The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - We must stand up for Canadians.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:13.960 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Quartha Lakes, with new content

00:00:17.660 for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe,

00:00:22.060 and share this program, because on today's show, we are talking about the media's wonder

00:00:27.120 about how Canada got poorer than the state of Alabama.

00:00:30.760 Also, the Canadian military is changing up the way it recruits its soldiers.

00:00:34.700 To talk about this and so much more, we bring on Brad Redekop,

00:00:38.080 the Member of Parliament for Saskatoon West.

00:00:40.680 Thanks for coming on the show.

00:00:41.780 It's a pleasure to be here.

00:00:42.600 Good to have you on again.

00:00:43.640 Yeah.

00:00:43.860 It's been a while.

00:00:44.420 It's been a while, yeah.

00:00:45.400 All right.

00:00:45.900 Lots to talk about.

00:00:46.440 So much to talk about.

00:00:47.880 Immigration in general, I think we're going to take a focus on that in this part of the show,

00:00:52.120 but something that came up a few days ago that just gave me a bit of a crying moment,

00:00:58.080 but also a chuckle at the same time.

00:00:59.660 Let's put up the first graphic here.

00:01:02.140 The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper here,

00:01:05.380 a little perplexed about how Canada got poorer than the state of Alabama.

00:01:12.080 They just can't figure it out, but I don't know what it is.

00:01:14.760 I can't imagine what happened in the last 10 years.

00:01:17.180 Yeah, can you say liberal government?

00:01:18.600 Yeah, yeah, it's a liberal policy.

00:01:20.420 So the same people that are in charge now made this happen.

00:01:27.400 The same ministers, if you look at their front bench, it's the same crew, made this happen.

00:01:33.980 So the media can't seem to connect the dots.

00:01:37.460 And somehow it's going to be different this time?

00:01:39.800 Somehow it's going to be way different this time.

00:01:42.280 I don't know where or how, but some way it's going to be different.

00:01:46.400 And you know what? If they don't figure it out, they're going to ask for more time, more patience and more money until they can figure it out.

00:01:53.460 All the super smart people in Ottawa. Yeah. Unreal. I couldn't believe I saw that.

00:01:58.220 It was circulating on social media. And of course, the comments got re-healed, right?

00:02:02.120 Absolutely. The comments were like, we could probably point a map.

00:02:06.520 We could probably draw a map. And still the media would cover and, you know, talk it away for the liberal party.

00:02:12.600 It's the unfair world we live in. That's for sure. Unbelievable. Wow.

00:02:15.800 Yeah, I can guarantee you, if Canada was poorer than the state of Alabama when Stephen Harper was in charge, or even now with Pierre Polyev in charge, the media would not be talking this way.

00:02:27.460 No.

00:02:27.600 It would be end of times conversation.

00:02:30.120 It'd be the lead story.

00:02:31.320 Oh, yeah.

00:02:31.800 You'd see all the panel heads, the liberals, not one conservative on these media talking talk shows, but whatever.

00:02:39.120 All just, you know, how this is awful.

00:02:41.980 This is end of times.

00:02:43.020 people are going to the food bank and the millions and can't afford homes to the young people.

00:02:48.640 Don't mess around with the facts.

00:02:49.860 Yeah, I know. I know. Okay. I need to get off. I need to get that off my chest.

00:02:53.520 Take a breath.

00:02:54.100 I will take a breath. All right.

00:02:55.540 So we're going into a bit of immigration conversation that we've been having the last few days.

00:03:01.100 Let's give a cut one.

00:03:02.160 We're going to start with the way the Canadian military is going to look at new ways to recruit soldiers.

00:03:08.180 So we have the Immigration Minister making this announcement.

00:03:10.620 It's about 60 seconds. Might tug on the attention span because this minister is is a tough one to listen to.

00:03:17.760 And finally, we are creating a new category for skilled military recruits to attract highly skilled foreign military applicants.

