Juno News - Justin Trudeau’s assault on Canadian border security

00:00:00.000 We're going very meta today. The True North Senior Fellow and Founder Candice Malcom joins

00:00:14.520 me on True North to talk about her new book, No Border, Justin Trudeau's Assault on Canadian

00:00:20.560 Border Security. Candice Malcom, my friend and colleague, joins me. Candice, thanks for coming

00:00:25.160 on and congrats on the new book. Thank you so much, Andrew. It's great. I don't think we've

00:00:29.260 done one of these videos in a while, so it's good to catch up and chat a little bit here.

00:00:33.940 For sure. And obviously, the timing of this is not coincidental with the election coming

00:00:38.380 up in just a few short weeks, I'd presume, which really lends me to ask you here, what

00:00:43.900 is the real point of this book? Is it to say that immigration is an issue and this is why

00:00:49.720 it's important? Or is it really trying to make immigration a political issue for the election?

00:00:54.320 Well, Andrew, I think immigration is already one of the top issues of this election. I

00:00:59.660 think that you can't deny, after having four years of Trudeau's disastrous policies, seeing

00:01:04.200 50,000 people illegally come into our country every year to claim asylum and clog up our refugee

00:01:10.460 system, Trudeau's handling of immigration has just been awful since day one. So my last book

00:01:16.160 called Losing True North, I wrote it almost immediately after Justin Trudeau got elected. He got elected in the fall of

00:01:23.000 2015, really on the back of a pledge that he made that was in relation to the Syrian refugee

00:01:29.240 crisis that was spilling into Europe. He kind of captured that moment, appeared to be the most

00:01:33.920 sympathetic, the most, you know, big hearted when it came to welcoming Syrian refugees. He made the

00:01:38.760 biggest pledge. And, you know, it didn't really matter what the facts were on the ground. It didn't

00:01:43.100 matter that Canada had no capacity to welcome the number of people that he wanted to welcome. It

00:01:48.020 didn't matter that Trudeau himself had a very naive view when it came to the threat of ISIS and

00:01:52.760 Islamist terrorism and how that was welcomed into Europe alongside the Syrian mass immigration. So

00:01:59.000 Trudeau made this big promise. He captured the hearts and imagination of so many Canadians. I think

00:02:03.680 that was really an important aspect of why he got elected in the first place. And then one of the

00:02:07.820 government's very first moves once they became government was a bill called Bill C6, which

00:02:12.800 drastically changed the way that someone becomes a Canadian citizenship. So they made it a lot easier.

00:02:18.380 They scrapped the language requirement for anyone over the age of 54. They made it so that you could

00:02:22.980 become a citizen in just three years of only living in Canada part-time. And then, of course,

00:02:28.140 they made it so that convicted ISIS and Islamist terrorists, convicted al-Qaeda terrorists could

00:02:33.380 become Canadian citizens. Because as Trudeau famously said, he said, a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,

00:02:37.620 you know, even if you're a convicted ISIS terrorist who hates Canada, essentially. So Trudeau

00:02:43.820 dismantled our citizenship program. And I put that book out in early 2016. It was really successful.

00:02:49.280 I think Canadians really cared about what was happening to our country, to our immigration

00:02:53.780 system. And so, you know, that book came out. And I really just felt that over the last three years,

00:02:58.820 the things that Trudeau did in his first couple of months was just the tip of the iceberg. There

00:03:03.020 was so much more. There's so much more happening. And it has happened over the last few years. So I felt

00:03:07.400 like it was really important to do a recap and to go through some of those disastrous policies,

00:03:11.760 which we can get to one by one if you want here. But just to kind of do an overview and to say,

00:03:17.040 hey, this is what Trudeau has done over the last four years to remind Canadians that the stakes are

00:03:21.480 really high, that when you're the prime minister of this country, you have the huge ability to remake

00:03:25.360 the country, to change the country. And immigration is one of the ways you can do that, one of the most

00:03:29.760 dangerous ways that an irresponsible government can destroy a country. You and I, I remember,

00:03:35.460 talked on my old radio show when that previous book came out. And I recall, I mean, first off,

00:03:41.100 it was a great book, but it had a lot of predictions in it. And looking back on it,

00:03:45.660 did you really, when writing this one, go back and remind yourself of, yep, that happened,

00:03:50.580 that happened, that happened? Because I found myself doing that when I was reading this book

00:03:56.100 that's just come out, looking back, and a lot of the things that you warned of have come to pass or

00:04:01.200 are in development right now. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I do, Andrew,

00:04:05.280 just on a regular basis is go through polling data. And it's really interesting,

00:04:09.280 because in the 90s and the early 2000s, Canada was different from other kind of Western countries,

00:04:14.860 different from the United States, Australia, the UK, in that most Canadians accept immigration,

00:04:19.900 there hadn't really been kind of a movement in Canadian society of kind of anti-immigration or

00:04:26.080 anti-migration, people that were really skeptical. Overwhelming majorities, like 60,

00:04:30.280 65, 70% of Canadians welcomed immigration and thought that immigration was good for the country.

