the 50 United States.

00:17:41.060 Well, over the past, since Trudeau came to office nine years ago, I think per capita Canadian GDP over

00:17:48.460 that period has grown by 0.6% in Canada, but grown by 16% in the United States. So we are falling behind

00:17:59.300 dramatically. And it's not just the numbers, but the huge portion of people that he's picked who are

00:18:06.500 low-skilled temporary foreign workers. And people coming on, I hesitate to say foreign students.

00:18:14.700 Because, like, I don't think anybody's going to argue that if Queens brings in somebody to their

00:18:20.640 medical school, this is not a problem. But if you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people

00:18:26.880 doing, like, six-month diplomas at dodgy fly-by-night diploma mills that happen to have some kind of an

00:18:38.180 arrangement in the case of Ontario with community colleges, those kids are not coming primarily for

00:18:47.160 their education. They're coming for a work permit. They're coming because their immigration agents have

00:18:51.940 told them they're going to get permanent residency and then citizenship. They'll be able to sponsor their

00:18:55.760 family. It is a down payment on immigration. It's not about a study permit. And it's turned that

00:19:02.600 whole program on its head. You add all of this together, you've got kids sleeping, 20 to 30 kids

00:19:09.620 sharing apartments, sleeping in shifts, working around the clock. The Indian Consul General in

00:19:15.380 Toronto told me every week he's sending body bags back to India of kids who have taken their lives

00:19:19.920 because of the depression, the economic pressure. They have to send remittances back home. They can't

00:19:25.200 afford to live here. They can't get the permanent residency that they were promised. It is a moral and 0.68

00:19:30.820 humanitarian disaster that the government has also created. Okay. I'm sorry to sound so negative.

00:19:36.860 No, this is why we wanted to talk to you. You actually understand the numbers and the policy.

00:19:42.420 But let's talk about the freight train that's coming at us. Yeah. Because the Donald Trump tariffs

00:19:46.940 are not about an economic policy. It's that they're annoyed that our border mess up, our immigration mess up 0.53

00:19:55.340 is now messing up their system. And when you look at the increase of people going across the Canada-US

00:20:01.980 border from, you know, a few tens of thousands a couple of years ago to 109,000 in 2022, 198,000 in

00:20:12.480 2024. And then you look at 43,000 of them are Indian nationals who came to Canada on some kind of

00:20:20.400 visa and then go across and claim asylum in the U.S. Of course, they're going to have an issue

00:20:26.680 with what we're doing. Cleaning up that mess, in my view, starts with cleaning up our own problems.

00:20:33.800 So we've got a problem with a broken immigration system that's causing problems in our own country 1.00

00:20:38.340 for everyone involved. And it's now causing problems with our closest trading partner and

00:20:45.160 therefore a threat of, if you don't fix your problems, we're going to impose this penalty on

00:20:51.440 you. Yes. And let me say that I kind of look at it differently. Look, the U.S. has a longstanding

00:21:00.680 and legitimate interest in northern border security and border security generally, particularly since

00:21:04.820 9-11. In Canada's defense, we did a lot post-9-11 under the Kretchen and Martin governments and the

00:21:11.620 Harper government to improve border security. We brought in digital passports and biometric visas

00:21:21.240 and an information sharing agreement with the United States. The Harper government in particular

00:21:27.260 really tightened up our asylum system. We've done a lot to improve that. And it's true that I think 0.98

00:21:36.100 like 13,000 foreign nationals are found to be doing land border crossings illegally from Canada to the

00:21:43.000 United States. 198,000. In a year? Yes. Yeah, in a year. Which is like how many come across in a week

00:21:51.520 or a couple of weeks from Mexico? My point is the southern border is the real issue for the United

00:21:57.860 States. And it's a real issue for us. This I do not understand. Why has the government of Canada

00:22:03.700 not gone to Washington to say, you need to tighten up your southern border? Because we're getting way

00:22:10.300 more illegal migration from the U.S. to Canada than vice versa. And it's largely coming from people who 0.68

00:22:17.100 came in from the southern border that overstayed in the U.S. that have failed on their asylum claims

00:22:22.340 and are now asylum shopping by coming to Canada. And by the way, the fentanyl that's hitting our streets

00:22:29.080 and killing people with addiction, most of it is being trans-shipped. The precursor chemicals 1.00

00:22:36.580 typically go from China to Mexico. The product is cooked in labs in Mexico run by the narco 0.99

