Juno News - Auditor General SLAMS Carney government over student visa fraud (w⧸ Brian Lilley)

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is the Candace Malcolm Show. Today is Tuesday, March 24th,

00:00:06.660 2026. We have a great episode for you today. And folks, today's episode is brought to you

00:00:10.740 by Berna, but more on them a little bit later. Okay. So yesterday, the federal auditor general

00:00:16.220 released an absolute bombshell of a report. Conservatives are calling it a dumpster fire

00:00:21.660 because it exposes the incredible fraud and mismanagement of our international student

00:00:26.860 program. So the report was released yesterday on March 23rd, and it found that the government has

00:00:32.860 a lack of capacity to investigate fraud in the system. Some 98% of fraud cases that were flagged

00:00:39.700 by the government for being fraudulent are not investigated. In other words, we turn a blind eye

00:00:44.440 to fraud in our system. We allow the system to just be out of control, used by some of the worst

00:00:49.460 forces in the world, and we don't do anything about it. The report found that between 2023 and 2024,

00:00:54.320 Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada, so that is the Department of Immigration,

00:00:59.120 identified over 153,000 cases of international students potentially non-compliant with study

00:01:07.060 permit conditions and had no funding to investigate these. So only 2,000 of them

00:01:13.340 were actually investigated. Let me repeat that because it is so stunning. Over 153,000 cases

00:01:19.380 that the government suspected were fraudulent and only 2,000 of them were actually investigated.

00:01:26.140 What an absolute joke. What an absolute joke of a country we live in. The audit noted that between

00:01:30.820 2023 and 2024, the Immigration Department launched 4,057 investigations into students

00:01:36.880 that did not comply to their visa. Now, speaking at a press conference in Ottawa, Canada's Auditor

00:01:42.560 General, Karen Hogan, noted that just 4,000 investigations, nearly half of the investigations

00:01:48.240 were closed due to students just not responding.

00:01:51.940 They just didn't want to be investigated.

00:01:53.380 So we just stopped investigating them.

00:01:55.000 Let's roll that clip. 0.89

00:01:55.960 But I think when you look at integrity,

00:01:57.460 while there were some adjustments made

00:01:59.800 to improve the integrity of the program,

00:02:02.600 what's concerning for me is that

00:02:04.420 the department is enacting on the information that it has.

00:02:08.000 There are so many things that were raised

00:02:09.740 by the department themselves,

00:02:11.120 and then no follow through.

00:02:13.920 So for example, the 153,000 cases

00:02:17.740 of students who were potentially identified as not following the terms of their permit.

00:02:22.240 While only 4,000 were investigated, within those 4,000, about half of them were closed

00:02:27.860 because the students stopped communicating with the Immigration Department.

00:02:31.320 I would expect that they'll take that all the way through.

00:02:33.960 That should be happening no matter where you are in the reforms.

00:02:37.260 That should be acting on the data you have to preserve the integrity of programs.

00:02:41.640 Should be something that's worried about at the start when you get an application,

00:02:44.860 throughout the application, and then when the application or the permit has expired.

00:02:49.820 This is totally unbelievable. Okay, so the audit found that 93% of the students whose visas were

00:02:56.060 expired, this is pointed out by Kirk Lubinov on X, they were allowed to stay in the country,

00:03:01.220 and 60% didn't leave. This is what Kirk Lubinov had to say, absolutely insane. The Liberal

00:03:05.040 government found and let 509,000 people with expired study permits stay in Canada. 39,500 had

00:03:12.720 no immigration status at all. That's just a finding for one year. Okay, it's just really

00:03:18.620 not a good day for the government. Speaking on CBC, yes, this is the CBC on power and politics.

00:03:23.260 Former Harper advisor Amanda Galbraith said that this entire thing is a dumpster fire. I couldn't

00:03:27.440 put it any better myself. Let's roll that clip. Amanda, the report confirms what many observers

00:03:32.840 have been saying for a long time, that that post-COVID international student program

00:03:36.980 was frankly a bit of a mess.

00:03:40.080 Yeah, I think a dumpster fire is a kind way to describe what is before us here.

00:03:45.120 I mean, 150,000 cases, you know, like the system throws up red flags.

00:03:50.200 They make two phone calls, nobody says anything, and the government just ignores it.

00:03:53.600 And respectfully, if the minister is one saying,

00:03:56.360 I've only been in the job for a fraction of this audit, so don't point the finger at me,

00:04:00.440 like you've been part of, there's a liberal government that's been in place for over a decade.