00:04:35.160 And in time, you can compare that to, you know, the United States that had a much,

00:04:38.880 much lower consensus, like 30% of people thought that immigration was good. In Australia and the UK,

00:04:43.240 it was like 50%. And you can see polling over time has just completely flipped. And now Canada is in

00:04:48.540 the exact same situation as these other Western countries, in that Canadians, by and large,

00:04:53.820 don't really want more immigration. And, you know, what has changed, what has happened, is that Canadians

00:04:59.320 trust immigration, they know that, you know, we're a small population country, we're kind of off in a

00:05:03.960 corner away from a lot of the rest of the world. And, you know, we need people, we need people to

00:05:08.460 come and help grow our economy, to help populate some of our northern cities, and to continue the

00:05:13.260 kind of growth that we have. But Canadians only support immigration when it's done legally, when

00:05:18.240 it's done in accordance with the rule of law, when people come in good faith, and when people really

00:05:22.380 want to make a change in their life, they don't just want to come to Canada to live off the system,

00:05:26.940 to enjoy a free ride, to, you know, get some of the benefits. If you want to come and become Canadian,

00:05:32.220 you have to work hard, you have to come by the rules, come by the book, do it legally, and then

00:05:36.900 join the Canadian family, learn English, commit yourself to becoming Canadian, and really, you

00:05:41.640 know, getting that Canadian identity. And a lot of the newcomers that are coming today, they just,

00:05:46.720 they're not interested in that. They're kind of Canadians of convenience, they come because of

00:05:50.580 the passport. We've seen a huge rise in things like birth tourism, where people just show up in

00:05:56.100 Canada when they're like seven and a half or eight months pregnant, they have a baby, and then they

00:06:00.460 leave. There was one hospital in Richmond, British Columbia that said about a fifth of all babies

00:06:04.840 were born to foreigners who had no connection, no ties to Canada. So this is kind of like a

00:06:09.340 microcosm of what is happening. And Canadians are very skeptical of that. We want people to come to

00:06:14.900 our country that love Canada, that want to contribute and add to the Canadian story. And, you know, it's not

00:06:21.280 that Canadians are closed minded, or they're not open to having people from different cultures, and,

00:06:25.600 you know, that look different or whatever. Canadians are open to that. They just don't like it when

00:06:31.240 people do things that are illegal, that don't actually contribute to Canadian society. And I

00:06:36.940 think Trudeau is kind of ignorant of that. He's, he's playing with fire. He loves the idea of being

00:06:42.160 this open, welcoming, loving guy who shows up at the airport to welcome people. But he's not as concerned

00:06:47.980 with the day to day nitty gritty of what it's like, it's really hard to move to a new country and to adapt to a new

00:06:53.860 society. And, you know, you need to provide the support, you need to make sure that you're not

00:06:59.380 letting in so many people that they don't have a chance to adapt. Because if given the choice,

00:07:03.580 they can just find a little enclave where, you know, they can be around people who look and speak

00:07:08.140 exactly like them, that's going to be a lot easier than getting dropped into, you know, like the middle

00:07:13.000 of Saskatchewan and no one understands your culture, no one speaks your language. And that's going to be a lot

00:07:18.280 harder in the long run. It's better for everyone if you do adapt to the Canadian society. But in the

00:07:23.680 short run, and you know, what's easier is people just finding their own ethnic community and staying

00:07:28.800 isolated. And I think that's what Trudeau fundamentally doesn't understand. And that's why so many of my

00:07:34.200 predictions from my first book are coming true, Andrew, is because, you know, the writing is on

00:07:38.040 the wall. And when you have this ignorant approach that just says, hey, everyone should come to Canada

00:07:42.620 and, you know, everything will work out. It's like, no, no, it's not going to work out. You have to

00:07:47.820 actually do the hard work, put in the hard work, both on the government side and, you know, on behalf of

00:07:52.400 newcomers who are coming to our country. One thing that has really become apparent to me,

00:07:57.440 and I'm sure you've seen this as well, is that the more significant of an issue immigration has

00:08:02.380 gotten in Canada, it's similarly become more and more difficult to have an honest discussion. And

00:08:07.640 certainly the media is shying away from it. And I wanted to have you expand on that thought if you

00:08:13.040 could, because one of the big problems, and we've seen this from, you know, the immigration minister

00:08:17.720 calling people that criticize the government's immigration record on Canadian. We've seen it from

00:08:22.800 the prime minister insulting some woman in Quebec who asked a question about immigration. And this is

00:08:28.840 something that's happening with more and more frequency. How do you think we can break through

00:08:33.520 that? Because we've been given more and more examples of why it's important to talk about this,

00:08:37.720 but there seems to be more and more of a resistance to talking about it.