00:22:43.080 cartels. It's run by coyotes across the U.S. southern border and then trans-shipped across to

00:22:49.120 Canada. Here's my point. We have an interest in the success of the Trump administration

00:22:54.140 in closing the U.S. border from illegal migration and drug trafficking. We should be working with

00:23:02.100 him and work with the United States on that. And I think that would give us more credibility

00:23:06.180 when it comes to protecting our interests. You know, the issues that Trump is now talking

00:23:11.280 about have been raised by the Biden administration previously. Now, in a much more diplomatic form,

00:23:16.640 because that's the way the Biden administration operates, as opposed to Trump showing up with a

00:23:21.020 baseball bat and saying, hey, here's my problem, fix it or you get this. But they're a problem for

00:23:27.480 both administrations. The Trudeau government has no interest in doing the heavy lifting on policy,

00:23:33.220 though, is my view. I talked to several people from several provinces who were on the call with

00:23:39.980 the prime minister, talking about this with the premiers, and they all came away frustrated. And not

00:23:47.540 all of them are opposed to this government. But they're all frustrated that, okay, the premiers

00:23:53.420 had to call for a meeting. Doug Ford basically publicly shamed Trudeau into calling a meeting.

00:24:01.300 And then when Trudeau shows up after putting the meeting off for a day, there's no plan. And then

00:24:07.160 we read in the Globe and Mail, two anonymous liberals saying, we'll have plans out in front of you in

00:24:14.200 the weeks and months to come. That's a problem. Yeah, it's a huge problem. And the reason Trump

00:24:23.280 made this statement earlier this week is that he wants rapid action on this. He wants to come to

00:24:30.000 office with already real momentum on border security, on drug interdiction. And you know what? He has every

00:24:39.560 right to demand. That's his mandate. Now, I think it would be catastrophically bad for the U.S. economy

00:24:44.380 to impose a 25% tariff on imports from Canada. I need to remind you, Brian, and perhaps Justin Trudeau

00:24:53.640 could remind him, that 60% of U.S. oil imports come from Canada, five times more than from all of the

00:25:03.220 OPEC countries combined. Mr. Trump won this election on a promise to cut gas prices in half.

00:25:11.600 If he imposes a 25% tariff on the single largest source of U.S. oil imports, he'll be increasing

00:25:18.240 and not cutting fuel prices for Americans. So it makes no sense for the American economy,

00:25:24.580 for him politically, obviously. But the Trudeau government needs to demonstrate it is serious

00:25:31.340 about these issues. And I don't think it has, we're starting with any credibility in Washington

00:25:37.500 on that. The oil exports are roughly 18.4 million barrels a day. Works out to current spot prices for

00:25:46.880 Western Canadian Select at about $57. Yeah, about a billion a day. Adding on the 25% tariff would

00:25:55.940 actually put Western Canadian Select at a higher price than West Texas Intermediate. So that would

00:26:02.760 definitely push up the price. But I said earlier, I don't think he's doing this for economic reasons.

00:26:08.640 He wants to do this to get a result on the border. And while the economic argument of how much we trade

00:26:15.200 with them is a good one that we always have to remind them, if that's your only argument, it's a bit

00:26:20.440 like, well, your wife's really angry at you that you keep leaving your socks on the couch at night.

00:26:24.840 And you say, but honey, don't you see how clean the garage is? Well, she's still going to be angry 1.00

00:26:29.040 about the socks. So let's deal with the socks. And it'll help both of us.

00:26:34.620 Well, look, I agree, obviously. But the bigger issue that both Canada and the United States are

00:26:45.700 suffering from is the open southern border. The fentanyl, by the way, the amount of fentanyl

00:26:54.280 exports from Canada, United States is negligible, negligible. The amount of fentanyl imports coming

00:27:01.000 from Mexico through the United States to Canada is enormous. Here's my point. If we're serious about

00:27:07.020 protecting our own people, we should be joining up with the Trump administration to demand that

00:27:11.900 Mexico cooperate in cracking down on the narco gangs and on border security.

00:27:16.860 It would give us more credibility. We need to take a quick break. But when we come back, Jason,

00:27:20.560 I want to ask you about the change in multiculturalism, because the change between how

00:27:25.440 you as Minister of Multiculturalism, as the Harper government viewed it, vastly different from what's

00:27:31.460 going on with the Trudeau government now. More in moments.

