Juno News - May 26, 2025


International students face deportation after brutal hit and run

Topics
hit-and-run deportation punishment temporary foreign worker program
Hosted by
Isaac Lamoureux Noah Jarvis
Mentioned
Jagmeet Singh Jamil Giovanni Bill C-63 Mark Carney Trudeau Surrey Jason Albert Gray Elmira Aliakbari Stephen Guibo Ford Mustang Tim Hortons Olaf Scholz COVID-19
Edmonton’s controversial bike lane expansion hits some democratic speed bumps What Canadians can expect from the throne speech

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

166.36

Word count

2,135

Sentence count

99

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Two international students from Surrey, BC faced deportation after dragging the body of a 45-year-old man in a deadly hit and run. Conservative MP Jamil Javani has launched a petition to shutter the temporary foreign worker program. A new study found that if Canada exported more LNG to other countries that rely on coal, it could virtually erase its global carbon footprint.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Two international students from Surrey, BC faced deportation after dragging the body of a 45-year-old man in a deadly hit-and-run.
00:00:13.000 Conservative MP Jamil Javani has launched a petition to shutter the temporary foreign worker program shortly after being sworn into office.
00:00:20.000 A new study found that if Canada exported more LNG to other countries that rely on coal, it could virtually erase its global carbon footprint.
00:00:29.000 Hello Canada, it's Monday, May 26th, and this is the True North Daily Brief. I'm Isaac Lamoureux.
00:00:34.000 And I'm Noah Jarvis.
00:00:36.000 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know. Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.
00:00:44.000 Two international students, Gagan Preet Singh and Jagdeep Singh, are facing deportation and only up to four years in jail after pleading guilty to charges stemming from a fatal hit-and-run in Surrey on January 27th, 2024.
00:00:59.000 The incident, which killed 45-year-old man Jason Albert Gray, has been described by the victim's family in a Surrey provincial court as unimaginably cruel.
00:01:09.000 They treated him like a piece of garbage, dumping him on the side of the road, said Gray's wife.
00:01:14.000 He was so severely injured, we were not able to view his body. 0.51
00:01:17.000 Court proceedings revealed disturbing details surrounding the event.
00:01:20.000 Gagan Preet Singh was behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang that struck Gray after the collision the vehicle briefly stopped.
00:01:27.000 A witness alerted Singh and his passenger, Jagdeep Singh, that a man was trapped underneath the car.
00:01:32.000 Despite this warning, the pair drove off, dragging Gray for 1.3 kilometers.
00:01:37.000 They eventually stopped and did not give the victim aid, but instead reportedly worked together to remove the victim's body and throw it to the side of the road.
00:01:45.000 Gagan Preet Singh and Jagdeep Singh have pleaded guilty to failing to stop after an accident and interference with the dead body.
00:01:52.000 Another individual in the car was not charged.
00:01:55.000 The victim's family has expressed profound anguish over the handling of Gray's remains, highlighting the distressing nature of his death.
00:02:01.000 Prosecutors are pushing for substantial penalties, recommending prison sentences of only three years for Gagan Preet Singh and four years for Jagdeep Singh.
00:02:10.000 Additionally, both men face three year driving vans.
00:02:13.000 Their status as international students mean they will face deportation hearings following their sentencing.
00:02:18.000 So Noah, is Canada's international student program far too lenient with regards to who we are giving student visas to?
00:02:25.000 Absolutely. We've seen the stories where the government has been giving international student permits to people who are going to fake colleges and fake universities,
00:02:34.000 or just with colleges who are giving out plenty of more international student permits than they had in previous years to make up for certain financial difficulties.
00:02:44.000 So the international student program definitely has been abused.
00:02:49.000 The government, the federal government has not really been responding to that as quickly as many Canadians have been hoping for.
00:02:56.000 But when you're allowing people to come into this country and potentially obtain a license, 0.75
00:03:02.000 you have to ensure that these people are qualified to drive.
00:03:05.000 And clearly in this case, Gagan Preet Singh and Jagdeep Singh should not have been behind the wheel of any vehicle.
00:03:12.000 And the fact that the punishment that they have been given was so lenient is really telling of how broken the Canadian criminal justice system,
00:03:20.000 only facing a few years behind bars and only having a three year driving ban. 0.94
00:03:27.000 I think that is a bit ridiculous. I think a lot of Canadians would find that there to be a lack of justice in this situation.