00:08:41.260 Yeah, it's almost becoming like a joke, like a farce. Like, you know, if someone disagrees with

00:08:47.540 you, you just call them racist. And that's like, that's how a liberal thinks they win an argument.

00:08:51.400 I mean, the idea, again, is that this is the reason why Canadians are becoming more and more

00:08:56.120 skeptical, is the approach of people mostly on the political left. It's that if you question this

00:09:01.400 idea, if you are critical, you know, not of the fact that there are different people from

00:09:06.460 different ethnic backgrounds coming to Canada. I don't think that that's the problem that a lot of

00:09:10.020 Canadians have. I think the problem a lot of Canadians have is the cultural fit, whether

00:09:14.340 people are actually going to follow our rule of law. And, you know, I think that the Trudeau

00:09:19.440 government was faced with a dilemma. They realized that Canadians were very unhappy. The majority of

00:09:24.600 Canadians were calling the illegal border crisis a crisis, whereas the immigration minister and the

00:09:29.600 prime minister were denying that it was a crisis and basically saying anyone who was talking about it

00:09:33.960 was just irresponsible and they were fear mongering. So you have a crisis of illegal immigration.

00:09:38.440 You can either deal with that, deal with the policy and go and kind of like lay down the

00:09:42.760 law and be tough. But that would threaten Trudeau's whole image. So instead of actually addressing

00:09:48.800 the crisis, they tried to address the public relations, the perception of a crisis. And they

00:09:53.580 did that by basically promoting that anyone who talks about this is just a hateful, bigoted person

00:09:59.860 who hates immigration and they are not welcome in the public sphere. They're not welcome to be part of

00:10:04.800 the conversation. And fortunately for the Trudeau liberals, the media were all too happy to comply

00:10:10.200 with this. It's really interesting, Andrew, as part of my research in my book, I was going back and

00:10:14.680 looking at immigration data all the way back. I was also looking at immigration news coverage dating

00:10:19.920 back decades. And, you know, there was a consensus among journalists. They would call what was happening

00:10:25.880 illegal immigration. I have a story from 2005 open on my laptop from the Toronto Star that they were

00:10:31.600 talking about how there were 45,000 illegal immigrants who had just disappeared into Canadian

00:10:36.120 society. And they were writing about the phenomenon. You know, you would never see a story like that

00:10:40.480 in the Toronto Star today because they no longer, first of all, they no longer use the term illegal

00:10:44.520 immigration. As soon as the Trudeau government started using the term irregular immigration, which

00:10:48.860 has never been used in the past in Canadian language, the way that Canadians talked about immigration,

00:10:54.720 as soon as they changed to irregular immigration, all the news media fell in line and started doing the exact

00:10:59.600 same thing. The news media started to basically tell every story as if the people who were coming

00:11:05.760 were sympathetic and that Canada had to help them, even if they were bad people, even if they were,

00:11:10.080 you know, drug dealers or gang members. The news media would still paint them as if they were the

00:11:14.720 victim and somehow it was Canada's responsibility to help these people. And, you know, Trudeau really

00:11:19.840 just put pressure on media and made Canadians feel like they really couldn't have this conversation.

00:11:25.520 Because the worst thing that you can be called in our society today is racist. No one wants to be called

00:11:30.480 racist. And most of the people who are worried about Canadian border security are not racist people,

00:11:35.680 but they would shy away from the conversation just because they don't want to be labeled with that

00:11:39.600 really, really disgusting term that, you know, makes you feel like you have no place in the conversation.

00:11:46.080 To that point, people on the right tend to have, in a lot of ways, internalized this. And one example

00:11:52.560 you mentioned earlier, birth tourism, when the Conservative Party of Canada's members

00:11:56.800 at their convention, I think it was last summer, almost a year ago, were discussing a motion on

00:12:02.640 birthright citizenship and whether to put an end to it. This is something that was not a radical

00:12:08.080 concept. Canada is one of just a small handful of developed countries that has birthright citizenship,

00:12:13.680 but even that was really kiboshed by the Conservative leadership. And do you think that this is

00:12:19.360 something that the right needs to do a better job at pushing back on? Or do you think it is about

00:12:26.080 choosing your battles because of that media climate we've just been talking about?