00:04:03.800 Like, it is at their feet.

00:04:05.360 Here is Canada's Immigration Minister, Lina Diab. This is one of the most ineffective, terrible communicators I've ever seen in politics. But here is Minister Lina Diab saying that the government just didn't have any capacity and that they will start doing things better starting now. Just let them completely start again. You know, pretend that the Liberals haven't been in power for the last 10 years. Pretend that it was someone totally different that created this problem. Starting now, we're going to be flagging more and doing more. Let's roll that clip. This is thought three.

00:04:33.820 Why does your department have so little capacity to investigate non-compliant potential fraudulent cases?

00:04:41.320 And what tangible things are you going to commit to today to improve that?

00:04:45.600 So we will be centralizing the investigation.

00:04:49.040 We will be streamlining anyone that is flagged.

00:04:53.640 We will be doing more reporting and we will be information sharing with CBSA

00:04:59.760 of any students that are not compliant or that are not currently students notice how she keeps

00:05:07.080 saying will be again like why weren't you doing that from day one it makes no sense reporters

00:05:11.140 tried to press the immigration minister further on this failure and lena dayab just walked away

00:05:15.880 she walked away michelle rumple took the opportunity to jump in and again call this 1.00

00:05:19.780 whole thing a dumpster fire let's roll that clip pass their visa maybe mr ananda sangra you can

00:05:24.160 answer this it's about the cbsa i'd like to say something i i have i i'm even less confident now

00:05:31.260 in the system than i was after watching that here's the reality the minister has had this

00:05:35.480 report for some time that's how auditor general's reports go the fact that she's coming out here and 0.84

00:05:40.340 cannot um come up with a few key clear deliverables to change the system and ensure that all of these

00:05:48.920 cases are being uh reviewed is crazy to me um but also like some of the things she said was were

00:05:54.740 just wrong like for example she said that some of these um permits were extended but they got pr

00:06:01.120 that's not the same thing uh to me the fact that the minister had this report um did not do anything

00:06:07.420 about it and came with those lack of answers uh it's going to make more canadians have a lack of

00:06:12.840 faith in the system and frankly it's going to tell canadians that the people who are in control of

00:06:16.480 the immigration system are the fraudsters, not the government. So we will be holding the minister 0.95

00:06:21.360 to account on this with more proposals. Thank you. 100% true. Wow, what a mess. What a just

00:06:27.520 terrible, embarrassing mess. To help me break this all down and to understand a bit more,

00:06:31.860 I'm pleased to welcome my friend Brian Lilly to the program. Brian Lilly, as you know,

00:06:35.480 is a columnist, political columnist over at the Toronto Sun and the host of the Full Comment

00:06:40.560 podcast. He also has a sub stack over at BrianLilly.com. Brian, welcome to the show.

00:06:44.920 thanks for being here you know you're almost speechless looking at how incompetent this is

00:06:51.000 candace and you and i both know the immigration system you and i both worked in ottawa um i

00:06:56.440 covered it you worked for a while in the immigration ministry uh how do you become this incompetent 0.50

00:07:05.560 this is a system that the rest of the world used to admire used to say let's go and copy

00:07:10.840 And now whether we're talking about this student fraud, our much abused asylum system, the health care program that for asylum seekers that used to cost $60 million now costs a billion.

00:07:26.840 You look at the expansion of the temporary foreign workers program, the utter abuse of the permanent residency program.

00:07:37.080 Every single part of this is broken.

00:07:40.820 And I want to highlight something that Michelle Remble-Garner said there.

00:07:45.380 She said the ministers had this Auditor General's report for some time.

00:07:48.920 She absolutely has.

00:07:50.260 If you read AG reports, what you see is what they found, and then the auditors go back

00:07:56.940 to the department, including to the minister's office, and say, okay, here's all the problems.

00:08:02.540 What is your response?

00:08:04.300 How will you fix it?

00:08:05.220 And sometimes they say, well, no, we disagree, rarely, but sometimes they may disagree.

00:08:09.900 But they almost always have a response.

00:08:12.100 And that minister, Lena Diab, who is the least competent minister that I've ever seen in my 25 years of covering politics, couldn't answer. 0.50

00:08:21.680 She couldn't answer at committee.

00:08:22.900 She couldn't answer in the House.

00:08:24.360 She couldn't answer to reporters.