00:03:35.000 Wiping out an entire family truly is tragic and should face more severe consequences.
00:03:41.000 So just facing only up to four years in jail for the fatal hit and run that he committed,
00:03:47.000 I think many Canadians would disagree with that.
00:03:50.000 So we need to be more stringent in the type of people that we allow to be driving on our streets, 0.89
00:03:56.000 the type of people that we're bringing into this country in general, 0.88
00:03:59.000 and the type of punishment that we are doling out to people who are murdering people in their vehicles.
00:04:05.000 Conservative MP Jamil Javani has launched a petition calling on the Liberal government to end the temporary foreign worker program.
00:04:15.000 Javani argues that the program suppresses Canadian wages and worsens the labour market.
00:04:20.000 In his first official statement after being sworn in on Thursday,
00:04:23.000 Javani launched the petition demanding the government to scrap the program entirely.
00:04:27.000 Javani wrote quote,
00:04:28.000 No more cheap labour programs that take Canadian jobs and suppress wages.
00:04:32.000 The petition claims that the temporary foreign worker program is a major contributor to quote,
00:04:37.000 unsustainable immigration levels and is directly harming Canadian workers.
00:04:41.000 The petition reads quote,
00:04:43.000 Youth unemployment in Canada rose from about 9% in 2022 to over 14% in 2024,
00:04:49.000 the highest level in more than a decade, excluding the COVID-19 period.
00:04:53.000 Javani pointed to rising numbers of foreign workers in youth dominated sectors like food service and retail.
00:04:59.000 The petition also cites labour concerns raised by the Iron Workers Union Local 97,
00:05:05.000 which has called on Ottawa to end the program and focus instead on training and hiring domestic workers.
00:05:10.000 The petition makes an exception for seasonal agricultural workers calling for their program to be treated separately
00:05:16.000 to support Canada's farming industry while ending the broader temporary foreign worker program.
00:05:20.000 So Isaac, what sort of entry level jobs are temporary foreign workers taking that could otherwise go to younger Canadians who are just entering the workforce?
00:05:29.000 Yeah, Noah. So you mentioned food services and retail, which are definitely a big part of it.
00:05:33.000 For example, in Ontario, Tim Hortons hired at least 714 temporary foreign workers in 2023, up from just 58 in 2019.
00:05:42.000 But while food services and retail are some of the main industries, so too are hospitality, construction and warehouse on logistics.
00:05:50.000 These jobs typically require minimal formal education or experience.
00:05:53.000 These sectors are labour intensive and often rely on shift or part time work,
00:05:57.000 which many young Canadians take on either during school or as their first jobs after graduation.
00:06:02.000 And the temporary foreign worker program increases competition for these roles, allowing employers to hold wages down or bypass the need to train and develop local talent,
00:06:11.000 which in turn makes it harder for domestic workers, especially youth, to gain experience or to enter the job market.
00:06:18.000 But it's not just those markets. Anecdotally, I've heard nightmare after nightmare of people entering the job market after graduating university in countless industries
00:06:27.000 and seen their inability to find a job for years. I've had some friends who luckily enough could find work in different countries,
00:06:34.000 notably the US, but who have remained out of luck in Canada.
00:06:38.000 Also, Giovanni called on the fraction of temporary foreign workers classified as seasonal agricultural workers to be treated as a separate program
00:06:46.000 and not lumped in with the broader program that leads to the suppression of Canadian wages.
00:06:51.000 The first line describing the program on the federal government website reads, quote,
00:06:56.000 the temporary foreign worker program allows Canadian employers to hire foreign workers to fill temporary jobs when qualified Canadians are not available.
00:07:05.000 But clearly that is not the case in almost any instance.
00:07:08.000 I mean, look at the videos online of these job fairs in Ontario.
00:07:11.000 Thousands of people lined up. Still, did those jobs go to Canadians or to temporary foreign workers for which the company will be subsidized?
00:07:20.000 A new Fraser Institute study found that if Canada wants to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, it could sell Asia some of the cleanest LNG in the world.
00:07:33.000 Canada could replace much of Asia's coal powered energy, which generates nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as natural gas for the same amount of electricity.
00:07:43.000 According to the study, if Canada sold the additional natural gas to Asia after doubling its production, it could reduce the equivalent of taking 137 million cars off the road annually.
