In this episode, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel and Finance Minister Pierre Poirier join me to discuss immigration and border security, and the growing number of asylum seekers crossing the border illegally into Canada. We also discuss the Prime Minister's new plan for dealing with the growing refugee crisis.
00:00:00.000You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:09.000Well, they thought they were going to have an easy day over there today, but not so fast, Mr. Speaker.
00:00:16.640What is it going to take for the Prime Minister to have any respect for any laws in this country that may curb his out-of-control behaviour?
00:00:25.320And now, here's your host, Tony Clement.
00:00:30.980Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Clement.
00:00:36.860For another edition, hey, summer may be over or nearly over, but our Conservative MPs have been hard at work in their constituencies and throughout the country throughout the summer.
00:00:47.540But now we're into a new phase. We are here in Winnipeg, Manitoba as a Conservative caucus, a national Conservative caucus.
00:00:56.620We're going to have caucus meetings. We just finished a shadow cabinet meeting with all of the people who have specific responsibilities for various portfolios to shadow the ministers, the Liberal ministers,
00:01:09.280ask the right questions, demand the answers on behalf of Canadian taxpayers and citizens.
00:01:16.140And with me today, we have two of my colleagues who are part of the shadow cabinet, part of leader Andrew Scheer's shadow cabinet,
00:01:25.280who have specific responsibilities and some very important issues that have been raised, really, throughout the summer.
00:01:32.320And we have every anticipation that this will be topics that will be heard in the halls of Parliament when we get back on September 18th for question, period.
00:01:43.080So, without further ado, let me introduce them to you. We have Calgary MP, Michelle Rempel.
00:01:50.540It's great to be having you on The Blueprint.
00:01:53.680As well, Ottawa Area MP, Pierre Polyev, who serves as the finance shadow cabinet person.
00:02:03.480So, congratulations in that role, Pierre.
00:02:05.720Thank you very much, Tony. Good to be with you.
00:02:07.480By the way, Michelle Rempel serves as the immigration and citizenship shadow minister as well.
00:02:13.120So, we have both of them here and we're going to talk about those two topics that you probably have been thinking about yourselves throughout the summer.
00:02:44.040So, we're in a situation now, two years after Justin Trudeau took the prime minister's role, where Canada used to have an open, fair, and compassionate asylum claim and refugee system.
00:03:53.960With that tweet, he erased the border.
00:03:55.520And this is so uncompassionate because many of the people that are illegally crossing Canada's border, those asylum claims that they're making, they won't be found valid.
00:04:06.000But the problem for Trudeau is because he's increased the amount of people that are making these claims by promoting the illegal border crossing with that hashtag welcome to Canada tweet,
00:04:16.060by doing things like removing the visa requirement on Mexico without a proper review, he's actually creating what Public Service of Canada is now forecasting to be an 11-year backlog in reviewing asylum claims.
00:04:32.100So that's a technical term for saying that it's going to be 11 years before the government of Canada deems whether or not somebody who's illegally crossed the border has an asylum claim.
00:04:42.720And during that time, they are entitled to receive social assistance benefits, subsidized housing, access the Canadian health care system.
00:04:52.360And he doesn't have a plan to pay for any of this.
00:04:55.380And the other side is there's people who have legitimately gone through the system.
00:04:59.240Who haven't jumped any queues, who have filled out the right forms and who are waiting for their hearing to see whether they can seek asylum.
00:05:07.680So Trudeau sent Mark Garneau, one of his ministers, out in the middle of the summer to talk about this because I think he's been a little bit afraid to own up to his mistake.
00:05:18.640When he sent Mark Garneau, I think Mark Garneau actually said, well, we're going to have work permits for these people.
00:05:23.980So can you imagine being somebody, let's say you're somebody who's trying to sponsor your spouse into the country or you're coming into the country, trying to come into the country through legal, proper channels to hear that, that if you've crossed the border illegally, you know, we're going to prioritize work permits.
00:05:41.600You know, this is one of those things where I think, Tony, Canadians are, they understand that immigration is part of Canada's fabric.
00:05:48.720But the problem with Justin Trudeau is that he's been so irresponsible and reckless about it.
00:05:54.020He's actually, I think, taking away social license to operate in Canada's immigration system.
00:06:00.360And, you know, when you look at people around the world right now, like we've, you know, you helped me with this.
00:06:04.720We did so much work on the Yazidi genocide.
00:06:11.940You know, we want to be in a position to help there.
00:06:14.340And you remember what it was like fighting the government, trying to get them to help legitimate genocide survivors.
00:06:20.860And now we're talking about setting up refugee camps.
00:06:23.880Like nobody's fleeing persecution from the United States of America.
00:06:27.300So we've been fighting hard all summer, trying to hold the liberals to account.
00:06:31.600I feel like Canadians are waking up to what a shambles the system's at.
00:06:36.660But, you know, to anyone who's listening to this, you know, you reaching out and voicing your opposition on this issue in a common sense way that says our system is no longer compassionate.
00:07:45.240And if you do this, your claim will be processed quickly.
00:07:48.420And now, as a caveat, he has to fix that system that he's broken.
00:07:51.620And when your claim is found invalid, you will be sent back to your country of origin.
00:07:56.560And then he needs to follow through with that action.
00:07:58.820Well, this is the bizarre thing about it.
00:08:01.440I'm glad you raised this point, Michelle, because what we're seeing right now is Justin Trudeau sending out his ministers to go to the United States at various points,
00:08:12.360to go to various communities, ethnic communities, and say, we were just kidding.
00:08:18.840We weren't, you know, hashtag welcome to Canada didn't mean that we had no border.
00:08:25.420So he's trying to backtrack or to have it both ways, really.
00:08:28.360Yeah, and, you know, this week, something I'll be raising in the House, I don't know if you read this, Tony.
00:08:33.500So not in addition to the refugee camps, they actually are, as I understand it, buying RVs or trailers, heated trailers, and putting it at the border.
00:09:06.560So, you know, there's some concrete things we'd like to see him do.
00:09:09.180There is an agreement that we have with the United States that basically recognizes that both of our countries have asylum claim systems that are fair, they're compassionate, so that if you enter into Canada and make an asylum claim, you can't go to the U.S. and do the same thing, like sort of shop for asylum claims, and vice versa.
00:09:29.800That's called the Safe Third Country Agreement.
00:09:40.140So we want the government to look at that agreement and close that loophole.
00:09:45.600The other things, there's technical things that they could do.
00:09:48.060They could open up more official points of entry.
00:09:50.400We know where people are coming across the border illegally, they could designate that as an official point of entry and start applying the Safe Third Country Agreement more effectively.
00:09:58.840They need to, you know, they need to deal with this mess that they've created at the IRB.