Trudeau did ‘almost everything wrong’ on immigration. It’s about to get worse
Episode Stats
Summary
Jason Kenney has been in politics for a long time. He served as immigration minister in the Harper government for many years, and then served as premier of Alberta for a few years. Now, he s in the private sector, and has some thoughts on immigration.
Transcript
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.
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
00:01:55.020
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
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
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.
00:02:49.980
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
00:04:35.380
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
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
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
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
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
00:12:17.820
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
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
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
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
00:14:58.960
most sensitive to unreasonably high levels of immigration. They're the last people to find a
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:22:36.580
typically go from China to Mexico. The product is cooked in labs in Mexico run by the narco
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
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
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
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
00:31:23.480
that? Overwhelmingly, high social economic status, Caucasian, overeducated Canadians with luxury
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
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?
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
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
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
00:33:50.820
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
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
00:36:38.480
recreate the worst aspects of their cultures of origin, but to leave those things behind.
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
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.
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
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
00:41:35.100
you go see to solve it? You went and visited the Gypsy King, not the band, not the multiple Gypsy
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,
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
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
00:45:22.340
years. So I'm glad that you're coming out of hibernation and starting to offer your thoughts.
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.