00:08:26.260 I can't believe that she's still in her job.

00:08:29.260 I completely agree.

00:08:30.500 I almost feel bad for her when she's talking because it does seem like she's totally out of her depth and that she's not briefed properly.

00:08:36.180 She doesn't have the support of the other ministers.

00:08:39.060 And like, let's just back up a little and make it clear that she has not been the immigration minister during the period that we're talking about.

00:08:46.220 Right. That was Trudeau. That was Trudeau's guys, including Mark Miller and Sean Fraser.

00:08:51.640 Shockingly, they're still ministers. Actually, they've been promoted and they have bigger files now.

00:08:56.900 Right. And so I want to just take this back because yesterday we reported on the show that Blackhawks reporter and our friend Holly Dole,

00:09:02.980 uh don't sorry uh she broke this story about how policies enacted by two successive immigration

00:09:09.040 ministers cost thousands of canadian students their jobs according to a federal memo department

00:09:14.140 of employment for the first time admitted that the 18 jobless rate for canadian students was due

00:09:20.580 in large numbers in large part to the large numbers of foreign students this contradicts

00:09:26.620 the statements at the time made by ministers sean fraser and mark miller so holly was out there

00:09:31.320 on social media yesterday. She quote tweeted this article from the Toronto Star. Toronto Star is

00:09:38.180 even reporting this. Canada's international student program blasted by Auditor General for failing to

00:09:42.620 address integrity concerns. And Holly tweeted it saying, you know, the Toronto Star, you missed

00:09:47.200 the point here. Yes, the report was bad. But the main thing is that it contradicts the Trudeau

00:09:52.760 ministers at the time. So at the time in 2022, Sean Fraser said it's good for the economy. And

00:09:57.860 Mark Miller says, I don't think international students are taking away or jobs away from other

00:10:03.500 people. Oh, he doesn't think. Pierre Polyev jumped in and made another important point here.

00:10:10.460 Conservative leader Pierre Polyev says, the two most incompetent and destructive ministers in my

00:10:15.200 lifetime who brought our immigration system from the best to the worst were promoted in Carney's

00:10:20.840 cabinet. Nothing has changed. A liberal is a liberal. And I do think it's important because

00:10:24.640 I agree that Lina Diab is, you know, she's being thrown under the bus in many ways. She's being 0.98

00:10:28.960 here to take responsibility for these other guys who are now even more senior. And this is part of

00:10:33.940 the problem with the whole liberal government under Mark Carney, Brian, which is that we're

00:10:37.760 supposed to believe that we've got some change, that things are different now, that we've got

00:10:41.040 the new guy and he's very competent. The old guy wasn't very good, but he's gone. And now Mark

00:10:45.100 Carney's here to make everything better. But the reality is it's being run by the same people. It's

00:10:49.080 the same government with the same ideas, the same worldview, and they're not really making the

00:10:52.860 changes. What do you think? Well, I think that's absolutely correct. And if you back up, there were

00:10:58.560 two policies, and I outlined this in my Toronto Sun column, two policy changes that the Liberals

00:11:03.620 made in 2022, that by April 2024, Justin Trudeau was saying, we brought in people faster than we

00:11:12.660 can absorb them. And then he also, he pointed out that these, the fact that we were bringing in so

00:11:22.140 many people so quickly, including on the temporary foreign workers side, was driving down wages. So

00:11:27.100 those changes. April 2022, the Liberal government in Ottawa decides, you know what? We don't need

00:11:34.740 these guardrails around temporary foreign workers. At some point in a long-serving government,

00:11:40.660 the temporary foreign worker program becomes a hot button, especially when unemployment goes

00:11:44.500 up. But in April 2022, the unemployment rate nationally was about 5%. And for young people

00:11:50.840 between 15 and 24, it was 10%. And it stayed that way throughout the whole year. But in April 2022,

00:11:57.860 they got rid of the guardrails. It used to be you couldn't get a temporary foreign worker.