00:27:35.160 One of the other interesting aspects of the breakdown and support for our immigration system 0.99

00:27:41.960 is perhaps, in my view, the way that the Trudeau government looks at multiculturalism,

00:27:47.720 as opposed to the way that you looked at multiculturalism, Jason, the way the Harper

00:27:52.280 government looked at it writ large. There's nobody standing up for Canadian values anymore,

00:27:58.500 unless that value is diversity is our strength. I mean, other than that, what is the Canadian value

00:28:04.560 from the Trudeau government? It's about multilateralism. It's about international

00:28:10.040 institutions. It's about the rules-based order. And diversity is our strength.

00:28:14.260 Yeah. You know what? Imagine you're a new Canadian. Like, you know, Brian, folks like you and I who won

00:28:20.340 the lottery by being born in this country, I think we take a lot of things for granted. But imagine

00:28:26.840 you're new to this country. You just arrived five years ago during the Trudeau administration.

00:28:30.800 And you start listening to your leader talk about the country. What does he say about Canada?

00:28:37.880 That we are not just a genocidal state historically, but engaged in an active genocide. That's his actual

00:28:45.080 position, by the way. That we are irredeemably racist with systemic racism deeply embedded in our

00:28:55.620 institutions. We are essentially an evil expression of colonialism, which needs to

00:29:04.140 deracinate all of these institutions that are rooted in its colonial past. And that we have no 0.77

00:29:12.720 core identity. We're the first postmodern society with no core identity. And like, why would you want

00:29:20.280 to be proud of such a place? Why would you want to encourage your kids to go and, I don't know,

00:29:25.720 maybe serve in the military, serve our country or, you know, a country which had its flag at half

00:29:32.640 mast for half a year, where you have municipal councils canceling Canada Day celebrations because

00:29:39.600 we're supposed to be ashamed of instead of proud of Canada. This is what the left has done to our

00:29:45.200 national identity. And I think it's outrageous. You know, in a country that maintains high sustained

00:29:53.640 levels of immigration, it is especially important that you have certain symbols, values, institutions

00:30:02.820 grounded in its history, which are unifying, which are points of unity. And we do have those.

00:30:09.240 By the way, Brian, it is not a coincidence that people around the world dream of becoming Canadians.

00:30:16.160 It's because they want to benefit from a society predicated on certain institutions and values like

00:30:23.280 equality of all before the law, parliamentary democratic institutions, the rule of law, free enterprise,

00:30:35.140 private property rights, pluralism, and so on. Do you know how many people I know were the first in

00:30:43.300 their family ever to own property when they came to Canada? Exactly. That was the case in my family,

00:30:50.320 to own land. I mean, you didn't do that in so many parts of the world unless you were super wealthy. And

00:30:57.320 then we all come to Canada and we get to learn that. But somehow Canada is now the problem.

00:31:04.280 Right. That wasn't the case. And that's not what you, when you were going out and you earned the

00:31:09.340 nickname, Minister of Curry in a Hurry, I mean, who was it at these events that was telling you

00:31:16.120 Canada is a white settler colonial nation that we need to engage in decolonization? Were you getting 0.84

00:31:23.480 that? Overwhelmingly, high social economic status, Caucasian, overeducated Canadians with luxury 1.00

00:31:30.400 beliefs. When I say luxury beliefs, you're a struggling newcomer to Canada, coming from perhaps

00:31:36.220 a developing country, perhaps a country characterized by corruption, kleptocracy, state,

00:31:41.840 abusive state authority. You come here to work hard and get ahead in a fair country, right?

00:31:49.840 You're so focused on, you're so happy with that opportunity and so focused on the hard work

00:31:54.800 in front of you. You don't have time to get obsessed with these luxury beliefs of the intersectional

00:32:03.140 left who are obsessed. By the way, you've seen now, I've lost track of how many liberals have

00:32:09.160 been caught inventing fake indigeneity, fake indigenous identity. Why do they do this? Because 0.99

00:32:15.520 in the pecking order of intersectionality, you know, where kind of social status is attached

00:32:22.440 to your perceived minority status or your victim status, they all want a piece of that, right? 0.63

00:32:29.260 When I became Minister of Multiculturalism, Brian, I looked at the program, the Multiculturalism

00:32:34.420 program run by Ottawa, the grants that we were giving. Overwhelmingly, they were grants, and this is

00:32:40.240 going back to like the 2007-8 period, to left-wing organizations to go into schools to teach kids

00:32:48.880 that they are either the unwitting perpetrators of white supremacy, colonialism, and the structures

00:32:55.500 of privilege. That's what they teach, I guess, Caucasian kids. Imagine teaching a Ukrainian refugee 1.00

00:33:01.780 child that because of this color of his skin. And then they would teach other kids that they are

00:33:07.540 the unwitting victims of these structures of colonialism, white supremacy, and oppression.

