BORDER CRISIS： Doug Ford's ＂Tone＂？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
164.32251
Summary
In this episode, Andrew Lutton talks to the immigration minister Ahmed Hussen about the growing crisis at the border, and what he thinks about the federal government's handling of the situation. The government has been accused of not doing enough to deal with the growing problem of illegal border crossing by asylum seekers.
Transcript
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Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor John Tory were united in calling out the federal government for its inaction
00:00:07.280
and its ability to allow this border crossing crisis to actually become a crisis.
00:00:13.580
Doug Ford and John Tory went to the government and said,
00:00:15.980
Look, we need help. We're not going to pay for it. This is your mess. You have to fix it.
00:00:21.420
Well, the Immigration Minister, Ahmed Hassan, actually responded.
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He responded to the call from these two heads of government in Ontario and Toronto.
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And what did he say? He didn't like Doug Ford's tone.
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Yeah, have a listen to Ahmed Hassan's comments here.
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And I'm very concerned by Premier Ford and Minister McLeod really making statements that are difficult
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to understand when it comes to how they are describing asylum seekers.
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These are people who we have a legal obligation to give a fair hearing to.
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And so we are applying Canadian law, we are applying international law,
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and that requires all levels of government to work together.
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We have a wait time for an asylum hearing at 11 years
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because agents and the system itself is tapped out.
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You have hundreds of asylum seekers in Toronto that are going to get kicked out of their dorm rooms
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because, well, they need the dorm rooms for actual students.
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You've got millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars,
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owed to jurisdictions like Toronto to deal with this.
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You've got all of the challenges that we are facing as far as security is concerned,
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the strength and integrity of the system, and, yes, the cost.
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is concerned about the tone that Doug Ford uses in criticizing the government
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for allowing the aforementioned crisis to take hold.
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What is it about what Doug Ford said when he looked at the government and said,
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you've got to rein in this illegal border crossing problem?
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Because even Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons
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referred to border crossing illegally as illegally.
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Crossing a border between official border crossings is illegal.
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But the fact of the matter is he doesn't like that he is under the microscope.
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He doesn't like, like none of the representatives of the federal government, by the way,
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That is the reason that the problem has gotten as bad as it has.
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when your policies are rightfully being called into question right now.
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I mean, the government likes to call it irregular, irregular border crossing.
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it makes me feel a little bit irregular, quite frankly.
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But when they're focused on the language and not the crisis,
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they have proven to Canadians that they don't care about our borders.
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And it's time that they actually get held to account for that.
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For the True North Initiative, I'm Andrew Lutton.