00:07:54.000 Elmira Aliakbari, a natural resource expert with the Fraser Institute and co-author of the study, told True North, quote,
00:08:01.000 it's possible for us to double our existing natural gas production.
00:08:04.000 But realistically, for that to happen, we need to remove several barriers that are now in the way.
00:08:09.000 According to a Natural Resources Canada report from 2024, Canada holds 87 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, ranking 15th globally and third in the Western Hemisphere.
00:08:20.000 In the same year, the Energy Institute reported that Canada was the fifth largest natural gas producer in the world and produced 190.3 billion cubic meters in 2023.
00:08:29.000 By replacing China's coal-generated power with Canada's LNG, the study found that emissions would be cut by 62% for every unit of energy produced.
00:08:38.000 It noted that coal consumption in the Asia-Pacific region, including China and India, rose by 182% between 2000 and 2023.
00:08:45.000 Coal accounted for 56% of India's energy consumption and 54% of China's in 2023.
00:08:51.000 Aliakbari said several forecasts, including from the International Energy Agency, show that demand for LNG will continue to rise in the coming years and decades.
00:09:00.000 Demand is expected to rise, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, with a growing population and energy demands as they make good on their pledge to decarbonize their economies.
00:09:10.000 She noted Canada's competitive advantages, including its colder climate, shorter shipping distances to Asia compared to the US, and its use of hydroelectricity in the liquefaction process.
00:09:20.000 These factors also give Canadian LNG a lower carbon footprint than most global competitors.
00:09:25.000 Aliakbari said it's possible to double Canada's existing LNG production to offset global emissions.
00:09:30.000 However, the provincial and federal governments of Canada would need to remove several barriers to do so.
00:09:35.000 So Noah, what are some of the legislative barriers that exist that prevent further LNG production?
00:09:40.000 It's been stated repeatedly, and it's Bill C-69.
00:09:43.000 Bill C-69, the Liberal government's quote-unquote no more pipeline bill, helps to ensure that resource development in Canada is extremely time consuming and extremely expensive.
00:09:55.000 Canada has one of the most time consuming and expensive environmental assessment processes largely brought in place by the Trudeau government under Bill C-69.
00:10:08.000 And if Canada wants to have any hope of becoming an energy superpower in developing our LNG and even developing our oil, there's no chance of doing so under the regime that the Trudeau government has put into place.
00:10:23.000 Mark Carney has promised to help to speed up resource development projects, but he did not pledge to repeal Bill C-69.
00:10:33.000 The closest he'd gotten to saying something like that was in his interview with Vasi Capellos of CTV, where he said that he would explore all options that is necessary to speeding up resource development.
00:10:47.000 But that is not necessarily going to be a given for this Liberal government when you have people like Stephen Guibo at the Cabinet table, who is very much against resource development his entire life.
00:10:59.000 And he has not backed down from that ideological commitment that he committed himself to in his youth.
00:11:06.000 And you also have the current energy minister who he worked at Hydro Ontario, and he is still a bit of an unknown commodity with how he's going to approach the energy file.
00:11:18.000 It remains to be seen whether or not the Carney government will take the necessary steps to getting rid of the legislative barriers to LNG production.
00:11:27.000 But as this report notes, if he does if he is able to get rid of those barriers, Canada can become an energy superpower by exporting our LNG to Asia and not just Asia, because that's half of the battle.
00:11:41.000 We can also begin exporting our LNG to Europe, if you recall, the former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Canada a few years ago to explore options for Canada to export its energy.
00:11:55.000 And all Trudeau could tell him is that there's no business case to exporting Canadian LNG to Germany.
00:12:01.000 And that the only thing that Canada really can explore doing is exporting hydrogen energy, which is still a bit of an unproven source of energy.
00:12:11.000 So if Mark Carney, if the conservative opposition is able to pressure the Carney government into exploring options into exporting our LNG to Asia as well as Europe, I think Canada could really become the energy superpower that the Fraser Institute describes.
00:12:28.000 But that would require serious action that Mark Carney hasn't really indicated that he's willing to take.
00:12:37.000 That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. You can stay on top of new episodes every weekday by subscribing to the Daily Brief on iTunes and Spotify.
00:12:45.000 Also, while you're at it, make sure to hit us with a five star rating and please leave a review.