Juno News - Liberal elites MELT DOWN over Poilievre’s immigration proposal

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show. We've got a great episode for you

00:00:07.600 today, folks. Thanks so much for tuning in. So recently, as of late, Juno News and myself on

00:00:12.700 the show have helped to push a national conversation on immigration and reversing,

00:00:18.380 restricting the inflow of mass migration. I think that there's a growing consensus,

00:00:23.060 definitely on the conservative side, but more and more just across the entire country,

00:00:26.280 that our immigration system is broken, that mass migration has failed our country, 1.00

00:00:31.100 that so many of the issues that we're struggling with are happening in part or in full because of

00:00:36.940 the open border policy of the previous administration. And I'm pleased to see that

00:00:41.380 the conservatives are starting to take some steps in this direction, catching up, I think,

00:00:46.440 with the national mood of the country and certainly the conservative base in starting to restrict and

00:00:51.280 reverse that flow of immigration. So we announced earlier this year that Pierre Polly, the leader

00:00:58.460 of the Conservative Party, announced that a conservative government would immediately deport

00:01:03.860 people in the country who are not yet citizens who have been convicted of a violent crime. That is

00:01:09.260 an obvious winner. That is like a no-brainer that that should be the policy. I actually think that

00:01:14.980 it probably already is the law because you become inadmissible if you are convicted of a serious crime.

00:01:19.060 But nonetheless, it's good to see them championing that. Well, the latest thing that the conservatives

00:01:23.480 have come out talking about and pushing is an end to the interim federal health program

00:01:29.100 for failed asylum seekers, right? This is like a totally insane policy. But anyone who steps foot 0.86

00:01:34.320 in Canada can claim to be a refugee. They just have to put their hands in the air and basically say,

00:01:39.500 I need asylum. I'm seeking asylum. At that point, they get put into a system where they have to 0.95

00:01:44.660 have their case heard before a judge. And a lot of these cases don't have any merit. A lot of the

00:01:48.740 people abandon the case and just disappear. But of those cases, they get to a refugee 0.99

00:01:53.400 judge. And if that judge determines, no, no, no, you're not actually a refugee. You have to go.

00:01:58.620 You're like on a deportation list. And those people still get access to this program. Of course,

00:02:03.640 that program gives them better health care benefits than you and I. It's an elevated above and beyond

00:02:08.800 program where the feds fund the provinces to give these people better health care in Canadians.

00:02:13.940 It begs the question, why does anybody get better health care than a Canadian? Like, why does someone who just 1.00

00:02:18.460 steps foot in the country and doesn't have any claim here and has a lot of times entered the

00:02:22.120 country illegally, crossed the border illegally or came under false pretences? Like, why did they

00:02:26.160 get better health care in Canadians? It doesn't make any sense, particularly someone who has had 1.00

00:02:30.920 their case rejected. And so they're a failed refugee. They're a bogus refugee. Again, low-hanging fruit. 0.95

00:02:37.300 I'm going to show you the video that Conservative Leader Pierre Poliev posted on X and then I'm

00:02:42.540 going to react to it. So let's play that clip. Fact. Six million Canadians can't get access to a

00:02:48.180 family doctor. Fact. It takes 30 weeks for the average Canadian to see a specialist. Fact. While

00:02:53.760 you can't get health care, liberals force you to pay higher taxes to fund deluxe supplementary

00:03:00.020 health care benefits for asylum claimants who've been rejected, who are non-Canadians,

00:03:05.800 non-permanent residents, and have never paid taxes in this country. Fact. The reality is that these 1.00

00:03:12.100 services include many things that are not covered by your public plan. Things like physiotherapy.

00:03:18.880 Fact. The cost of providing these deluxe supplementary benefits to asylum claimants has

00:03:26.480 gone up by a thousand percent under the liberals to over a billion dollars. Money diverted away from

00:03:32.080 our health care, jamming up our system and increasing our wait lines. The liberals destroyed

00:03:37.740 our immigration system with numbers that overwhelmed our jobs, our health care, and our housing. Not only 1.00

00:03:44.700 that, they've made it so that when someone is here making an asylum claim and they commit a crime,

00:03:50.780 they could indeed have lower sentences than if a Canadian had committed the very same crime.