00:12:29.920 Well, look, I think that when you're talking about these issues, you do have to be careful,

00:12:33.760 you have to be sensitive. And a lot of people will interpret what you're saying as being kind of

00:12:38.240 like hateful or exclusive of other people. So you have to be careful in your language. I don't think,

00:12:45.840 I think that there's a lot of examples of people just kind of being brash or mean-spirited or rude

00:12:50.480 in the way they talk about immigration. And you have to be careful for sure. But that said,

00:12:54.960 I think in so many cases, the Conservative Party of Canada, the like conservative establishment,

00:13:01.120 is afraid of their own shadow. They don't want to rock the boat. They saw how Kelly Leach was treated.

00:13:05.200 You remember Kelly Leach ran for leader of the Conservative Party. She had a couple of ideas that were

00:13:10.320 pretty strong. Maybe she didn't communicate them in the best way. But the media just completely

00:13:15.200 demonized her. They turned her into like a Trump figure. And they pretty much ruined her career

00:13:20.960 in politics. And I think that a lot of Conservatives saw that and just didn't want anything to do with

00:13:25.920 it. They didn't want to touch any of those issues. You saw, you know, just on this campaign trail,

00:13:31.600 Andrew Scheer was asked about a values test for immigrants. And he really quickly shied away from

00:13:35.840 the Liberal government and said that he wouldn't do that. But that, you know, he thinks that integration

00:13:39.600 is important. So I think that, you know, in so many ways, the Liberal government has been successful

00:13:45.520 in creating this climate of like fear around immigration. But what hasn't changed is the fact

00:13:50.720 that most Canadians still don't want more and more immigration. Only 6% of Canadians, according to a poll

00:13:55.760 last summer, wanted more immigration. And then at the same time, the trio government was rapidly increasing

00:14:02.800 the immigration numbers, annual immigration intake to the highest levels in recent history. So,

00:14:08.640 you know, in some ways, it's like the Liberals are successful in creating this climate where you

00:14:12.960 can't talk about it. And then the Conservatives just don't really know what to do. They don't want

00:14:16.800 to be seen as being racist or offensive. But then at the same time, they haven't really created a

00:14:21.680 different approach or a different vision of Canada from the Liberals. So we're kind of stuck

00:14:26.640 without a lot of leadership. I guess that's why you have Maxine Bernier and his party that is willing to

00:14:31.840 talk about this. And as you see, they're written off and most of the media absolutely despise them

00:14:37.840 or think that they are actually just a bunch of bigots. And, you know, that's what that's what

00:14:41.520 you get for talking about immigration. So again, I think that's why elections are really important.

00:14:46.720 And the more that we have Liberals have found, the more that we have these people that

00:14:50.480 a take it take Canadian advantages for granted. And that's why they are willing to, you know, slash our

00:14:56.640 immigration citizenship requirements and then also open the border and not do anything to defend the

00:15:00.960 border and to defend our legal immigration system and the integrity of it. But then at the same time,

00:15:05.520 really create this climate of fear where you can't talk about these issues, you can't criticize them,

00:15:09.760 or you'll be disregarded and successful. And that's why it's so dangerous, Andrew.

00:15:15.040 When you talk about prescriptions that you'd like to see adopted, when we look at what Trudeau is doing,

00:15:22.080 I think we all can agree much of it needs to stop the Safe Third Country Act, Roxham Road, all of these issues.

00:15:27.520 But what's worse is that the government has continuously said it's fixing these issues.

00:15:32.800 And you talk about this in your book specifically with Ahmed Hassen going over to, I think it was Nigeria,

00:15:38.800 and not really coming back with any sort of clear record of what he did over there that was supposed

00:15:43.360 to help with the illegal border crossings, or Emmanuel Dubourg speaking to the Haitian community,

00:15:48.080 same sort of thing. So the government has said that it's dealt with this. Are the data showing that?

