Bill Blair got himself in hot water this week when he failed to understand some important details from his own portfolio, the entire crisis that his portfolio was created to deal with, and he just doesn t understand it. Facts are hard when you're a Liberal Member of Parliament, even more so when you re a Liberal Cabinet Minister.
00:00:00.120Facts are hard when you're a Liberal Member of Parliament, even more so when you're a Liberal Cabinet Minister.
00:00:05.700Border Security Minister Bill Blair got himself in hot water this week when he did an interview on global television's The West Bloc,
00:00:13.300in which he failed to understand some pretty important details from his own portfolio,
00:00:18.960the entire crisis that his portfolio was created to deal with, and he just doesn't understand it.
00:00:25.760He said when it comes to the 32,000 illegal asylum seekers, illegal border crossers,
00:00:32.000that Canada has dealt with, that the majority, his word, the majority have already left.
00:00:37.340He was called on this on Twitter by Paul Wells, who made a little joke about Bill Blair's quote-unquote evidence-based decision-making there,
00:00:46.740and Bill Blair apologized. He said he misspoke. He was referring to those who have been denied,
00:00:53.560those who have been rejected, he says, the majority have been removed already. They've left on their own.
00:00:59.920The department clarified with a similar excuse, that he was referring to those whose asylum claims have been rejected.
00:01:05.940So no, not the majority of the 32,000, just the majority who have been told they can't stay here.
00:01:11.620But even that flies in the face of the actual data that we see.
00:01:15.200That report a couple of weeks ago that I talked about from the Toronto Star that revealed only just shy of 400 people
00:01:21.420had been deported in the first place, actually said that there are thousands of people that claimed asylum
00:01:27.300and did not get it that are still here because they aren't part of that 400.
00:01:32.220So first off, the majority of these asylum claims have not even been determined yet.
00:01:36.840The majority of those who have been deemed inadmissible are still here,
00:01:40.500and Bill Blair can't get the initial fact right, nor even his attempt at correcting the fact.
00:01:46.320So we either have a Minister of Border Security who's deliberately and willfully obtuse when it comes to his own portfolio,
00:01:53.140or someone who is actually just a moron.
00:01:57.120And I hate to use that term, but we're talking about a man here
00:01:59.740who Canadians are supposed to believe has our best interest in our national security
00:02:04.420and the integrity of our immigration system as being his first and foremost priorities,
00:02:09.360yet he doesn't even know the numbers that Canadians learned a couple of weeks ago.
00:02:13.340For the True North Initiative, I'm Andrew Lawton.