00:33:15.180 Why in the world would you want to go into a diverse society like Canada that works pretty 1.00

00:33:20.320 well and teach everybody to distrust each other? Teach people that they are somehow involved

00:33:25.660 in some cosmic racial struggle? This is nuts. That's where the left is coming from, and unfortunately

00:33:31.300 the Trudeau, I defunded all of that. We refocused the multiculturalism program on promoting civic

00:33:38.080 literacy, by which I meant an appreciation for our historically grounded identity and common values,

00:33:43.260 how we develop these institutions, patriotism, God forbid, when's the last time we heard people

00:33:48.160 talk about patriotism.

00:33:49.660 Well, it's negative.

00:33:50.820 Yeah, building, exactly, building bridges between communities with a history of conflict. So we had

00:33:55.260 programs to bring together, like, let's say, Canadian youth of Sinhalese and Tamil origin,

00:33:59.580 Sikh and Hindu origin, Jewish and Muslim, and so forth. And we tried to do positive things like

00:34:06.540 this. And we also promoted, as you know, civic literacy in deepening the citizenship program.

00:34:13.380 We increased it by one year, the duration before you could become a citizen from three to four years.

00:34:19.680 We brought in a much more rigorous language proficiency test, because if you don't speak

00:34:23.040 the language, you can't fully participate in the society. We massively increased the knowledge

00:34:29.500 requirement. You might remember our new citizenship study guide, Discover Canada,

00:34:32.940 which gave a very balanced, I think, and substantive knowledge of Canadian history.

00:34:39.660 And we did all of these things. And then Trudeau, of course, pulled all of it out. We've gone back to

00:34:44.760 billions of dollars of grants being given to radical left organizations to teach people effectively

00:34:50.460 to hate the country, its institutions, and its history, and to distrust one another.

00:34:54.380 It is, it's going to take a long time to turn that around.

00:34:58.940 I'll even say this, and I'll give you an example, that the left tends to fetishize

00:35:03.840 immigrants in some very bizarre ways. That, you know, they're all good, and they're all coming 1.00

00:35:11.800 from great places, and I don't know why they're coming to this horrible land. Here's one example.

00:35:16.540 An immigration group, probably while you were a minister, an immigration group in Gatineau, Quebec,

00:35:21.680 put out a pamphlet, things you should know when you come to Canada. And one of them included,

00:35:27.140 don't bribe police officers or public officials, because in Canada, you can go to jail for that.

00:35:33.780 Well, the group was denounced as horribly racist. How dare you say that people in other countries

00:35:38.520 have bribes? And I'm standing there with one of the camera ops at the Old Sun News, Andre.

00:35:45.420 You might remember Andre from Parliament Hill, Russian guy. And he said,

00:35:49.640 that was the best advice I got when I came to Canada. Don't offer bribes. He said,

00:35:53.760 in Russia, if we didn't bribe people, nothing happened. If you wanted, you went to the government

00:35:58.500 office to get something, you better be slipping some cash, or it ain't going to happen. He didn't

00:36:03.720 know that that was frowned upon in Canada until somebody told him.

00:36:07.980 Exactly. By the way, we also said in Discover Canada, the citizenship guide that I published,

00:36:12.920 that Canada's tolerance and diversity do not extend to certain barbaric cultural practices,

00:36:18.920 including female genital mutilation, forced marriages, so-called honor crimes, et cetera.

00:36:28.120 Justin Trudeau came out as my critic and condemned this because he thought it was insensitive.

00:36:33.000 But I'll tell you, Brian, the vast majority of newcomers who come to Canada do not come here to 1.00

00:36:38.480 recreate the worst aspects of their cultures of origin, but to leave those things behind. 0.50

00:36:44.120 And we have an obligation as a welcoming society to openly and thoughtfully convey what we mean by

00:36:55.460 Canadian values, one of which is the equality of men and women, one of which is that we don't 0.99

00:37:04.700 tolerate abusing people because of so-called honor crimes. If that's your culture, hey,

00:37:12.580 how about you try not to bring those kinds of aberrant practices to Canada? It is, I think,

00:37:20.940 incumbent on us to say those things charitably, but truthfully.