00:03:30.660 Eligible recruits with a job offer from the Canadian Armed Forces, including doctors, nurses, pilots.

00:03:37.080 can be invited to apply for permanent residence.

00:03:41.080 They will be subject to the same security and all military requirements.

00:03:47.080 This new category will support our government's commitment to strengthen our armed forces,

00:03:54.080 to defend our sovereignty, and to keep Canadians safe.

00:03:59.080 This category and other priority categories supports Canada's defense industrial strategy, which Prime Minister Carney announced yesterday by adding a range of workers critical to support our sovereignty and security.

00:04:17.500 There are some countries that do this already, right? Some, not all, but some countries do this already. So we're inviting in more military-aged men to join the ranks of Canada's armed forces because we can't seem to recruit soldiers. I think that should be the line itself. Why can't the Canadian armed forces make their recruitment targets in this current environment?

00:04:42.320 Well, we used to be able to do it. We used to have, there were more than enough recruits in Canada that wanted to join the military, all the different forces that we have. And again, after 10 years of Liberals, that's not the case anymore. The military is messed up in such a way that it takes forever for a recruit to actually go through the recruitment process. And so guess what? They're not sticking around. They're going and getting a job somewhere else. And so now we've given up on Canadians. We're going to try to find people from other countries to fill our recruitment positions. I think it's embarrassing, quite frankly.

00:05:10.800 I think it's also challenging for those young people that are considering their options in life, right?

00:05:16.300 They're laying out their life where they want to go.

00:05:19.340 And the liberals have just botched the military procurement process, just botched it.

00:05:25.560 We can't seem to get anything new.

00:05:27.120 So we are not even flying with the latest technology.

00:05:30.780 We're not sailing with the latest technology.

00:05:33.060 We're not in the trenches with the latest technology.

00:05:35.060 and it's just so outdated, it just becomes, unfortunately,

00:05:39.880 which many proud soldiers have served this country,

00:05:42.560 many still do and are doing.

00:05:44.780 But in terms of hitting their recruitment targets,

00:05:48.060 the government can't seem to do it because the incentives,

00:05:51.900 to me, just don't seem to be there.

00:05:53.300 Yeah. Well, it's interesting, Jamie, when I was in school,

00:05:57.140 the F-18 fighter jet was like the newest thing, right?

00:06:00.720 Now, sadly, that was a long time ago for me.

00:06:03.760 I didn't want to say it, but yeah.

00:06:05.060 And yet it still is.

00:06:06.080 It still is the state of the art.

00:06:07.500 And we're just barely getting a few new planes.

00:06:09.040 And yet they want to cancel that contract.

00:06:10.340 So it's no wonder recruits don't want to work for the military.

00:06:13.220 Yeah.

00:06:13.440 So now we have to look elsewhere to bolster our ranks.

00:06:16.340 It was the civil service.

00:06:17.580 There was talk for a while of letting all the bureaucrats defend us.

00:06:21.860 So that was interesting.

00:06:23.980 And so at the same time, they're also taking away firearms from law-abiding citizens.

00:06:30.660 I don't want to go down that.

00:06:31.780 See, you're getting me all riled up today.

00:06:33.200 Okay, take another breath.

00:06:35.060 All right, so we have another issue with health care for asylum seekers. 0.99

00:06:40.060 All right, throw up a few graphics here, give you an idea.

00:06:42.540 So we're now spending a billion dollars a year.

00:06:45.420 So we're $78 billion in the whole, $70 billion, $72, somewhere in there.

00:06:49.480 What's a billion or two?

00:06:51.620 So a billion on health care costs of refugee claimants.

00:06:55.660 So flip to the next slide here.

00:06:58.860 And then, so about 500,000 people.

00:07:03.800 That's quite a large number.

00:07:06.500 You're on the Immigration Committee.

00:07:07.840 Tell us what this means.

00:07:08.920 So, first of all, if you claim asylum, so what we typically think of as refugees, you claim asylum.