00:03:58.520 This is unfair and it's time that it changed. That's why tomorrow conservatives are moving a motion

00:04:03.840 to change it. The motion would force a review and a cutback in benefits to asylum claimants to ensure

00:04:11.000 that non-citizens and non-permanent residents do not get superior health benefits than Canadians.

00:04:17.940 Second, it would ensure that those asylum claimants who are here and have been rejected

00:04:23.140 only get life-saving emergency care and not special care. And third, it would ensure that judges give

00:04:31.720 the full sentence and allow for a complete deportation of foreign nationals who are non-citizens that commit

00:04:38.820 crime in our country. Enough is enough. We can't allow foreign criminals to take advantage of our 1.00

00:04:45.580 system. False refugee claims to overwhelm the services that you pay for. We need a system that 0.98

00:04:52.160 allows you as a hard-working Canadian to benefit from all that you've contributed to Canada. Quick and

00:04:58.500 high-quality health care, good jobs and housing, safe streets. That's the Canadian promise. We're going to

00:05:06.000 restore fairness. Sign our petition. Back our motion. Tune in tomorrow for the debate. Let's ensure that all

00:05:13.160 Canadians get fair treatment.

00:05:14.900 So I would just applaud Pierre Polyev for coming out and doing that. I think that's Polyev at his best.

00:05:19.180 He is breaking it down in a way that anyone can understand. It's based on the numbers, right? It's like he's

00:05:24.240 explaining a complex system and talking about how unfair it is for Canadians, which is just so

00:05:28.640 patently obvious, right? Like, obviously, the system is not right. And he paints it out very

00:05:34.460 clearly there. Unfortunately, the reaction, I mean, the video went viral. It's gotten millions of views

00:05:39.540 on social media. But there's a lot of criticism for it. Why? Because the establishment in Canada

00:05:44.840 doesn't want to have these conversations, any discussion about immigration, and they will just jump to

00:05:49.460 call you a racist. We saw that with Danielle Smith last week. She, again, had mild criticism about

00:05:54.060 immigration, said that they're going to put some questions on immigration on the referendum. And

00:05:58.360 immediately, the NDP came out and accused her of racism. We saw a bit of the same thing. So we'll

00:06:02.520 go through the reaction in a moment. But to discuss this, I'm pleased to be joined by Matt Spoke. Matt's

00:06:07.660 a tech entrepreneur. He is a real estate builder. He's on the board of Canada Strong and Free, and he is

00:06:11.980 the co-founder of Project Ontario. So, Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us.

00:06:16.740 Thanks for having me, Candice. Okay, so you saw Pierre Polyev's announcement and that clip.

00:06:22.800 What did you make of it? I know that you come from a different perspective on immigration. I think

00:06:26.680 you're pretty pro-immigration, even though you're on the conservative side. And so we'll get to that

00:06:30.720 discussion debate a little later in the episode. But I just wanted to get your opinion and your

00:06:35.720 reaction to Pierre's announcement there. Yeah, I mean, I think broadly speaking, I'm in, you know,

00:06:41.260 in agreement with what the leader of the Conservative Party announced yesterday. I think to have

00:06:46.620 a functioning immigration system, the baseline is that people have to trust that there is no fraud

00:06:51.640 happening, that there is nobody taking advantage of the system in the ways that the Conservative

00:06:56.440 leader described. You know, if you're a criminal and you're being treated more leniently than a

00:07:00.880 Canadian who's committing a crime, I don't think that that's a fair interpretation of our laws. I don't 1.00

00:07:05.860 think that we're properly enforcing rules related to fraudulent claimants. So all of those things to me

00:07:11.480 are good. I think these, you know, the system needs to be based on rules and laws being enforced. And

00:07:18.260 then, you know, once we get past that step, we can debate, you know, what's the right type of

00:07:22.180 immigration approach. But we can't have a debate on immigration if we're not, you know, in the first

00:07:26.440 place enforcing the rules that already exist. Well, I can just quickly show you just a couple of

00:07:30.760 news stories from like the last 72 hours. First of all, we had the National Post reporting this

00:07:36.960 is overwhelmed by asylum claims. Ottawa coped by ignoring security protocols. 25,000 people from

00:07:43.940 some of the most dangerous countries on earth received refugee status without ever meeting a 1.00

00:07:48.140 government employee. So they just basically are so overwhelmed by the number of asylum claims that

00:07:52.560 they don't they don't bother doing the things that Canadians trust that they do. Or how about this

00:07:57.060 one here that the Ottawa ramps up their latest budget numbers show $1 billion in asylum seeker costs