00:37:25.980 So assuming that the polls are correct, the Trudeau government's on its last legs. We'll see how long

00:37:31.560 they can keep standing. Maybe they fall in the spring. Maybe we go all the way to October.

00:37:36.040 But let's say the polls are accurate and Pierre Polyev becomes the next prime minister.

00:37:40.880 We have no idea who he put into this file, but where does the heavy lifting have to begin to fix all

00:37:47.400 this? Well, given that you've done some of it in the past, where do you start to fix this and make it

00:37:56.400 so that Canadians aren't becoming as skeptical of immigration as their southern neighbors?

00:38:02.300 Well, fortunately, there is a roadmap in that Canada did have a very, there was a cross-partisan

00:38:08.440 consensus about what we called a human capital model for immigration. The Harper government in

00:38:13.580 particular led very positive reforms that were endorsed by newcomers in elections. So I think

00:38:18.620 there's both a political and a policy map to follow. But first, you're going to have to clean up

00:38:24.700 the damage done by Trudeau. Now, that involves, for example, the fact that by next year, we'll have

00:38:33.300 nearly 5 million foreign nationals on temporary visas expiring or have expired in Canada. So we're

00:38:42.060 going to be facing, we already have, we don't know how many people here overstayed illegally whose

00:38:46.960 visas have expired. We will have millions more falling out of legal status. Now, many, I hope

00:38:55.560 most of those people will do the right thing and voluntarily go back to their countries of origin. 0.87

00:38:59.020 And some of them always plan to. But do you really think all 4.9 million are going to do that? Mark

00:39:05.640 Miller does. Particularly because many of the foreign students that came did so on the commitment they

00:39:12.720 got from often dodgy immigration consultants who they paid huge amounts of money to, that somehow

00:39:18.080 their one or two year study permit with an attached work permit was going to lead to the gold standard

00:39:24.960 of international migration, which is Canadian permanent residency and the right to sponsor

00:39:28.500 their families. So they're going to, many of them will stay here. And because of the dysfunction of

00:39:33.080 the system, they'll say, and by the way, the word is already on the street, being promoted by the

00:39:38.440 immigration consultants and all these WhatsApp discussion groups that if you, they're not going

00:39:43.160 to be removing people because the CBSA, the Canada Border Services Agency, which is responsible for

00:39:48.380 immigration enforcement, border security, they last year, they're only resourced to remove about 13,000

00:39:55.120 people a year. So if we're talking about millions of people here illegally, and then you add on to that,

00:40:02.380 the potential massive flow of illegal migrants in the United States trying to avoid Trump's mass

00:40:10.200 deportations, upwards of 20 million people. Now, I think we could be looking at hundreds of thousands,

00:40:17.840 or God forbid, potentially millions of so-called illegal aliens in the United States that will try

00:40:25.840 to head north, particularly of Justin Trudeau as prime minister. So we may be headed towards a really

00:40:32.220 catastrophic situation. This will not be easy for a poly of government. They're going to have to,

00:40:37.640 in my view, significantly increase removal resources for the CBSA. There's no way they can

00:40:44.380 remove millions of people. But if we show that we're at least remotely serious about enforcement,

00:40:49.660 that does send a dissuasive message for more people to come here, okay, illegally. Clean up the 0.95

00:40:55.220 asylum system in the same way that we had done in the Harper administration. Where necessary,

00:40:59.600 imposed visas, the Trudeau government, as you recall, they lifted the visa on Mexico. Tens of

00:41:04.920 thousands of largely unfounded asylum claims came from there. So there's a whole series of things

00:41:10.040 that have to be done together in a coordinated way to send a message. But still, I'm concerned it

00:41:16.720 will take years to clean up the sort of backlog of challenges that they've created.