00:07:15.260 I don't want to go back to my host country, my home country.

00:07:17.620 I want to stay in Canada.

00:07:19.400 Right away, immediately, you are given many things, including a work permit.

00:07:22.880 But one of the things you're given is health care.

00:07:24.660 And that health care actually is better than ordinary Canadians receive.

00:07:28.280 It includes things like vision care, glasses, contact lenses.

00:07:31.840 It includes hearing aids.

00:07:33.680 It includes physiotherapy.

00:07:35.680 There's many, many things in that that are called supplemental health benefits that asylum seekers receive.

00:07:41.460 Now, we're not against them receiving medical care when they need it.

00:07:45.060 So there should be like a basic level of medical care that people receive.

00:07:48.160 But the problem we have or I have with this is the extra supplemental benefits that they're getting, which is better than what Canadians get. 0.68

00:07:55.820 And it doesn't seem fair.

00:07:57.900 And so the government just willingly pays this.

00:08:01.220 it looks like. So up to a billion dollars a year. And not just that, it's a billion right now,

00:08:06.840 but it's going to grow to a billion and a half in a few years. And why is that just with the

00:08:10.420 backlog? The increasing number of refugee claimants, yeah. Wow, okay. So that's causing 1.00

00:08:16.360 a problem. But there was a report not too long ago that, I can't remember how many hundreds of

00:08:21.960 thousands of people have died in the emergency room in Canada, waiting for care. So we have a

00:08:27.700 structural problem, I think.

00:08:29.360 Well, we have 6 million Canadians that don't even have a family doctor.

00:08:32.580 It can take 30 weeks to wait for a specialist, on average, in Canada.

00:08:35.980 So we have issues in our health care system, there's no question.

00:08:38.860 And offering these enhanced supplemental benefits just puts more of a drain on our system.

00:08:45.280 And like I said, not ordinary Canadians don't even have access to that kind of coverage.

00:08:50.160 And I think the blame needs to be put on the government itself to allowing this to happen,

00:08:58.300 to get here in the first place and it continue to happen.

00:09:00.740 And as you said, it's only going to get worse into the future.

00:09:03.500 That's right. Absolutely.

00:09:04.380 And I mean, it lies, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the liberal government

00:09:08.440 because they are the ones that allowed the asylum system to explode in terms of numbers, first of all.

00:09:14.280 And then they are the ones who decided to put these very generous benefits to tag along with that asylum system.

00:09:21.340 And so guess what? When you build a system that's very attractive, has really good benefits, people want to take advantage of that system.

00:09:27.440 And that's what's happened in Canada. And so we have a large number of people that are claiming asylum that shouldn't be. 0.88

00:09:33.000 And that's a whole other story. That's what's driving the numbers of asylum seekers in Canada.

00:09:38.400 Not legitimate people, but people that are trying to game the system.

00:09:42.220 So they see how generous Canada is. They sometimes falsify their application, and it kind of gets them that little, you know, ticket to get some added benefits that Canadians don't get, the Canadians who are paying the taxes.

00:09:59.720 Yeah, I mean, it's one thing if somebody shows up on our border and says, I'm persecuted in my home country, I want to claim asylum here.

00:10:06.300 That's a story that I think most of us can relate to, and if it's proven to be true, you know, let them claim asylum here.

00:10:11.900 But what's really a problem right now is when somebody comes to our country, they're here, 1.00

00:10:16.960 maybe a student or some other kind of person who's a non-citizen, they're here for a year or two years.

00:10:21.400 And all of a sudden something happens, like they get arrested for a crime, which could cause them to be deported.

00:10:25.900 All of a sudden, oh, they want to claim asylum two years later.

00:10:28.980 You know, that doesn't make any sense.

00:10:31.760 And that's, I think, where the government, the liberals have let people game the system through methods like that

00:10:37.060 to not only claim asylum and get the benefits of a health care system,

00:10:40.420 but actually avoid prosecution of law and the ability to avoid, you know, going to court or being convicted of a crime or going to jail.