00:08:04.240 coming out. So, you know, the government is just going to continue to spend money on, you know,

00:08:11.440 people who haven't come to Canada legally for the most part. Most people who claim refugee status in

00:08:17.100 Canada have either crossed the border illegally or come under false pretenses, right? They came 0.70

00:08:21.380 as a visitor on a visitor visa or came as a student. And then rather than leaving because their visa's

00:08:27.180 running out, they just decide to throw their hands up in the air and say refugee and take advantage 0.99

00:08:31.380 of the system. I want to get your response, Matt, to some of the criticism of Pierre Polyev. Because

00:08:36.880 to me, again, that was that was like pretty low hanging fruit on the conservative side. Actually,

00:08:40.540 the Harper government tried to do this back in when Harper was prime minister. Also restricting,

00:08:47.060 you know, these are people who are about to be deported, right? Like these people have no claim

00:08:50.600 to be in Canada. I don't understand why they're not deported. Like the day that the judge finds that

00:08:54.720 they're not a refugee. But you know, these are people that shouldn't be in the country. So why on earth 1.00

00:08:59.780 are we funding them? And yet, you know, here you have Andrew Coyne of the Globe and Mail saying this

00:09:04.200 is just sad and desperate. Go get go out with some dignity. Dwayne Bratt, who's a university

00:09:11.220 professor at Mount Royal University, unlike often quoted in the media in Alberta, he says, Pierre

00:09:17.520 Polyev decides to go beyond Smith and her anti-immigration push. I also see the emphasis,

00:09:23.600 see how his emphasis on deportations, this is himself from Trump. Immigration is a challenge

00:09:28.260 and changes need to be made. But this is hostile rhetoric. We had Charles Adler, who was once a

00:09:35.440 conservative commentator, but then he became a liberal and now he's a senator. He says,

00:09:40.460 blaming the newcomer as a strategy in Canada, a perennial political loser. This would probably

00:09:44.800 have rarely missed an opportunity to communicate with the wrong country. So I guess he's saying that

00:09:48.740 this is like supposed to be like an American message or something. I mean, there's like,

00:09:53.320 I could go on and on. There's like hundreds of these sort of like hot takes. Mark Levesque,

00:09:58.620 who is the, let's see, what is his position? He used to be chief economist with the public sector

00:10:03.140 pension investment. Now he's with TD Securities. And he just says like, you know, this is a dog

00:10:08.960 whistle, dog whistle. And that's like the favorite accusation of the left. So basically like the

00:10:13.300 elites and the liberals and the left say you cannot talk about immigration, like any discussion

00:10:16.720 on immigration, even if you're just talking about like obvious fraud, where like, I would say

00:10:20.780 like nine out of 10 Canadians would agree that people who are in the country illegally and about

00:10:24.880 to get deported shouldn't get better health care than us. And yet they try to like cleanse the

00:10:29.300 conversation and not allow like any conservative opinion and scold the conservatives for having.

00:10:34.160 So it'll be interesting to see whether Polly and the conservatives double down on this message

00:10:37.640 and keep going, or whether they get scared away from like mild criticism. What do you think?

00:10:42.080 Well, I think it's worth reminding people that, you know, a lot of this problem dates back to

00:10:46.020 the really poor track record of the Trudeau government on the immigration file

00:10:49.600 over the last 10 years, but particularly in the years sort of like through and leading out of

00:10:54.500 COVID, where we saw, you know, record, not only record, but like, you know, multiple times our

00:10:59.900 previous records in terms of like an annual immigration targets. I think peaking in 2023 and

00:11:05.060 2024, where we had over a million people coming into the country, you know, these problems that

00:11:08.920 we're describing of refugee claimants that are now, you know, in queue for these special health care

00:11:13.200 benefits, the problem has gotten so much larger because of the number of people that are now in a 0.91

00:11:17.820 position where they see refugee claim as their only option to getting kicked out of the country.

00:11:22.660 Somebody on a student visa who otherwise would have to leave or somebody on a temporary work

00:11:26.040 permit who otherwise would have to leave. You know, that number of people in absolute terms is

00:11:29.980 just larger than we've ever experienced. So all of a sudden, the number of people then going through

00:11:34.100 this process of refugee claiming is larger than we've ever seen. And so naturally, you know,

00:11:39.720 the problem is a lot bigger. I think it used to be a relatively niche problem. I think the policy and the

00:11:44.100 principles that Harper tried to push forward here and that Polyev is championing now makes sense.