00:12:03.300 This is outside of agriculture. But to work, you know, if you wanted to hire someone at Juneau,

00:12:08.000 who was a temporary foreign worker, and where you are had unemployment above 6%, you couldn't get

00:12:14.480 them. They got rid of that. They went from saying you could only have 10% of your workforce be a

00:12:19.960 temporary foreign worker to saying it can be 20. And in some industries, including hospitality,

00:12:26.940 so we're talking about the Tim Hortons and the A&Ws, you can have 30% of your workforce be

00:12:32.400 temporary foreign workers. They completely took the guardrails off. They put the temporary foreign 1.00

00:12:37.260 workers program on steroids. That's April 2022. Then you fast forward to November 2022. And they

00:12:45.740 do the same with international students they say you know what employers are telling us they can't

00:12:50.460 get people to work why maybe you're still giving them serb um and and so the uh the government says

00:12:59.900 international students no longer have a cap of working just 20 hours per week they they have a

00:13:06.700 full work permit now they added hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people to the the labor 0.99

00:13:13.900 force who are not canadian are not permanent residents and we had more than a million people

00:13:19.340 i think it was about a million five that were unemployed across the country at that time

00:13:26.300 then what does that letter that the the memo uh the briefing memo for the secretary of state for

00:13:32.380 youth and children say that starting in early 2023 the job market deteriorated for young people

00:13:39.500 and it's still deteriorated and yet we're expanding the temporary foreign workers program

00:13:45.280 again in certain rural areas. I asked the ministry yesterday, I emailed the minister's office and

00:13:53.600 said, this is Patty Hajdu's office, and I said, you say this is certain eligible rural regions,

00:14:00.700 can you tell me where? And they said, oh, when's your deadline? I said, you announced this 10 days

00:14:06.020 ago. You must know where this is going to apply. And they said, we need some time. They got back

00:14:10.800 to me at about 9, 9.30 this morning with a vague, these are some parameters that we will look at,

00:14:17.780 but they don't even know where it's applying. So this is a total meltdown of our immigration 0.96

00:14:22.760 system, abuse of our temporary foreign workers. And our asylum system has become gone from

00:14:29.400 protecting groups like the Karens, which was a group that persecuted in Burma, now called Myanmar,

00:14:38.120 that Canada went in and took a bunch of these people who were in refugee camps and resettled

00:14:42.060 them or resettling Syrians who were fleeing the war and resettling them. We've gone from that to 0.97

00:14:49.240 people showing up at Pearson Airport or Vancouver and saying, oh, I'm declaring asylum. Or you're

00:14:56.460 here for a year and you say, oh, my student visa is about to end. I'm declaring asylum. I'm sorry, 0.94

00:15:02.460 you're from Mexico or Hungary or India or the USA. You are not getting asylum. You shouldn't. 0.53

00:15:09.280 I'll say the Carney government's trying to do some very minor tweaks to the system

00:15:13.140 to tighten it up. And the United Nations has now come out denouncing those changes and saying they

00:15:18.660 will violate our international covenants. I mean, it's unbelievable. Our entire system is built on

00:15:24.800 just so much trust. And the reality is that there's just so many people out there that

00:15:28.900 are not trustworthy, that are trying to take advantage of our generosity. And the fraud in

00:15:33.360 the system shows that the complete abuse of the refugee system. Okay, guys, let's be real. Crime 1.00

00:15:38.760 is up. Repeat offenders are released on bail. Police responses are slower than ever. And in

00:15:44.800 many places, law abiding citizens are expected to just hope nothing bad happens. That's not good

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00:16:41.280 special offers. Make sure that you're prepared. It's better to be safe than sorry. Shaza, I want

00:16:47.100 to bring it back to our economy brian because there was a pretty shocking report that came out

00:16:51.660 on march 13th that canada's economy had lost 84 000 jobs in the month of february and that our

00:16:57.980 unemployment rate ticked up to 6.7 you mentioned how temporary foreign workers program is supposed

00:17:02.700 to be tied to unemployment and when it hits a certain they announced it the same day right

00:17:06.780 well this i'm going to get to that so uh this is according to the cbc how they covered it back on

00:17:11.100 march 13th canada has seen almost no job growth over the last 12 months wait a minute i was told

00:17:16.460 Brian, that the reason that Mark Carney was able to win such a sweeping victory in April

00:17:21.740 last year is because he had all of this business acumen and he was going to be able to get us back

00:17:25.940 on track. Well, that has not borne out at all. The numbers show the exact opposite. Again,

00:17:30.300 Canada's economy lost 84,000 jobs just in the month of February. Unemployment ticked up to 6.7%.