00:10:49.020 So that's, it's just not, it's not right.

00:10:50.640 And we on the opposition have been trying to fix this as well, that if those that are not citizens are committing crimes,

00:10:57.400 that perhaps they should be elsewhere because, you know, we have crime happening everywhere.

00:11:05.020 Like the crime is going off the charts here.

00:11:07.540 So clearly, the revolving door justice system is a problem.

00:11:12.340 But at the same time, we can't seem to hold anyone anyway.

00:11:16.680 Right. Well, there's actually a couple of problems there.

00:11:18.480 One is that because there's a law that says if you're convicted of a crime with greater than six month sentence, you have to be deported.

00:11:26.360 What judges are doing is they're saying, well, you know, you should be a normal Canadian would be would be charged with a year in this or given a sentence of a year in this case.

00:11:33.840 But because this person is a non-citizen and they could be deported, we're going to back that sentence off to less than six months just to be nice to them.

00:11:41.700 And so we've created this two-tier sentencing system in Canada.

00:11:44.920 So that's problem number one.

00:11:46.260 And then problem number two is when somebody does need to be deported, we aren't deporting them.

00:11:50.580 We just send them a letter saying you need to go home and assume that they go home.

00:11:55.060 And, of course, people don't go home.

00:11:56.540 They stay here.

00:11:57.120 They hide underground.

00:11:58.360 And so they remain in the country. 0.89

00:11:59.980 Yeah, I can see that being frustrating for those Canadians that are following the letter of the law, doing everything, paying their taxes, everything possible to live a law-abiding life.

00:12:12.740 And then all of a sudden there's two-tiered system.

00:12:17.100 I can see how that would irk a few people.

00:12:19.720 And it also, you're very right about that.

00:12:21.920 It also upsets immigrants who came here through the normal process, right? 1.00

00:12:25.960 They went through all the right channels.

00:12:27.960 They crossed all the T's, dotted all the I's, waited for a long period of time, got their paperwork.

00:12:32.440 And then they see someone else who just skirts the whole system by claiming asylum.

00:12:36.300 And all of a sudden, they have better benefits than they do.

00:12:39.220 Everybody dislikes that system.

00:12:41.380 Yeah, and it's the fault of the Liberal government for allowing this to happen.

00:12:44.280 It's not the fault of the claimant.

00:12:45.760 They're just doing what the rules allow them to do.

00:12:48.440 We didn't have this 10 years ago.

00:12:49.800 We did not have this 10 years ago.

00:12:51.140 And also, extortion is on the rise.

00:12:53.660 We've done a show about that a few episodes ago with a few members.

00:12:56.700 but extortion is getting out of control in this country.

00:13:00.000 Sadly, yes.

00:13:00.780 And unfortunately, it's causing a lot of chaos in our streets.

00:13:06.560 We have houses being shot up, business being shot up, caught on video.

00:13:13.540 And this growing, you know, just what is happening?

00:13:18.080 This growing feeling of ease.

00:13:20.520 Well, imagine being a business owner and receiving this cryptic letter saying, 0.99

00:13:24.080 you need to pay me a million dollars or someone's going to be in trouble, we're going to shoot you

00:13:27.880 up or whatever. And this is, these are, they seem, it seems unbelievable in a country like Canada 0.96

00:13:32.600 that you would wake up in the morning and find that taped to your business door, but that's

00:13:36.000 exactly what's happening. And there are fires, shots being fired, there are people being injured

00:13:41.060 and even killed, and people are being arrested. Surrey has a whole investigative unit that's

00:13:46.280 focused on extortion investigations, and it's sadly become a really big problem in Canada.

00:13:51.180 There was an incident not too long ago in Vaughan, I believe, just north of Toronto, where people broke into a person's house.