00:11:49.840 They always just used to be a lot more niche in terms of the scale of the problem. So, you know,

00:11:54.800 I think it's disingenuous. I think especially these liberal commentators who conveniently skip over

00:11:59.140 the fact that this is a problem, not only that the policy was broken by the previous liberal

00:12:03.840 government and to a certain extent not being corrected by this current liberal government,

00:12:07.320 but also that the consensus across the country has so dramatically changed in the last five years

00:12:13.380 because of these mismanaged policies. And I think if you see division on this and if you see tension

00:12:19.180 and you see like really heated debate, we really do have the liberals to blame for having created that

00:12:23.900 because, you know, you don't have to go back very far 10 years or so to realize that there was a

00:12:28.680 general acceptance across Canada in most demographics and in most electoral coalitions that

00:12:34.900 immigration was a net positive for the country if managed responsibly and if the rules were 1.00

00:12:39.120 properly implemented and enforced. Now we've sort of lost that consensus. And I think it's leading

00:12:43.800 to a lot of this really heated debate that I think is unhealthy, but it's a consequence of bad policy.

00:12:49.920 Well, I disagree just in that. I think it is healthy, right? I think that for many years,

00:12:54.200 Canadians didn't want to talk about immigration and anyone who did talk about it got accused of being

00:12:58.580 racist. I know because I've been talking about this issue for 10 years and I've been called racist by all

00:13:01.680 the liberals, even though I never talk about race. I just talk about like culture or economics,

00:13:06.220 but still like that's, that's their go-to knee-jerk reaction. And I think that the fact that so many

00:13:11.260 Canadians are just truly so fed up with mismanagement of the system and the manipulation, like taking

00:13:16.760 advantage of our generosity and all that kind of stuff, that they're willing to have a conversation

00:13:20.440 and more and more people just don't even care. I should, I should re-characterize. I don't think

00:13:25.080 that the debate on the issue is unhealthy. I think what, what, what the risk is, is that you create

00:13:29.740 these camps of people that I think go to extreme versions of these views. And, and, you know, I,

00:13:35.400 I, I won't, uh, I won't hide my views on, on some of the debates that we've seen on Twitter and, and,

00:13:40.480 and previous guests that you've hosted on your show, where I think what you're doing is you're

00:13:44.480 effectively fanning the flame of people that have, you know, I don't think mainstream views. I think

00:13:48.980 many of the, you know, the downstream implementation details that they would recommend, I think would

00:13:53.780 be considered by most Canadians extreme. And I think you're fanning the flames of these people being

00:13:57.480 effectively given, um, mainstream, uh, attention because we're, we're not operating within a

00:14:04.520 responsible way in our, in our immigration policy. There's always going to be room to debate what's

00:14:08.840 the right number of people, uh, what types of people, how do we manage enforcement and deportation?

00:14:14.080 Like, I think all of those things need to be responsibly debated. Uh, but I, I do worry that

00:14:18.560 this sort of bleeds into territory where on the one hand, you've got liberals saying, Hey, it's,

00:14:22.840 it's not okay to even question refugee claimants and their legitimacy in the country. I think that's

00:14:27.720 unhealthy. And I think on the other hand, it's unhealthy to say, Hey, we should be looking at,

00:14:31.320 you know, mass deportations on the basis of sort of like ethnic origin. And, you know, I think there's

00:14:36.780 lots of room in the middle to have a responsible and reasonable debate. Um, but, but I worry that

00:14:41.260 we're effectively fanning the flames of, of the extremes on this issue.

00:14:44.900 Yeah. I see your criticism there. I'll, I'll just push back slightly. Like, I think that the,

00:14:49.060 the fact that I know, I know you're referring to my interview last week with Daniel Teary,

00:14:52.260 um, like I'll just restate this, right? Like, like this movement and these ideas are gaining traction

00:14:57.460 online. They have like a big following. If you look at like the replies on X to any of Jason Kenney's

00:15:02.980 responses, you'll see that it, you know, there's, there's a lot of people that hold these views that

00:15:06.180 are interested in this topic. Right. And so like me, me, just like hearing them out and pushing back

00:15:12.580 against the elements that I find distasteful, like describing Canadians just based purely on