00:15:53.600 No, I mean, that's the interesting thing is that the number of illegal border crossings has stayed the

00:15:59.920 same. Canada is on track in 2019 to have more asylum seekers than any of the previous year. You know,

00:16:05.520 2017 broke the record and doubled the previous year for a number of asylum seekers. And then 2018 was

00:16:11.600 even higher, so a new record. And now 2019 is on track to set a new record once again. So the numbers

00:16:17.680 are continuing to grow. The Trudeau government like to create the appearance that they're doing something,

00:16:21.840 but the numbers show something totally different. And you wouldn't really know it as a Canadian unless

00:16:26.160 you were, you know, someone who was really, really interested in this and spending time

00:16:30.480 on the immigration and, you know, data websites and pulling up all the statistics because you don't

00:16:36.480 see it reflected in the media. They stopped talking about it. So you would assume the problem has been

00:16:40.960 solved, but it hasn't. There's just so many, you know, people from around the world that are still

00:16:45.200 hearing about this idea that you can go to Canada, you can just walk across the border, or you can

00:16:51.360 come up with some kind of a scheme to get to a Canadian airport using false documentation,

00:16:55.760 claim that you're a refugee, just stick your hands in the air, say refugee, and you're guaranteed all

00:16:59.680 the same legal protections as a Canadian, even if you have no claim, even if your claim is completely

00:17:03.840 bogus, you can do that. And you're guaranteed right now the wait time to see an immigration

00:17:07.920 judge is about five years. It's about five years. So you get five years where you get, you know,

00:17:12.320 unlimited handouts, benefits, the exact same stuff as a Canadian who is on welfare,

00:17:17.280 plus even more because there's other programs like the interim federal health program, which gives

00:17:22.240 these people, these migrants, free dental care and different kind of drug plans that Canadians

00:17:28.320 don't even get or have to pay out of pocket. It really is, I mean, for someone coming from a poor

00:17:33.680 country, that's like a huge boost in their standard of living, even if you're eventually found not to be

00:17:39.680 a real refugee. Canada is basically non-existent at this point. So you have tens of thousands of

00:17:48.160 people who have been rejected or their claim is a bit abandoned, and they're still living in Canada

00:17:52.320 and, you know, not there legally, they're there illegally. But this is able to carry on. And

00:17:58.400 Andrew, it's not like the solution would be that big. You know, we have laws on the books that could

00:18:02.480 deal with this stuff. We have lots of laws on the books. It's just that Trudeau is choosing not to

00:18:07.520 follow those rules. He's really ignoring them. And the protections that we have that are built into the

00:18:12.640 system, he's kind of quietly undoing them, and making it even easier for people to take advantage of

00:18:17.680 our generosity. Do you think it would be enough to just return to that Harper and Kenny era of

00:18:24.640 immigration? Or do you think that the challenges have gotten to a point where we really need a

00:18:28.720 a new or at the very least renewed approach to immigration? Well, I think that Harper and Kenny

00:18:34.880 inherited like a real mess in immigration. They spent years trying to fix it. I was there for a short period

00:18:40.800 working for Kenny in the immigration department. I was there for about a year and a half,

00:18:44.080 and I saw kind of the mess that we had. And there's just so many people that take advantage of

00:18:48.000 Canada's generosity. And the Canadian government knows it. The bureaucrats working in the immigration

00:18:52.160 department, you know, they're not naive. A lot of them have worked overseas in consulate offices,

00:18:56.800 and they understand, you know, just how valuable a Canadian passport can be and how many people

00:19:01.760 are willing to kind of cheat and steal to get one. But the problem I see now is that we just had so

00:19:07.040 many years of mass sustained immigration where people are coming into Canada and they're not really

00:19:12.240 integrating. You know, a lot of people are integrating, a lot of people are not. And so I

00:19:16.800 think it's actually time that we take a pause where we just sort of, you know, slow down the immigration

00:19:22.080 intake, maybe keep it to like essential economic immigrants, people coming specifically with a job

00:19:28.480 at a visa. And then, you know, slow down for a year or two, don't take as many people and make sure,

00:19:33.600 focus on the people who are already in our country, on the people who are already Canadians,

00:19:37.360 make sure that they are welcomed and that they are, you know, learning English and integrating

00:19:42.000 and joining the Canadian family. And then, you know, maybe in a couple of years, we can open the

00:19:45.920 borders back up and allow more people to come in legally with a focus on the legal side of it.

00:19:51.840 But, you know, I think that we've had so many years now of just kind of mass migration, open borders,

00:19:56.800 no regard for integration whatsoever, that there's a lot of people in our country that we should be

00:20:01.920 concerned about. And we should make sure that they are part of the Canadian family before we focus on,

00:20:06.640 hey, let's let another million people in, or let's let another two million people in,

00:20:09.840 which is the current plan. The book is No Border, Justin Trudeau's Assault on Canadian Border Security.

00:20:16.240 The author, True North founder and fellow Candice Malcolm. Candice, thanks for the time. And again,

00:20:21.360 congrats on the new book. All right. Thank you so much, Andrew.

Juno News - September 18, 2019

Justin Trudeau’s assault on Canadian border security

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