Juno News - Time to end birthright citizenship？ + Reacting to Carney's meeting with Trump

00:00:00.000 Well, Prime Minister Carney goes to Washington and comes back with, what exactly? We're still

00:00:17.320 trying to figure that out. I mean, besides the commitment to apparently keep on talking,

00:00:22.380 he basically came back with virtually nothing. Here's his trade representative, Dominic LeBlanc,

00:00:27.900 trying to put the best possible spin on what came out of D.C.

00:00:31.900 Coming into this, it's been widely reported that the Canadian delegation was hoping for relief

00:00:36.920 on steel tariffs, and it was widely reported and never denied by anybody in the government.

00:00:42.920 So you're not getting that leaving here, and I'm trying to figure out how you can still

00:00:46.780 say that you're happy, and how can you tell Canadians that you've come away from this with

00:00:50.700 a win at all? I wouldn't purport to correct your question, Mike, but I think I said in the House

00:00:56.920 of Commons yesterday that we don't have an expectation of a detailed deal today. So because

00:01:04.200 some unnamed sources speculated, it doesn't change our state of mind when we got here.

00:01:12.140 On top of that, there's also some clouds over our current deal, our big deal with

00:01:16.580 Trump, the Trump administration, the USMCA slash KUSMA. And this story from the Globe and

00:01:23.260 Mail touches on that. Trump also signaled ambivalence about whether he would ultimately preserve the

00:01:29.540 trilateral United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement or sign other deals. Sounds a little

00:01:36.320 ominous. Like, what kind of other deals are we looking at? I mean, Canada has been a huge

00:01:40.600 beneficiary, even according to Mark Carney himself, huge beneficiary of the USMCA or KUSMA,

00:01:46.820 and it's up for review next year. Now we have some indication from Trump that he may allow that

00:01:54.340 deal to lapse and push for a one-on-one deal with Canada. Carney himself didn't have a whole lot to

00:02:01.720 say during a long, rambling news conference in the Oval Office. And when he did speak,

00:02:07.160 he touted the half trillion dollars in investment that Canadians have moved to the United States.

00:02:12.220 Let's listen. Let's be clear about the relationship as it stands right now. We are the second largest

00:02:17.480 trading partner of the United States. We do a lot of trade going across the border where we're

00:02:22.080 cooperating, first thing. Secondly, we are the largest foreign investor in the United States.

00:02:26.940 Half a trillion dollars in the last five years alone, probably a trillion dollars in the next five

00:02:31.900 years if we get the agreement that we expect to get. You know, I don't think that Carney meant

00:02:37.340 to brag about the loss of half a trillion dollars and more possibly in investment capital that could

00:02:44.440 very well have been invested in Canada. The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada

00:02:48.880 said that the tidal wave of investment leaving Canada for the United States is hardly something

00:02:54.280 to brag about. Now this story, Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel-Garner says it's time to restrict

00:03:01.640 birthright citizenship. In other words, to end the practice of automatically granting citizenship

00:03:07.600 to children born here to non-permanent residents. And we have a circumstance now where a child,

00:03:16.520 say, born to temporary foreign workers is automatically granted citizenship. Rempel-Garner says there's

00:03:24.720 something wrong with that. I'll quote you from her op-ed that was posted to Acts this morning.

00:03:29.340 The granting of citizenship to anyone born here, even to the children of temporary residents,

00:03:35.420 presents several major problems. Immigration levels have outpaced housing, healthcare, and job

00:03:41.480 growth, and have led to increased social tensions. She writes as well, liberals have, through their

00:03:48.180 post-nationalism and mass immigration policies, brought into question the intrinsic value of Canadian

00:03:54.820 citizenship. Well, the reaction from the left has been swift and harsh. Here's a post by Gil McGowan,

00:04:01.660 who is president of the Alberta Federation of Labor. The Conservative Member of Parliament for Oklahoma,

00:04:08.820 that's obviously a reference to the fact that Michelle Rempel-Garner lives with her husband in that

00:04:13.720 state, just made it clear that she wants to bring Trump's toxic brand of politics to Canada. 0.99

00:04:20.280 She should be ashamed of herself, and we Canadians should not reward her with clicks or shares.

00:04:27.540 MAGA is not welcome or wanted here. That's from Gil McGowan. Our guest today is Michael Bonner,

00:04:34.160 who worked on the immigration file in the Harper government. Welcome, Michael.

00:04:38.760 Thanks for having me.

00:04:40.560 All right, so this is a controversial issue, and Michelle Rempel-Garner has waded right into that. 0.86

00:04:46.700 What do you make of this proposal of hers? Well, look, I think it's a great proposal,

00:04:51.500 but can we please put aside this nonsense about Trump and whatever? The United States

00:04:57.360 has their own immigration policy. They allow birthright citizenship, and that doesn't seem

00:05:04.960 likely to change. If anything, we'd be moving closer to Northern European countries like Denmark

00:05:11.960 that don't allow it. This is just a weird sort of red herring, a strange obsession of... I don't even

00:05:20.840 know who this person is, Gil McGowan, but whoever he is, this is just a completely irrelevant

00:05:25.740 comparison and really a fatuous line of attack on what I think is actually going to be a very sensible

00:05:35.300 policy. Now, look, there is nothing that is so well thought out or seemingly logical when it comes

00:05:43.300 to government policy that would not be immune from abuse. So, you know, that's the kind of thing that

00:05:49.000 we should be looking at. There is a bill before the House right now, C3, that aims to restore

00:05:57.500 citizenship to people born to Canadian parents, but sort of continue to do that or allow the passage of

00:06:05.880 citizenship seemingly indefinitely. This is, you know, obviously, it will correct, you know, a handful

00:06:14.080 of injustices. It will. But it also opens the door to an unknown number of other persons abroad who

00:06:24.420 may feel that they can, that either they are entitled to Canadian citizenship for various reasons,

00:06:30.900 or they feel that they can somehow game the system and take advantage of it. And if you look in the

00:06:36.880 foreign press, you will see that there are op-eds and sort of, you know, articles that are suggesting

00:06:48.360 that various populations abroad can take advantage of this. And, you know, that's the kind of thing

00:06:56.600 that we really ought to be on guard against. One of the things that can help to sort of tamp down on

00:07:03.000 that would be forbidding birthright citizenship. It's interesting that she goes down the road of 0.98

00:07:08.500 this liberal agenda involving post-nationalism. And we're all aware of that famous statement that

00:07:15.000 Trudeau gave to the New York Times about turning Canada into a post-national state.

00:07:20.000 She says that Canada has been moving in that direction, that it has become operational. And

00:07:25.200 it's somehow reflected in this immigration policy, where the liberals seem to be eager to bring in as

00:07:33.420 many people as is humanly possible. And she also talks about essentially the cheapening of Canadian

00:07:39.380 citizenship. I mean, if you're going to hand it out to anybody, you know, what's the point of having

00:07:43.640 it, if you know what I'm saying? Do you think that there's a legitimate concern here by Rumpel-Garner?

00:07:48.640 I think the concern is absolutely legitimate. And I, you know, I think that most Canadians would agree

00:07:54.840 that citizenship should mean something. It should count for a lot more than it does. And, you know,

00:08:01.560 I am on the record in things that I've written and in a testimony before the Citizenship and

00:08:09.720 Immigration Committee actually last week, in which I say that we should expect more from present

00:08:15.220 citizens, not just from, you know, recent ones or, you know, people who have acquired citizenship after

00:08:22.980 a term of permanent residency. Citizenship should in general count for more. It should mean more to be

00:08:31.500 Canadian, not simply a, you know, member of a kind of economic union or, you know, some whatever they

00:08:40.920 mean, whatever the post-nationalists mean when they say that we're not a proper nation.

00:08:47.880 Trudeau's saying that, I think, was very damaging. I mean, you can see in more recent years and months

00:08:58.760 that the Liberal Party has been trying to sort of backpedal away from that vision or non-vision,

00:09:06.480 it seems to me. But it's very difficult. They want to talk about things like our culture and

00:09:13.180 immigration and national unity and so forth. And the elbows up crowd, I think we're very emphatic

00:09:18.260 as to trying to tell us that being a Canadian actually meant something, but they don't seem to

00:09:26.540 be sure what it is. And being, you know, I think they've hamstrung themselves in trying to articulate

00:09:32.220 that because of so many years of this kind of silly rhetoric, which most Canadians, I think,

00:09:38.220 flatly disagree with. Yeah. I mean, she even talks about the fact that because of these policies

00:09:44.180 and the social tensions that it has created, it's actually turning people against immigration,

00:09:50.580 people that would normally be all for it, you know, and welcoming to newcomers. She seems to suggest,

00:09:56.680 and I tend to agree with her, that the policies of the Liberals are actually creating more and more

00:10:02.200 problems associated with people opposing immigration. And to the point now where I think a lot of people

00:10:08.600 are speaking out against it. What do you think? Yeah, the immigration consensus broke down not only 0.96

00:10:16.320 because of the sheer numbers involved. It's not just a question of numbers. It must be emphasized.

00:10:21.740 There's also the question of skill level and skill and wage level. The Liberals can't have it both ways. 0.98

00:10:33.960 They can't say that, you know, we have a points-based immigration system that heavily weights skills and

00:10:42.380 education. And yet the vast majority of newcomers are low-skill, low-wage, temporary foreign workers. 1.00

00:10:51.360 I mean, that just doesn't add up, right? You've got to sort of choose what side of that equation

00:10:58.000 you're going to be on. And the result of that is a sort of depressing of wages and a sort of general

00:11:05.840 sense of strain on resources and scarcity and shortage and so on and so on and so on.

00:11:15.460 That in and of itself is bad. That's arguably the worst part of it. Secondarily, you factor in all

00:11:24.100 this sort of post-nationalist rhetoric. It sometimes feels as though the government has entirely given

00:11:30.520 up on the concept of integration, both economic integration, since an increasing number of

00:11:39.460 of skilled immigrants are leaving Canada. Even after obtaining their citizenship, they move on to 0.92

00:11:46.900 somewhere else for, you know, whatever reasons they may give. It's obvious that they have not become

00:11:54.100 economically rooted here and they seek their fortunes elsewhere. And there's a problem with cultural

00:12:02.260 integration, which they seem to have given up on. And this is reflected in polling. And I don't really

00:12:14.180 sense any kind of appreciation of the of the nature of the of the problem that if Canadians are saying this,

00:12:24.180 they're saying that, you know, more should be done to integrate newcomers in to adopt our values. That's

00:12:30.660 generally the way it gets phrased in what about what about the political front? Michael, because

00:12:37.060 isn't this a bit of a minefield for the conservatives to go down this route? We all know that in the past,

00:12:42.660 the left liberals have attacked conservatives as being as being racist or bigoted, all this other kind

00:12:49.140 of business. And so I'm wondering if the conservatives, while maybe chasing, pushing something that makes

00:12:56.100 sense, aren't leaving themselves open to those types of charges and labels?

00:13:03.140 Well, that's unfortunate. I mean, that's the sort of thing that liberals and the left say.

00:13:08.980 You know, anyway, I'm not sure we can prevent them from from trotting out these sort of crazy

00:13:14.900 accusations. You see, you see it on Twitter all the time. And, you know, it's probably best to ignore

00:13:19.780 that kind of thing. But I mean, the public, I don't think that the public are wrong. I mean,

00:13:26.900 I think if you're getting polling results with such overwhelming majorities of people who are saying

00:13:33.620 that something is wrong with with cultural and economic immigration, and that people are not

00:13:38.900 not fitting in, or we're trying, you know, we're trying to fit in more people than than we can

00:13:45.860 realistically absorb, you know, something needs to be done there. Now, unfortunately, if nothing is done,

00:13:52.180 and if we refuse to talk about it, and refuse to sort of allow that safety valve or as kind of like

00:14:03.460 letting off some of the steam there, it will turn ugly, it will. And you've seen that in in in many

00:14:10.420 European countries, and arguably in some areas of the United States, but we have to be able to talk

00:14:17.780 about this issue in a civilized manner. And the time to start was really, you know, it's not too late

00:14:26.100 yet. But the time to have started was, you know, before, like, not now, like, we're now getting into

00:14:32.980 the point where it's arguably too late. And I think that the liberals, I think that the liberals

00:14:36.740 understand this, in some sense, that's why they began ratcheting down the numbers and restoring

00:14:43.140 many of the safeguards and caps that were put on things like the temporary foreign worker program.

00:14:49.220 The question is, whether that is enough, both for the economic health of the country, and secondarily,

00:14:58.180 for public confidence in the immigration system. Now, economic health is one thing. I'm not an 0.74

00:15:05.380 economist, but I don't yet feel that we're sort of out of the, you know, it feels more like we're

00:15:11.300 entering a recession or something, I think. But for the cultural stuff for for the question of, you know,

00:15:17.700 Canadian confidence in the immigration system, we have a long way to go.

00:15:22.740 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I want to talk about this as well. For a decade, I'm just going to read

00:15:28.420 you part of her op-ed here. Liberals have operationalized the philosophy of post-nationalism,

00:15:34.980 asserting that there is no Canadian identity. And we spoke about what Trudeau once said about, about

00:15:42.020 Canada basically having no real identifiable identity, while simultaneously bringing newcomers, 0.96

00:15:48.580 to your point earlier, at a rate where integrating them into Canada's social economic fabric has become

00:15:54.740 challenging. And a lot of these people brought in as students, for instance, or temporary foreign

00:16:00.500 workers or under some other program, they don't want to leave. And so we've seen some of their protests

00:16:06.020 now, insisting that, you know, after their visas expire, that they should be allowed to stay.

00:16:13.620 And so I think the Liberals want them here. If they didn't want them here, they wouldn't be

00:16:19.060 bringing them over here to begin with. And I just suspect that if anything, they're going to fast track

00:16:26.020 the citizenship process for a lot of these people. I mean, they need them from a political vantage point

00:16:34.260 as well, Michael. You know that. They rely on these people as they lose Canadians. You know,

00:16:41.300 Liberals in the past have relied on mass immigration to bolster their voting base. Is that really what's

00:16:48.260 going on here, do you think? Well, I certainly hope not. You know, there are different ways you can look

00:16:57.140 at it. I mean, there are such a huge number of temporary permits, temporary residential permits

00:17:05.460 here that are meant to expire this year that if people don't voluntarily leave or, you know, renew or

00:17:18.100 like find some new stream to remain here, you know, you're looking at the border services

00:17:28.100 being strained, possibly to the, you know, to capacity with removing people. And I know that

00:17:35.140 some of that has been going on. I know that some people have gone underground, so to speak, and that

00:17:40.420 there are some what I would call human trafficking schemes to get sort of fake students at sort of

00:17:48.420 bogus degree mills into the United States, basically smuggling them into the United States. That's under

00:17:56.020 investigation. And, you know, we're probably not going to know the result of that anytime soon, but

00:18:03.140 at least something in theory is being done about that. But I think that you could well imagine that

00:18:09.620 the problem is on a scale much larger than we know about. From the political perspective, yes,

00:18:18.500 that's highly unfortunate and fast tracking, you know, if that is the plan, hopefully not. You're

00:18:25.700 looking at a level of social tension and strain that, you know, we haven't seen maybe since the early

00:18:32.980 20th century. And if, you know, if, if things are feeling awkward and uncomfortable now, or, you know,

00:18:40.260 we're looking at a kind of feeling of scarcity, especially for people of my generation, you know,

00:18:46.100 we haven't seen the worst, we haven't seen anything like the worst of it, if that's the kind of policy

00:18:52.260 that's coming down the pipeline. So let's, I mean, if you let too many people in, if you let too many

00:18:56.820 people in, they don't have to integrate, you know, they can just live in their own little communities.

00:19:02.660 And you know, this speak their own language, you know, go to their own businesses and build these

00:19:10.420 little communities without having to bother much with what's going on outside. That's my concern.

00:19:16.420 And I suspect that that's probably the concern of a lot of people. I've got a couple of other

00:19:20.420 stories I want to run past you. You just saw what happened with Mark Carney in, in DC. Can you give

00:19:27.060 me your take on how that went? I mean, we had some expectations, somewhat low expectations for many of

00:19:34.420 us. I don't even think he met the lowest of the low expectations. What do you think?

00:19:38.980 Well, I was a little bit concerned by the sort of buzz surrounding the journey, the meeting.

00:19:51.060 Which was then confirmed by what we heard from Minister Leblanc.

00:20:01.060 To me, it seems as though, you know, like, I think we like to think of ourselves as a country that

00:20:06.500 is open to discussion and talking and engagement and so forth. And, you know, that's great. But

00:20:13.060 engagement for sort of no particular reason or without any kind of desired outcome

00:20:19.700 or particular goal. I just don't, I don't think that that's wise. And I think that now that that has

00:20:28.100 been sort of communicated publicly, very explicitly from a, from a member of the, of the, of cabinet,

00:20:37.540 this is kind of the last time such a meeting can happen without some kind of result.

00:20:44.900 Okay. So this is.

00:20:47.060 We've had you already.

00:20:48.020 Yeah.

00:20:48.580 Yeah.

00:20:49.220 This was the second meeting in which basically nothing happened.

00:20:51.700 Right. And I'm not opposed to meetings, but like, we have to get something out of this. And, you know,

00:20:57.220 people will look at the video that came out of the White House meeting and it will be a Rorschach

00:21:03.620 test for the entire political spectrum of, of, of, of the Canadian polity.

00:21:10.340 Uh, half, half the people I saw were saying things like, oh, well, you don't understand

00:21:15.540 Canadian understatement and, and, uh, you know, the sort of sarcastic wit of Mark Carney saying that,

00:21:23.540 you know, like, come on. And then the other half say that, you know,

00:21:26.980 Carney is there sort of groveling shamefully and so forth. You know, I don't, I don't think that

00:21:31.860 anybody was groveling. I don't think that, I don't think that anybody was deliberately

00:21:37.060 trying to like subtly insult anyone, but you know, we need, we need.

00:21:42.020 Well, there was that one incident involving the discussion around, uh, women or girls,

00:21:49.300 boys in women's sports. Some are suggesting that this guy, that Trump knew that Carney has a trans

00:21:58.260 child and think that that was a not so subtle ribbing about wokeness and how the Americans are

00:22:09.220 not going down that road. Did you not think that was a kind of understated, uh, ribbing? Do you think?

00:22:17.380 I think that Trump is good at finding out, you know, weird and wild things to say to people, but

00:22:24.100 I mean, it, it goes, this, this, this goes to my central point is like, we can, we can have all

00:22:30.500 these sort of meetings and summits and, and subtle points and, you know, telegraphing sort of secret

00:22:38.340 messages to each other and so forth. But if, if nothing comes out of it and there's nothing to say,

00:22:44.340 well, look, we, our side has achieved this, or like we've prevented this horrible thing from happening.

00:22:50.020 If there's nothing like that, I don't see the point. And, uh, you know, I think there's been

00:22:57.220 a fair amount of goodwill, uh, shown to this government and there probably will be more good

00:23:02.020 will so far, uh, to, to judge by what we've seen so far. But I mean, Carney is supposed to be,

00:23:09.620 the prime minister is supposed to be the, the negotiator in chief with some kind of special

00:23:15.460 mojo for, for handling, uh, Trump apparently. I mean, this was kind of what was.

00:23:22.260 Paul Jay Yeah. That was targeted during the election,

00:23:25.140 Michael. We all heard that he was the guy who was going to deal with Trump and, uh,

00:23:28.660 Paul Jay Right. So six months later, I don't think

00:23:31.220 that that's, I think that's been a major disappointment. I got one last question for you.

00:23:35.940 I'm sorry to interrupt, but I've got to run this past you before we go.

00:23:39.300 A Toronto high school, Earl Haig has been attacked for playing an Arabic rendition of

00:23:45.460 Oh Canada. And this happened of course on October the 7th. Somehow the folks at Earl Haig suggested

00:23:52.020 it was an accident. I don't know how anybody can accidentally sing a national anthem in Arabic

00:23:57.860 on October the 2nd, October the 7th rather. And the education minister warns

00:24:04.260 that, uh, this better not happen again. To me, his response has been a bit lame.

00:24:08.500 What would you have done in this case if I were minister of education? Well, look,

00:24:15.860 there is no reason. I mean, I, I think, I think in, in principle, he's, he's right. There is no reason

00:24:22.660 at all to have our anthem sung in, in any, but the two official languages, full stop. And there should,

00:24:33.860 I mean, I I'm wary of, I'm wary of sort of banning things and just sort of outlawing

00:24:41.140 stuff, you know, left, right and center. Um, but you would hope one, one, one would hope that,

00:24:50.020 that one would have better taste and, and sort of tact, uh, when it comes to the treatment of the,

00:24:56.420 of the, of the national anthem. And, um, I think, you know, I don't know who is responsible for,

00:25:04.420 for this or what the reason is, but, you know, on this particular anniversary, it doesn't really seem

00:25:13.780 appropriate or particularly sensitive. Yeah.

00:25:17.060 Yeah. No. And I think it's, some people suggest it was on purpose. Some people,

00:25:22.820 I've heard people say that this was a purposeful antisemitic act by whoever orchestrated it.

00:25:31.060 It's so hard to see it that way, but do you think it could have been on purpose?

00:25:35.300 Look, I'm not going to impute any kind of motive to, to somebody that I don't know,

00:25:39.780 but we have two official languages in this country for historical reasons. You know, if you don't like

00:25:46.420 that, take that up with your member of parliament, but that's not going to change anytime soon. And

00:25:52.660 there's, there, you know, there are perfectly good and respectable historical reasons why that's the

00:25:58.500 case. Yeah. And it's the law. Apparently there is a law in the books that says you sing it in

00:26:05.220 both those languages. That's my understanding. Well, anyway, yeah. Last word to you, my friend,

00:26:10.020 please continue. Well, look, uh, you know, Canada is a great nation. We've stood,

00:26:15.780 uh, you know, if even just from confederation, we're one of the oldest, even before that we're,

00:26:21.700 we're, we're, we're, we're, you know, we have our own, uh, culture, we have our own traditions,

00:26:28.020 we have our own, and, and of course we are, we are a very welcoming place. People are welcome to come

00:26:34.820 here and participate and, and, and join us and so forth. Let's just get rid of this post-national crap

00:26:40.900 and just get on with the, the project of making the Canadian nation.

00:26:44.580 Hear, hear. Michael Bonner, thank you so much for coming on the show. Great chatting with you today.

00:26:49.220 Thank you. Michael Bonner. And that is it for this edition of

00:26:52.820 Straight Up with Mark Petrini. Hope you enjoyed it. Let's do it again real soon, shall we? Bye-bye for now.

00:27:00.820 Thank you.

Juno News - October 08, 2025

Time to end birthright citizenship？ + Reacting to Carney's meeting with Trump

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