00:15:17.380 race is, is, is obviously, I'm obviously opposed to that, but I think that, that these people are 1.00

00:15:21.940 part of the conversation because so many people follow them and agree with them and are pushing

00:15:26.820 this idea, um, that, you know, like, I think Justin Trudeau is very extreme. I think that he,

00:15:32.020 he represents a very, very extreme view that the century initiative and yet the media treat that

00:15:36.660 like it's mainstream. Um, I would argue the mainstream is, is somewhere much, much closer,

00:15:41.540 um, to the other side of this debate with like a full, not only saying that we need to totally

00:15:45.940 stop immigration for a few years, like a full moratorium. Um, but we need to start deporting 1.00

00:15:50.020 the bad people that it belong in our country. I'm not talking about citizens. I'm not talking

00:15:53.220 about people who illegally came here. I'm talking about people who are illegally here. Um, people 1.00

00:15:56.660 who have broken our laws, people who are violent in other ways, like, like those are the kind of

00:16:00.340 people. And then starting in the future, we should be much more selective. We should actually put

00:16:04.820 up protections around our citizenship and make sure that you can't take advantage of it, that you can't

00:16:08.740 become a Canadian citizen without even living in Canada. I mean, honestly, Matt,

00:16:13.220 like the, the, the, the loosening of our citizenship laws under the Trudeau government,

00:16:16.900 um, was just absolutely atrocious and, and, and, and there needs to be reckoning. And a lot of that,

00:16:21.700 a lot of those policies, uh, rightfully, um, should be rolled back.

00:16:25.060 No, I, I, I, I completely agree with, with, with most of what you just said there, Candace. I think,

00:16:29.700 I think where I, where I worry is that when some of these, when, when some of these sort of like

00:16:33.460 reform conversations get blurred into the same conversations where we're talking about,

00:16:37.860 uh, you know, ethnic based deportation, like, I think that's where you start to lose the

00:16:41.300 mainstream Canadian. So, you know, do I think we should be revisiting every detail in our

00:16:45.620 immigration system and how it's implemented, how it's enforced and how, uh, you know, how we're

00:16:49.700 effectively ramping up or ramping down numbers, depending on the circumstances in the country.

00:16:53.860 Absolutely. I, I just, I just worry that we do ourselves a disservice when that starts to sort of

00:16:58.340 fan these flames that I worry about. Um, I mean, the, the, my perspective, frankly, more than

00:17:03.300 I'd say most on the, on the, on the right in Canada is that we, you know, in the short term

00:17:08.180 have a problem to solve because we brought in a very uncontrolled number of what I would consider

00:17:12.580 maybe the wrong types of immigrants. Um, you know, and I say that based on, you know, their ability

00:17:16.900 to contribute to the country economically, their, their ability to sort of like find social cohesion

00:17:21.300 in the country and fit into our cultural and, and, and just societal norms. Um, but I do think

00:17:26.820 that the bigger issue that I worry about is that we're, we're, we're operating on the basis of this

00:17:30.980 sort of like zero sum mindset where growth is, is seen as a negative, you know, and what, what I hear,

00:17:37.140 you know, even Pierre Polyev in the last election, we were talking about, you know, limiting immigrants 1.00

00:17:41.700 based on the number of homes we built, which I don't think is an unreasonable perspective.

00:17:45.300 But I think one way to look at that is cut back on the number of immigrants. The other way to look at 1.00

00:17:48.340 that is that how do we ramp up the number of homes we built? How do we ramp up the number of hospitals

00:17:51.860 we built? How do we build more services and infrastructure so that we can support a growing

00:17:56.180 population? Um, you know, I don't think that that can be done and should be done at all costs at

00:18:01.220 any number, but I think, you know, in my mind it, you know, decline and growth are two sides of the

00:18:08.100 same coin. There is very, there's not much room for status quo. This idea, this romanticized idea

00:18:13.060 that Canada can just sort of freeze in time and we will always just be this size population forever.

00:18:17.780 The reality is we're likely going to shrink if we're not growing. And I think there's

00:18:21.620 real downstream economic consequences to that. So we need a responsible immigration policy,

00:18:26.260 uh, worth debating how to implement that. And I think, you know, those conversations are healthy.