00:17:35.120 Stats Canada said on Friday, a setback for labor market, one of the worst monthly job losses seen

00:17:40.220 in years outside the pandemic. The decline in employment was largely driven by a drop in full

00:17:44.740 time and private sector jobs the latter offsetting a short period of growth seen early in the fall

00:17:49.620 employment mostly fell in goods and service producing industry 18 000 jobs lost in wholesale

00:17:54.500 and retail trade 12 000 lost in construction 9 000 lost in manufacturing men aged 25 to 54

00:18:01.380 were hurt hurt the worst as well as young people aged 15 to 24 so you mentioned about youth

00:18:06.900 unemployment and how it was supposed to be under 10 well it's now 14 14 of young people who are

00:18:12.980 trying to get a job are unemployed. And again, we know that this is impacted by temporary foreign

00:18:20.440 workers being able to come in and take jobs. It's actually unbelievable. I'll just mention this,

00:18:25.340 Brian. When I was a student, I studied in Australia, and my student permit did not let me

00:18:29.880 work. I didn't have the ability to work. I remember some of the other students kind of

00:18:33.220 grumbling because they wanted to get like a job, you know, at a coffee shop or something just to

00:18:37.320 have some spending money. But the visa just simply did not allow them to work. So they had to either

00:18:42.040 take out a loan or try to get some money from their parents or something like that and i kind

00:18:45.400 of understood it right it's like you know we're here to study i was in australia to study i wasn't

00:18:49.560 in australia to take a job away from a young australian who is trying to work right and so

00:18:53.960 i always found it just mind-boggling that people can come here and work like if you're here to

00:18:58.760 study study great right go ahead and and actually get a degree and in some ways they pay a higher

00:19:04.520 student uh tuition payment so maybe they help subsidize the institution but why are they able

00:19:09.720 to work and why are they able to work so much i just want to tie this to one more story which

00:19:13.400 was black locks reporter um said that and w and tim hortons were basically lobbying the government

00:19:19.240 to allow more temporary foreign workers to expand like this is the worst possible time for this 1.00

00:19:23.800 right like everybody is fed up with immigration we see it displacing canadians we see just a huge 1.00

00:19:28.600 explosion of students especially in cities like toronto it's just like it's hard to find a place

00:19:33.320 to rent it's hard to find a job for young people because they you know there's just so many people

00:19:38.760 here that shouldn't be here and the fact that they're still out there lobbying tim horns is

00:19:43.240 still out there given the reputational damages company has received that they're still out there

00:19:48.840 pushing for uh temporary foreign workers in the food service industry i just want to just show

00:19:55.720 one clip michelle rumple garner yesterday was asking minister lena dieb about the specific

00:20:02.200 like why are the liberals kowtowing to tim hortons rather than fighting for young canadians

00:20:07.080 play that clip this is top five why aren't those jobs going to canadian workers and why are you

00:20:12.440 guys kowtowing to tim hortons uh so lovely performance as usual madam uh thank you for

00:20:20.040 the question uh we have a letter from many conservative members who have written to me

00:20:25.960 and to minister haidu and to another minister of requesting those changes uh in fact pleading

00:20:33.880 that they require those changes that's right in their problems so no love lost between those two

00:20:39.560 yeah remble garner went on to say uh just seconds after that clip ended that um the letters that

00:20:46.200 dia was referring to don't say what she's claiming and she will table them with the committee if she

00:20:50.840 wants so i i haven't talked to the notorious mrg to find out what she was talking about there that's

00:20:56.120 my nickname for michelle remble garner the notorious mrg uh so a couple of points you said

00:21:01.560 84 000 job losses and that is the headline number but it's worse with it's only 84 000 because we

00:21:08.600 had 24 000 part-time jobs but 108 000 full-time jobs were lost last month and over the last year

00:21:19.880 you know you hear oh we're reducing immigration numbers okay the labor force survey says that

00:21:26.440 we added 347 000 people of working age so that's 347 000 new people that is almost entirely driven

00:21:35.800 by immigration that is not through population growth um and 81 000 of them joined the labor

00:21:42.600 force 31 000 are unemployed or sorry 30 000 are unemployed 51 000 got jobs do you know where all

00:21:50.680 those jobs were created in the last year candace 49 900 in the public sector that is not the sign

00:21:58.760 of a healthy economy wow you know on on all these fronts we are stumbling and staggering and mark

00:22:07.640 carney is getting a a free pass by far too many canadians i interviewed bill robson the former

00:22:13.080 head of the c cd howe institute for the full comment podcast that just came out yesterday

00:22:18.520 and he does not give him good grades on you know he's fair in his assessment he tries to be as