00:41:21.500 I remember you going to deal with, we had two problems at the same time, huge influx of fake

00:41:29.280 asylum claims from Mexico, and also the Roma. We were not allowed to call them gypsies, but who did 1.00

00:41:35.100 you go see to solve it? You went and visited the Gypsy King, not the band, not the multiple Gypsy 1.00

00:41:40.360 Kings. I'm a fan of that band, by the way. You went to go see the Gypsy King in, I believe, Hungary, 0.99

00:41:46.960 wasn't it? Yeah, in Miskolc, Hungary. That's right. Yeah. And so we had to impose visas on both of 0.66

00:41:53.980 these countries just to be able to deal with it. What does that entail? Explain that for people that

00:41:58.900 haven't dealt with that before. Well, if you come to Canada and you make a, you get a step off the

00:42:05.420 plane, you come up to a port of entry, you say to the CBSA officer, I am experiencing persecution.

00:42:12.600 They say, fill out this form. You then become an asylum claimant. You are then entitled to a

00:42:20.680 publicly funded housing. Right now, that means they'll put you up in a hotel. You get access to

00:42:25.100 free, unlimited, publicly funded healthcare. You get income support, welfare effectively. You get an

00:42:31.060 open work permit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And because the system is now so overwhelmed,

00:42:37.980 44 months. Look at your application for years. 44 months right now. Oh, are you kidding me? No,

00:42:45.040 no. It's like two, three years to get to the IRB. 44 months. So that's almost four years.

00:42:50.380 Right, right. Exactly. 44. I think you said four months. And then even if they, you finally get to

00:42:56.660 the Immigration Refugee Board and they say, I'm sorry, you're telling me that because you're gay and

00:43:02.060 from Mexico, you're facing persecution. But by the way, you've got four kids with your wife,

00:43:09.500 A, B. There is millions of people go to the Mexico City Gay Pride Parade and they have gay marriage.

00:43:16.080 Like, what are you talking about? So they say, no, no, I'm sorry, that's not a well-founded claim.

00:43:21.000 Then you make an appeal and then you lose your appeal and then you go to the federal court and then you

00:43:26.120 make a humanitarian and compassionate application. You can string it out for years. And what are you doing

00:43:31.460 the whole time? Assuming that eventually they'll kind of lose track of you or you'll finally just

00:43:36.140 get waved into the country. So the incentives are very strong for people to make those kinds of

00:43:41.180 claims, which is why you need to use lots of multiple tools in the toolbox, one of which is

00:43:45.620 visas. So you can actually do a qualitative screen of people who are more likely to make claims of that

00:43:51.420 nature. And just say, you're not welcome in the country. You can't come here before you get on the

00:43:57.180 plane. Lots of countries as a Canadian, you go to, you need to get a visa.

00:44:01.460 Or at least electronic travel authorization. This is not, this is normal. It's not inhumane.

00:44:05.980 It's not, it's not, it's a terrible thing. It's just a normal way of controlling border

00:44:10.740 integrity. And one thing I can tell you is that a condition precedent of maintaining public support

00:44:16.580 for legal immigration is that you have a rules-based system that prevents to the greatest extent

00:44:24.760 possible large-scale illegal migration. Where you have a situation like in the U.S.,

00:44:29.840 millions or Europe, millions of illegal migrants arriving every year, you have very little public

00:44:38.220 support for legal immigration. So I would say to pro-immigration Canadians, if you'll want to

00:44:43.920 maintain or rebuild public support for legal immigration, we need to reestablish the integrity

00:44:52.120 of our system. That means things like visas. It means a faster, more efficient asylum system.

00:44:58.360 It means greater immigration security screening, et cetera.

00:45:02.820 Well, this is going to be the hot topic for the next several years, I believe. Because of the Trump

00:45:09.940 tariff threats, because of the Trump deportation threat, and what you just described, that we could

00:45:16.200 be facing a huge influx north. This is going to be a massive story in Canada for the next several 0.55

00:45:22.340 years. So I'm glad that you're coming out of hibernation and starting to offer your thoughts.

00:45:27.700 Really appreciate your time today, Jason.

00:45:29.920 Thank you, Brian. It was a pleasure.

00:45:32.280 Full Comment is a post-media podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host. This episode was produced

00:45:37.040 by Andre Pru. Theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. Remember,

00:45:41.980 you can subscribe to Full Comment, and please do, whether it's on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

00:45:46.740 the new YouTube podcast platform, wherever you are. Help us out. Leave a review, give us a rating,

00:45:52.460 and tell your friends about us. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

Full Comment - December 02, 2024

Trudeau did ‘almost everything wrong’ on immigration. It’s about to get worse

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript