Juno News - Trudeau admits he was WRONG on mass immigration

00:00:00.000 A former Liberal MP has taken aim at Justin Trudeau's comments about immigration.

00:00:11.180 The former Prime Minister was in Finland talking about the need for newcomers to

00:00:15.500 integrate and to have similar values as their new country.

00:00:20.060 If, you know, someone whose ancestry is not Finnish, for example, is able to come here

00:00:27.900 and grow up and go to school and learn the language

00:00:31.380 and appreciate hockey the same way and love winter

00:00:35.160 and have the same level of openness and respect

00:00:39.300 that people have for diversity in these countries

00:00:43.040 and the values we have,

00:00:45.660 then they should be able to feel like they are Finnish,

00:00:50.460 like they are fully part of this world.

00:00:52.460 increasingly in a very different world defining what a country is through shared values

00:01:03.500 and not through shared ancestry is the most important thing and let me tell you canada's

00:01:11.420 not some magical place uh you know we get it wrong sometimes and we have to adjust well he got

00:01:17.500 things wrong when it came to immigration and has admitted as much. Now, meantime, former Liberal

00:01:24.060 MP Kevin Blong posted this on X. When we raised exactly these points of the need for integration

00:01:33.720 of immigrants and shared Canadian values at Parliament, Justin Trudeau implied we were racist.

00:01:41.460 Trudeau dramatically ramped up immigration levels, which led to a housing crisis, overstretched health care services, increased crime and unemployment.

00:01:52.240 A massive immigration backlog continues to this day after Trudeau left.

00:01:58.460 This story in Blacklock's reporter, immigrant cases jam courts.

00:02:03.960 The federal court says it will see a record 30,000 immigration cases this year,

00:02:10.060 five times the average.

00:02:12.260 Prime Minister Carney says he's not worried about being left out of

00:02:16.240 so many cabinet decisions because of conflicts of interest.

00:02:20.000 There's a growing list of deliberations and government decisions

00:02:23.160 that you're excluded from because of your various conflict of interest screens.

00:02:27.900 Are you concerned that you have to outsource major decisions of your own government,

00:02:31.740 including potentially one on this project I'm not sure I'm not sure the

00:02:39.180 last bit of your question follows so I'm just gonna say no well I'm gonna say no

00:02:44.040 to the whole thing but more specifically your logic doesn't hold we have a very

00:02:49.920 strong team in cabinet who make decisions and and that process is

00:02:55.920 followed I have every confidence in their ability to make those decisions

00:02:59.280 decisions. And, you know, I think, to be clear, what happens with conflicts is that it's quite

00:03:05.580 often the avoidance perception of conflict as opposed to actual. Because, of course, my assets

00:03:12.500 are in a blind trust. I actually don't know whether or not I have an actual conflict.

00:03:16.560 Carney has millions of dollars worth of investments in a blind trust. He has rejected

00:03:21.260 a parliamentary ethics recommendation to sell off those investments.

00:03:25.520 Joe Biden's notorious crack-smoking son wants his country to make systemic changes that protect America's relationship with Canada.

00:03:36.280 Hunter Biden spoke with CTV News.

00:03:39.240 He lamented the state of U.S.-Canada relations and wants the next leader of his country to heal the relationship.

00:03:45.900 Trump has done more long-term damage to the status of our relationship, and not only the relationship with Canada, but the relationship with all of our allies, than people fully realize.

00:04:01.980 And so, at the end of the day, I hope that we elect someone that can heal and mend that relationship, but I think it's going to take time, and I can understand why it's going to take time.

00:04:15.900 When my dad was president of the United States, one of the things that he always say was leaders would come up to him and say, thank you, but how long is this going to last?

00:04:26.520 And I think that next time we have to make systemic changes in our system that are going to prove that this can't happen again.

00:04:36.840 Hunter Biden was found guilty of cocaine possession, illegal guns and tax offenses, but he was granted a pardon by his father.

00:04:46.560 It's time to modernize Canada's rules on nicotine.

00:04:49.840 Alternatives to cigarettes like heated tobacco vaping products and oral smokeless products don't burn tobacco or produce smoke.

00:04:57.340 Now, they aren't risk-free, but the growing body of scientific evidence shows that they have the potential to be substantially less harmful than smoking cigarettes.

00:05:07.760 Now, despite this, Canadians are banned from accessing this critical information and sometimes even banned from the products.

00:05:15.620 Nicotine pouches remain banned in convenience stores across the country, and current laws ban communication about the risk of these products compared to cigarettes. 0.59

00:05:25.240 It's absolutely ridiculous.

00:05:27.320 The evidence is here. 0.73

00:05:28.640 The tools exist.

00:05:29.900 Canadians deserve to have the freedom to know about them, to learn about them, to even just understand them.

00:05:35.600 It's a free country.

00:05:36.620 We should be able to have this information.

00:05:39.600 So learn more about this campaign and our friends over at Unsmoke by visiting their website, unsmoke.ca.

00:05:46.900 And thank you so much to Unsmoke for sponsoring this episode.

00:05:49.520 Our guest today is former Member of Parliament, Kevin Vuong.

00:05:53.820 uh his parents were both people from vietnam he knows a little bit about being a new canadian

00:06:00.060 welcome to the show kevin thanks for having me mark all right so you heard justin trudeau's

00:06:06.060 comments about immigration and i and it prompted you to react to those comments he was talking

00:06:13.180 about the need for integration and how people should value canadian values and fit in and

00:06:21.180 You seem to be suggesting from your comments that he had a very different point of view earlier on.

00:06:30.880 Yeah, listen, I think I am actually glad to hear a former Canadian prime minister celebrate Canadian values and recognize that our country is something that people want to be a part of.

00:06:45.400 But it's a very different tune that now the retired prime minister is singing than when we were both serving in the 44th parliament.

00:06:55.880 Because when those of us who dare to raise the exact same points that he's now saying in retirement, he would imply that we were racist.

00:07:04.920 There are times I remember in the House where they wouldn't overtly say we are racist or bigots.

00:07:11.120 But what he would say is something along the lines of, you know, saying that we were putting out dog whistles and say everything but calling us racist, but implying it throughout.

00:07:23.640 But for me, especially as a son of refugees, son of immigrants who came to this country, there's never been anything racist about expecting newcomers to embrace the values that make Canada worth coming to or being a part of, right?

00:07:37.560 My parents understood that as refugees, Mark.

00:07:40.440 They didn't come here to recreate what they fled.

00:07:44.460 They were persecuted by communists.

00:07:46.140 They lost everything to communism.

00:07:48.920 They were part of South Vietnam that, unfortunately, was a flawed but aspired democracy, but they lost the war.

00:07:54.740 And so when they came here to Canada, they came to become Canadian.

00:08:00.340 And saying that doesn't make me a bigot or a racist.

00:08:04.640 and advocating for integration also doesn't either, right?

00:08:10.640 Integration isn't exclusion, which during the 44th Parliament,

00:08:14.700 I heard a lot coming out of the then Prime Minister Trudeau and his party.

00:08:20.740 Because integration, I think for me,

00:08:22.980 is something that my parents were actually very intentional about.

00:08:26.200 And it's part of the promise that I think we make to everyone who comes to Canada.

00:08:30.540 There are things that we stand for and you can be a part of it

00:08:34.280 and you can belong as a Canadian, but there's things that you have to subscribe to, right?

00:08:39.800 If you want to be a part of Canada, you need to subscribe to rule of law.

00:08:45.520 You need to subscribe to, you know, our freedoms, which doesn't mean enjoying them.

00:08:51.420 It also means defending them.

00:08:53.780 You know, it was a big part of what my parents taught me to be grateful to Canada for giving my family everything.

00:09:00.760 It's why I volunteered to join the Naval Reserve and why I was proud to wear the maple leaf on my

00:09:05.860 uniform. Yeah, I mean, all of those things were, I think, generally accepted. At least they were

00:09:12.680 for many years. And then Trudeau became prime minister, and we saw a dramatic uptick in just

00:09:19.840 the sheer volume of people coming into the country, millions of people, which he let in.

00:09:23.540 this precipitated an economic crisis in the form of housing. You in your own district saw

00:09:31.020 an explosion in homelessness, you know, the 10 cities, that sort of thing. We saw dramatically

00:09:39.980 overstretched health care services. Many other services were overstretched. We saw increased

00:09:45.940 crime, unemployment, inflation. A lot went wrong because they let in so many people that we didn't 0.99

00:09:52.540 have space for at the time. We just could not absorb the sheer volume of people. I mean, look

00:09:57.500 at the gridlock on our highways. And it created a sense of, unfortunately, a resentment on the part

00:10:02.540 of some. You know, they blame the immigrants rather than government policies. So a lot has

00:10:08.080 gone wrong in the last 11 years in terms of immigration. In your position, how do you see

00:10:14.800 that degradation in what Canada used to be? You know, we used to have a pretty good immigration.

00:10:20.760 for decades we had a good immigration system it all went south what do you suppose went wrong

00:10:26.060 um yeah i think you're right to point out there there used to be a consensus on immigration i

00:10:32.540 think canadians saw immigration as a net benefit what made it a net benefit was because we were

00:10:38.860 screening for the best we were vetting who was coming in and over the last 11 years i i think

00:10:46.040 it's now become very clear that the standards were loosened. We weren't screening for the things

00:10:53.600 that had kept Canadians safe, right? Making sure that people who were being admitted didn't have 0.99

00:10:59.960 ties to terror, didn't have ties to criminal elements, that people who were coming here,

00:11:05.880 like my parents, for example, claiming asylum because of alleged persecution, actually were

00:11:12.220 legitimate claimants. You know, my parents waited two years in refugee camp to wait their turn to

00:11:17.860 come into Canada. That seems like a very novel concept because especially, you know, in my

00:11:23.260 writing and at one point we were ground zero for kind of homeless asylum seekers. And I got to meet

00:11:30.240 a lot of people who came here claiming asylum. And to help the process, to help their processing,

00:11:36.980 I heard their stories

00:11:39.720 and my staff kind of pitched in

00:11:41.660 with the Immigration Refugee

00:11:43.840 Board and documentation and all that

00:11:45.680 and you could tell from my

00:11:47.800 own experience Mark

00:11:49.540 directly I could tell who was

00:11:51.880 a legitimate claimant and who

00:11:53.780 wasn't you know

00:11:54.820 there was for example someone who came from

00:11:57.640 Uganda she 1.00

00:11:58.460 it took me a while to coax out of her

00:12:01.880 why she was here and she quietly

00:12:03.740 said to me Mark oh it's because I'm a lesbian 1.00

00:12:05.820 and that makes sense

00:12:06.980 because they have some of the world's most serious anti-gay laws,

00:12:10.960 including punishable by death.

00:12:13.120 Then I would meet someone else. 1.00

00:12:14.580 This individual happens to be from Nigeria. 0.99

00:12:17.060 And I'd be like, why are you here? 0.96

00:12:18.120 And he's like, oh, I'm bisexual.

00:12:20.200 And he would smile at me.

00:12:21.660 And it's like saying, claiming that they were bisexual

00:12:25.000 was like a cheat code that had been shared

00:12:27.640 with different people who wanted to come to Canada.

00:12:31.380 And honestly, I can't blame anyone for wanting to come here

00:12:33.800 who wouldn't want to come here.

00:12:34.820 But if you're an economic migrant,

00:12:36.980 There are legitimate streams that we have established that are going to vet you based on the skill sets and value that you will bring to this country. 0.71

00:12:45.940 And if it doesn't fit, I'm sorry, like, you know, there's not a fit.

00:12:48.940 But for the longest time, the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau would turn a blind eye to people who are clearly making false claims.

00:12:57.260 And so I think now to hear our former Prime Minister, while he's gallivanting around the world, celebrate the things that talk up Canadian values when for so long during his own administration, he was focused not on celebrating the good of which there is many of Canada and Canadians,

00:13:18.480 but on acknowledging and seemingly focusing almost on the flaws and the bad parts of Canada.

00:13:27.800 No country's perfect, Mark, but I would suggest we have more to celebrate and be proud of than we don't.

00:13:34.980 And so for him to do a complete 180 now, seemingly as if he had always been like this, is gaslighting Canadians.

00:13:44.400 And frankly, I find it offensive.

00:13:47.000 Yeah, I mean, where was that when he was Prime Minister?