00:22:25.240 neutral definitely not partisan but he's not giving carny good grades on the economy which

00:22:30.660 is you know what were the two things he was hired for as pm why did canadians vote for him he can

00:22:35.940 get a deal with donald trump and no one else can he hasn't done that he can steer the economy

00:22:40.680 because he's a central banker he hasn't done that he also promised that they would rein in

00:22:45.720 immigration they have not in any significant and meaningful way they have taken the temporary

00:22:53.000 population down from about seven and a half to uh seven and a half percent of canada's total

00:22:57.880 population to below seven it shouldn't be even at five percent you know we we have become too

00:23:06.600 reliant on this and and meanwhile we've got well over a million people unemployed in this country

00:23:12.360 Well, it's unbelievable. And I don't know, I think that a lot of people treat fraud in the system like very like kind of low level, like, you know, someone just sort of like misrepresenting something minor here and there. But Sam Cooper, our friend over at the Bureau, he's an investigative journalist, formerly in the legacy media, worked for Global for many years, and now he runs his own subset called the Bureau. And he tied this to something much more nefarious, Brian. And I just wanted to read you part of it, because this is the kind of thing that shocks me.

00:23:38.800 So he ties the Auditor General's report to organized crime.

00:23:42.740 This is a report he put out yesterday.

00:23:44.520 One number above all defines the scale of the failure.

00:23:47.720 1,000, sorry, 153,000 international students flagged as potentially noncompliant with Canadian

00:23:52.980 study permit conditions.

00:23:54.260 The federal government investigated fewer than 4,100 laying bare an enforcement system

00:23:58.060 so overwhelmed cannot meaningfully police the program it is mandated.

00:24:01.920 Those findings validate what the Bureau first reported inside British Columbia's multi-agency

00:24:07.260 anti-extortion tax force that canada's immigration system enforcement system has been overwhelmed by

00:24:13.020 transnational organized crime exploiting a student visa program that spiraled out of control

00:24:17.980 leaving investigators struggling to counter networks now driving a national security crisis

00:24:23.660 of extortion shootings in surrey bc rammed ontario edmonton and winnipeg report found that of the

00:24:30.860 investigations department did roughly 40 percent stalled because the students simply did not respond

00:24:34.940 to government's request for information we highlighted that off the top of the zone but

00:24:38.780 you know we had the the mayor of surrey declaring basically a national emergency saying that they

00:24:43.340 couldn't control the extortion the drive-by shootings the fact that these like like indian 1.00

00:24:49.580 gangsters basically were going and shaking down their fellow compatriots businesses saying if you 0.95

00:24:54.700 don't pay us we're going to kill you we're going to kill your family and this is a spiraling problem

00:25:00.060 sam cooper is saying that this is all linked it's not just like individual bad actors there are 0.99

00:25:05.260 these networks that go across our entire country it's actually shocking how dangerous things are

00:25:11.580 and how many naive canadians are to just say like oh they're students you know they're just not

00:25:16.300 complying they didn't respond so we're just gonna like leave them be well according to sam cooper

00:25:20.940 some of these are actually very bad people involved in very bad activities here in our

00:25:25.820 own backyard what do you make of it even if we try and get rid of them you look at the case in

00:25:30.220 saskatchewan that was in the news last week a guy found to have been committing immigration fraud

00:25:36.380 let go um and now he's suing the government of canada for charging him with something that

00:25:42.700 he even his lawyer says yeah he did it uh you know you talked about people being naive and

00:25:49.900 And, you know, Sam's work on this is stellar.

00:25:53.760 But you talk to folks in Ottawa about any type of fraud, and they are naive.

00:26:00.240 They think that nobody is out to game the system.

00:26:03.200 And it's not just on immigration.

00:26:04.760 I remember talking to liberal ministers, going back to early in my career, and putting forward

00:26:13.400 the suggestion that some people were abusing the EI system.

00:26:17.200 And they said, well, Canadians wouldn't do that.

00:26:19.900 And I thought, have you never been in a room where some guys are trying to figure out how to get their weeks in so that they can be off in time for the opening of deer season or bass season, or they want to make sure that they're off for the summer?

00:26:34.360 So that's gaming the system.

00:26:36.020 There is a certain percentage of every population that will game the system, and you need to be on the lookout for them, people who will abuse the system.

00:26:46.360 And it's not just one culture.

00:26:47.840 This is around the world.