00:18:30.900 Well, it's interesting because it seems to me like you're sort of on the,

00:18:33.700 on the idea that, I mean, this is what the Conservative Party believes too, that like the

00:18:36.500 immigration numbers should be tied to economic growth, should be tied to the number of houses 1.00

00:18:39.940 we built. I think the reality is that Canada, like structurally, culturally is opposed to building,

00:18:45.380 we're opposed to growing. You can see that.

00:18:46.900 Our healthcare is government funded. It can only grow so far as the tax base grows. The tax base

00:18:52.260 is already squeezed to the extreme, right? Like most of the cities are built around nice suburban

00:18:57.380 neighborhoods and areas, right? Where people don't want it to change. They actually want single 0.60

00:19:00.900 family homes. They don't want high rises and condos and townhouses. And so there's like fundamental

00:19:05.860 friction. And so to assume that, that we can just like change all that and we'll just keep like pumping

00:19:11.060 the gas on immigration. Like it was sort of bound to happen to the point where, you know,

00:19:15.860 there's this tension that, that, that, that most people don't actually in their neighborhoods,

00:19:20.100 like they don't want more, more condos. And, and, and you look at a city like Toronto and what have

00:19:24.500 they done? You know, they built like tons and tons of condos that are kind of designed for people in

00:19:29.060 their twenties, like, you know, bachelor, like 500 square foot apartments, which is totally like

00:19:34.820 counterproductive. If you want people to have families and you want them to have more kids and you 0.90

00:19:38.740 want to have thriving communities. Right. So a lot of it is just like kind of a failure of Croatia. And then,

00:19:44.020 and then also there's like the cultural element, right? Like, I don't think that immigration is 0.90

00:19:47.460 just like purely a mathematical equation. I think you have to consider of like, you know, Canada is

00:19:52.660 a nation, right? We do have a unique identity and we can't preserve that by just letting in everybody

00:19:58.100 from all over the world and asking nothing of them culturally, like saying, you don't need to

00:20:01.940 integrate. You don't need to assimilate. You, you could just do you and multiculturalism and you,

00:20:05.780 you know, you, we can have these like segregated communities, which when I look at places like

00:20:09.780 Vancouver and Toronto, I see mass segregation. I don't see a lot of like intermingling and like

00:20:15.220 the creation of like, or the adding to the unique Canadian identity. So I think some of the identity

00:20:20.820 questions are very valid and worth, worth having, you know, even, even if it might make us feel a

00:20:25.940 little bit uncomfortable, like there is a valid discussion there. And I think there's something

00:20:29.700 that all of the political parties are currently missing. No, I think that's right. And listen,

00:20:33.620 I think you're, you're highlighting a very, very difficult tension in Canadian politics. And in one way or

00:20:38.100 another, there's going to be an outcome that's going to be, I think less favorable than we'd

00:20:41.300 like. It's either going to be an outcome where, you know, we see the entire country shift so

00:20:45.380 dramatically against immigration that we end up in this sort of like cease at all costs narrative.

00:20:50.340 There's a, there's a narrative where everything gets more expensive because we can't get out of

00:20:53.300 our own way and we can't build anything. We can't deliver more services to get to people living in the 1.00

00:20:57.620 country or there's the optimistic and positive narrative which says, Hey, we should accept people that

00:21:03.140 want to join our country, want to contribute to our way of life, want to contribute to our economy.

00:21:07.540 But we also should be building the things needed to support that growing population.

00:21:11.220 That's a very fine line to walk. I don't know that any political party, any political leader

00:21:15.140 has really struck that balance quite yet. And I do think you need to address some of these short

00:21:19.060 term problems in order to lay the groundwork for, you know, maybe a longer term, you know,

00:21:24.180 new consensus in Canada that growth is good, but it needs to be, it needs to be guarded. And I agree

00:21:30.100 with you on, on social norms. I agree with you on Canadian pride. I agree with you on social

00:21:34.420 integration. I mean, I've always been of the view that multiculturalism in and of itself

00:21:38.660 is not something we should be aspiring to. I think we should be aspiring to more assimilation. 1.00

00:21:43.220 Um, and I, and I think, you know, historically in cities like Toronto, um, we have neighborhoods,

00:21:47.700 you know, today people think of Toronto and they think of places like Brampton and Markham,

00:21:50.820 which are quite segregated, but historically we had neighborhoods like little Italy and little

00:21:54.820 Portugal and little Jamaica and Chinatown that over a generation or two actually became part of a

00:22:00.260 cohesive, assimilated, assimilated fabric, where you have like a really interesting mix of people,