00:13:50.020 You know, when he was calling Canada a systemically racist country,

00:13:55.060 when he was suggesting that it was a genocidal country,

00:13:59.080 you know, when he was posing with a teddy bear over by the alleged mass grave site.

00:14:05.560 You know, it just seems like everything's different now.

00:14:09.920 You know, like now that he's out, it's okay to praise Canada,

00:14:12.500 Whereas when he was Canadian prime minister, he took every opportunity to heap abuse on this country unless it was politically expedient to wrap himself in the flag on any given day.

00:14:23.620 I mean, we have people who really seem to hate the country, you know, hate where we came from.

00:14:29.120 It's European roots, you know, he's attacked that.

00:14:33.180 And so that's what we had for 10 years.

00:14:35.720 And that's what his immigration policies almost seem to be a way to repudiate where we came from.

00:14:42.500 And so now that he's gone, should we care, I guess, what he thinks at this point?

00:14:50.420 Listen, I very much welcomed no longer seeing his name in the news cycle.

00:14:55.480 Unfortunately, it started popping up again in my algorithm.

00:14:59.260 You know, I wish I have no say over that because he's dating someone who's, you know, in pop culture.

00:15:06.320 um and you know i would very much love to never have to talk about for our former prime minister

00:15:13.500 again um my hope is time and history will judge his administration um to to be what i think was

00:15:23.040 a very flawed uh time of our country's history and and in fact um probably had not only set us

00:15:31.540 back 10, 11 years, but the damage that they've actually brought to the country is something

00:15:39.680 that I think is going to take decades to repair.

00:15:42.980 It's actually, you know, part of the reason why, and folks, some folks will know, when

00:15:48.280 I was asked to run for parliament, it was actually the liberals who initially had asked

00:15:51.320 me to run.

00:15:52.720 And was I a Trudeau liberal?

00:15:54.660 No.

00:15:54.900 But I did believe, naively, I guess, now I know, that I would bring perspectives and experience I thought was missing.

00:16:02.980 You know, as an entrepreneur, as a tech entrepreneur before I was elected, I was proud to serve in what was then Her Majesty's Royal Canadian Navy.

00:16:10.860 I was a naval reserve officer for, I think, eight, nine years at the time.

00:16:14.780 Those are all things I thought were missing.

00:16:17.100 For me, my own experience, I was proud to be part of an institution like the Royal Canadian Navy

00:16:22.940 that was over a century old, that grounded who I was in my identity. And that was something that

00:16:29.100 I was proud of. And I thought that pride was missing. I wanted to be a voice advocating for

00:16:33.820 that. Ultimately, it wasn't meant to be. And I sat as an independent and that gave me the chance to

00:16:39.740 be able to, I think, raise these issues, whether it was immigration, whether it was being proud

00:16:45.260 to be canadian um and and other things that i think uh the liberals clearly didn't want to hear

00:16:51.900 and and my hope is as the prime minister former prime minister trudeau has changed his tune

00:16:57.340 that our current liberal government under mark carney will do the same we've seen some changes

00:17:03.580 south of the border as well i mean in cities like new york's new york city for instance and

00:17:10.140 and other areas of the country where there's this flirtation with communists i mean your family was

00:17:15.820 persecuted by communists literally persecuted and your folks were both people forced out of

00:17:22.860 vietnam i'm sure it would have ended up uh either dead or in camps if they had stayed where they

00:17:30.700 were, and what goes through your mind when you see naive people, frankly, whether it's in Canada

00:17:40.480 or the United States, thinking that somehow communism is the answer, or quote-unquote

00:17:44.840 socialism, I'm not even sure they exactly know what the difference is, but they think that,

00:17:50.480 you know, seizing wealth from people who have it, and taking some for themselves, which usually

00:17:56.740 happens and then spreading a little bit around that somehow that's the answer to economic problems

00:18:03.060 um what goes through your mind when you see that so i think it's lunacy at best um they to me must

00:18:10.900 be historically illiterate mark um my parents like you said they lost everything to communism

00:18:17.380 i mean my my mother my mom and dad didn't know one another um they met in the refugee camp but

00:18:22.340 my mom she was training to be a doctor she lost her career um and and came here and and retrained