00:26:49.220 most people are law-abiding and doing what's right, but you have to be on the lookout for

00:26:54.240 those who will abuse your good graces. And if you're not, they're going to take advantage of

00:27:00.440 us. We have a government and a bureaucracy that believes nobody's out to do anything bad,

00:27:05.680 and we don't need to investigate. And, oh, well, I called the student that

00:27:10.160 submitted a fraudulent student visa application, but they didn't reply. So I guess it's fine.

00:27:19.220 you know there's one um bit in the report on the student fraud the student visa fraud

00:27:25.980 they found they they identified 800 cases there's the department not the auditor general the

00:27:32.320 department identified 800 cases of fraud more than half of them or about half of them

00:27:38.240 were renewed for another visa of one type or another so you lied your way into canada oh

00:27:45.380 it's okay here's another visa we'll just let you stay what what's the point of any of these rules

00:27:52.200 or laws if we will not enforce them and we are we're going to be in major trouble over this

00:27:58.980 i would just push back against one minor thing that all cultures are equal and that that there's

00:28:04.460 i'm not saying all cultures are equal well or that that that just is like you know i think

00:28:09.200 there are other parts of the world brian where they don't have the high level of trust right

00:28:12.580 Like we saw this with the food bank scandal that like students were taking advantage of food banks and maybe they were like they didn't even know that they were doing anything wrong because their culture is like, wow, these people are literally giving away free food, free diapers.

00:28:24.740 It's all for free. Just go over there and you get it. And to us, we're like, wait a minute. No, no, no. That's supposed to be for people who are really struggling, for people who are really poor.

00:28:32.460 if you're a middle class you know an international student from india that's not supposed to be for 0.98

00:28:37.540 you but but they maybe they just truly didn't get it or from their perspective that you know 1.00

00:28:42.140 you guys are foolish for giving away free food it's like how naive are we how stupid are we of 0.99

00:28:46.820 course they're going to take advantage of every little loophole if someone calls them saying hey 1.00

00:28:50.320 we're investigating you for fraud and then they say well all i have to do is just stop taking

00:28:53.940 their calls and they won't investigate me anymore like we are naive for putting this much trust

00:28:58.640 into people that don't share our basic values and cultures maybe they could i'm not saying that

00:29:02.980 they're incapable of it that if they were living in canada for 10 years they would serve to

00:29:06.100 understand our norms and values but people who they definitionally are not canadian they just

00:29:10.860 got here i don't think they have the same understanding that you know a lot of our

00:29:14.900 system is based on honor and trust i i remember um a you may recall this there was a an immigrant

00:29:21.480 services settlement agency in gatineau just across the river in quebec from ottawa

00:29:26.720 and they started getting denounced because they put out a just a brochure to hand out to people

00:29:33.440 what to expect and how to behave in Canada and they told people do not bribe government officials

00:29:39.280 and of course the left went crazy and said how dare you tell immigrants not to bribe government

00:29:45.960 officials the guy I'm working on with the story was from Russia and he said when he came to get

00:29:52.300 he'd been in Canada a long time was a citizen he said when I came to Canada that was the best

00:29:55.900 advice that I got. Because in Russia, if you don't bribe anyone, you don't get anything. So we do

00:30:02.740 have to put forward our norms. I was not making an all cultures are equal comment there. I'm just

00:30:07.980 saying it's pervasive. There's always people looking to game the system and you have to look

00:30:11.580 out for it. But we shouldn't be afraid to put forward what our norms, expectations, and values

00:30:17.880 are, including don't bribe, don't cheat the system, don't commit fraud. And by the way, if you do these

00:30:23.520 things, we'll punish you. I don't think we do that last bit anymore. We're, you know,

00:30:29.540 giving out participation trophies to everyone and not enforcing anything. We are breeding,

00:30:34.960 you know, on a parental, to use a parental analogy, we're breeding those kids that are

00:30:39.940 going to scream at everything and not follow any rules because we're not enforcing any rules.

00:30:46.480 Well, I think we completely agree on that. Brian, always appreciate your time and analysis. Thank

00:30:50.840 you so much for joining us. Thank you. All right, folks, that's Brian Lilly. Go check out his

00:30:54.760 sub stack over at brianlilly.com. It's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for

00:30:58.760 tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm. This is the Candice Malcolm Show. Thank you, and God bless.

Juno News - March 24, 2026

Auditor General SLAMS Carney government over student visa fraud (w⧸ Brian Lilley)

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