00:22:06.020 uh, you know, co-married across different ethnic backgrounds. And it, and it created

00:22:10.420 a period in time where Toronto was actually like a really interesting social experiment. I think we've

00:22:15.140 lost that because we've sort of pushed people into these like, you know, cultural little enclaves that,

00:22:20.580 that are, are, I don't think healthy for the country. Um, but you know, getting back to some sort

00:22:24.900 of normal is not an easy path. Yeah. I'll have to say, uh, you know, my husband and I moved to Toronto

00:22:30.260 as a, with our family in 2019, uh, we lived in Rosedale. I couldn't believe how like uniformly waspy

00:22:36.420 it was. It was like, you know, you expect Toronto to just be like totally like people from all over

00:22:40.420 place. And in our little neighborhood, it was just literally all wasps. And then you go one

00:22:43.780 neighborhood over and it was like totally different. It was like a lot of Muslims lived over there.

00:22:47.540 Lots of Jews lived over there. Like I did, I didn't actually see it as being multicultural. I saw it as

00:22:52.180 like a lot of really specific segregation, uh, by neighborhood. I just want to go back to the news

00:22:56.580 quickly with you, Matt here, because, uh, as Polly have mentioned in that video, he said,

00:23:00.420 we're looking forward to having this debate in parliament. So that's happening this week and we

00:23:05.060 see the, uh, liberal health minister. Um, so her name is Marjorie Michelle, and she is going ahead

00:23:12.820 and defending this program of interim federal health programs. So better benefits, um, for even people

00:23:19.380 who have been rejected. So I'm going to play that clip and get you to react to it.

00:23:23.860 Mr. Speaker, it's really unfortunate that we have this kind of conversation where we are talking

00:23:29.140 of the health of Canadian and asylum seekers. The reality is those people are in the country 1.00

00:23:36.900 and we have agreement and our system, our, our system, uh, the health system is a compassionate

00:23:45.620 system. So what we are saying is those people, they have, they, they need to have access to

00:23:52.660 health. And we are working closely with provinces and territories also to get more access to Canadian

00:24:00.660 people. Okay. So forget like her total inability to articulate an idea. I guess she's being heckled 0.60

00:24:06.180 there and maybe it's her second language. Seems like she's a Francophone. Um, but still like the,

00:24:10.580 the message that they have is basically like our system is based on compassion. Okay. So enough with

00:24:15.220 the facts and the numbers, we're here to just be bleeding heart compassion to the whole world.

00:24:19.220 Uh, what do you, what do you think of that response to that message?

00:24:22.180 No, I mean, this is going to, this is going to worsen the problem. I think this is where the

00:24:24.900 overall government gets in their own way and then they're going to turn around and blame the

00:24:27.460 conservatives for having stoke division. When in reality, it's, it's this, it's this really poorly

00:24:32.020 managed file where nobody, no reasonable person would, would, would agree that a certain class

00:24:37.700 of people in the country should be treated above, you know, actual Canadians or permanent residents 0.99

00:24:42.420 that pay into the tax system. I mean, I think one of the easiest solutions to, uh, mitigating some of

00:24:48.020 the negative effects of our immigration system is making it clear that social services, whether it be

00:24:52.500 healthcare or subsidized housing or anything of that nature, welfare programs are not, uh, are not

00:24:58.420 available to new arri, new, new arrivals for a period of time. I think that would be a reasonable

00:25:02.900 thing to layer into our immigration system. I don't think anybody wants to see a new immigrant 1.00

00:25:06.500 showing up and going on welfare or getting special treatment in the healthcare system or getting a

00:25:10.260 free house at the expense of the taxpayer. I don't think that's a fair way to build an immigration 1.00

00:25:14.260 system. And frankly, I think this is the type of thing that's going to make this debate more

00:25:17.860 heated over time and it's going to stoke more and more division. All right. Well, Matt, I really

00:25:22.340 appreciate your time and your insights. Good to have a friendly, a little bit of a debate on the

00:25:26.100 immigration issue. So appreciate you coming on the show. Great to see you. All the best.

00:25:30.660 All right, folks, this is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll

00:25:33.300 be back again tomorrow. I'm Kendis Malcolm. This is the Kendis Malcolm Show. Thank you and God bless.

Juno News - February 25, 2026

Liberal elites MELT DOWN over Poilievre’s immigration proposal

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