00:18:29.300 learned english and became the first female uh line worker on the assembly line uh in her factory

00:18:34.500 in mississauga actually um but you know she had an entirely different trajectory in life my father's

00:18:41.700 side you know they were business owners they're entrepreneurs of course that's not something

00:18:46.180 communists will suffer and so they lost everything my grandfather on my mom's side um he he was

00:18:53.140 actually a goalkeeper since fifa's on um for for the south vietnamese national soccer team

00:18:58.660 um and we know how communists treat uh any any anything that may be perceived as a threat

00:19:05.300 um to you know to their rule sports icons academics whatever and so on not that you

00:19:10.580 know i think my although i'm sure my grandfather thought he was an icon but he was thrown in jail

00:19:15.300 by nature of the fact that he was on a sports team my late uncle also my mom's side he was

00:19:22.020 a ranger in the south vietnamese rangers he was a captain and he fought communism he was a prisoner

00:19:27.940 of war if it wasn't for the us and the democratic forces um he probably would have died uh in a

00:19:33.140 prison camp they freed him before the end of the war ultimately everyone had to escape but

00:19:37.700 i think that the people who today celebrate communism all these sort of things need to open

00:19:44.180 a book they need to read a little bit of history and i am proud to continue my family's legacy

00:19:51.300 of not only fighting communism but to continue to stand up and defend democracy however i can

00:19:57.140 wherever i can and what's your political future if you have one i mean obviously things didn't go

00:20:05.620 exactly as you had hoped originally and now you're not in politics but sometimes you know when you get

00:20:14.180 you're bit by the political bug it was hard to shake entirely do you see yourself as having a

00:20:20.340 future in politics in canada yeah mark you're right like i i think for those of us who see

00:20:27.060 public service as a calling um it's hard to step away what helped me to step away and and why i

00:20:33.520 didn't run again um in april of 2025 is because i became a dad uh it was my daughter was was born

00:20:40.740 I was a first-time dad and I wanted to be there for her and actually my son we now know the gender

00:20:48.860 is due in October this this fall and so I want to be the best dad that I can be and be the best

00:20:55.620 husband and frankly I don't know that I can be the best MP that I would want to be and I think

00:21:00.760 that people would deserve and be those things but I'm still politically adjacent I'm still involved

00:21:06.300 A lot of people were very MPs and councillors very kindly had been actually texting me to run in the upcoming municipal election.

00:21:14.300 I'm involved and because I'm not about to stand by and let four more years of communism continue to grip City Hall here in Toronto and do everything that I can to ensure that Olivia Chow is defeated.

00:21:28.200 but we're also supporting other candidates across the city

00:21:32.980 because we also need to take back city council.

00:21:35.740 We need to bring common sense also back to our school boards.

00:21:38.560 And those are things that I'm able to do in some ways, Mark,

00:21:42.120 with a lot more flexibility and I think impact

00:21:46.000 than if I was still in a particular office

00:21:48.100 because I would be focused on doing the best that I can

00:21:50.100 for my constituency as opposed to necessarily

00:21:53.360 being able to spread myself as I have.

00:21:55.860 There's also different ways to serve.

00:21:57.660 i've i've done in uniform um i'm working with others to to build out an ai orchestration uh

00:22:03.580 technology company right creating jobs um bringing back entrepreneurism um to to canada is another

00:22:10.540 way to contribute and so those are some of the ways that i'm keeping myself busy but i i know

00:22:16.220 myself well enough that when my kids no longer want me around which i'm told daughters uh it

00:22:21.740 it happens sooner than one once,

00:22:24.120 I'll probably be looking to enter

00:22:26.260 or return to serving again.

00:22:28.680 All right.

00:22:29.660 Kevin Vuong, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:22:31.740 We appreciate it.

00:22:33.260 Thanks for having me.

00:22:35.480 If you enjoyed this show,

00:22:36.320 consider supporting great independent journalism

00:22:38.560 by becoming a premier member of Juno News.

00:22:42.020 Please go to junonews.com backslash straight up.

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00:22:46.500 It helps us do what we do.

00:22:47.580 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:22:48.980 We'll see you next time.

00:22:51.740 You

Juno News - June 30, 2026

Trudeau admits he was WRONG on mass immigration

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