00:14:00.960 He was there with his child, and he was executed in front of the child.

00:14:04.760 There was another video, I believe, Vaughan in Richmond Hill, somewhere, same area, and someone was executed, shot right on the street.

00:14:11.040 Yeah, yeah. And I think in Syria, I can't remember the exact number, but it's something like 35 or something like that incidents in the month of January this year alone of extortion charges that were laid by the police. And it's just a very troubling thing. And it's a big problem in Canada.

00:14:27.540 So we want to see equality in our justice system. We want to see it toughened up so it's not this revolving door justice system.

00:14:33.660 And then those people who get charged, what do they do?

00:14:39.220 They claim asylum.

00:14:40.720 And then they're free of their justice obligations again.

00:14:43.500 So these problems interconnect with each other.

00:14:46.040 Right.

00:14:47.040 And it just goes around and around.

00:14:48.040 And we wonder why morale in some of our police agencies is going down in frustration.

00:14:54.100 And citizens too.

00:14:55.100 Because when you have an increase in crime, you have an increase in victims.

00:14:58.980 And it's a terrible feeling to be helpless in your own community.

00:15:03.080 Let's cut, I think this is cut three, maybe.

00:15:05.840 This is Michelle Ruppel-Garner, who's our critic for immigration.

00:15:09.320 You sit with her on committee.

00:15:11.000 We're talking in strengthening its immigration system, Canada's immigration system.

00:15:16.120 Play cut three.

00:15:17.720 Mr. Speaker, hello.

00:15:19.320 Fifteen years ago called and wants its immigration debate back.

00:15:22.980 Fifteen years ago, the asylum system had less than 10,000 claims thanks to our conservative government.

00:15:29.560 What happened, Mr. Speaker?

00:15:31.460 Order, order.

00:15:32.260 We do have a point of order.

00:15:32.940 The Honourable Member for Winnipeg North on a point of order.

00:15:35.400 We said 10,000. I believe it's closer to 60,000 back in 2012.

00:15:38.580 Not a point of order. That's debate.

00:15:40.240 The Honourable Member resumed her answer.

00:15:42.540 Liberals want to silence me, but again, I got this information

00:15:45.540 right off their website.

00:15:46.540 Do they not know how to use the Google machine?

00:15:48.840 It was less than 10,000 when they took government.

00:15:52.040 Today, it's almost 300,000 after the hashtag

00:15:56.440 Welcome to Canada, every economic migrant in the United States. 1.00

00:16:00.340 This is insane.

00:16:02.340 Same point.

00:16:03.420 First of all, isn't she doing an awesome job?

00:16:05.140 She's doing a fantastic job.

00:16:06.560 Absolutely.

00:16:07.200 And it's such a, it's a tough file because there's so many moving parts to it, right?

00:16:10.880 So many programs, so many avenues where, you know, they intersect, whether it's asylum,

00:16:16.760 refugee, regular system, and everything in between, right?

00:16:20.220 There's a lot of moving parts in this.

00:16:22.320 But the point's the same.

00:16:24.840 This wasn't a problem 10 years ago.

00:16:27.360 What's happening now is the fault of the Liberal government.

00:16:30.380 We did not say, right at the beginning, how did this happen?

00:16:34.940 It happens after 10 years.

00:16:36.620 Absolutely.

00:16:37.060 This is how it happened.

00:16:38.000 And she mentioned, she said, hashtag, welcome to Canada.

00:16:40.380 That was Justin Trudeau's tweet that he gave in response to some crises that were happening in the world.

00:16:45.440 And he basically said, you know, you can't get into country X.

00:16:48.420 Come to, welcome to Canada.

00:16:49.360 Come here.

00:16:49.800 We want you to be here.

00:16:50.780 And so guess what?

00:16:51.500 People said, oh, hey, the government wants us in Canada.

00:16:53.960 Let's go.

00:16:54.920 And so they started flooding into Canada for, and we had limits in place.

00:17:00.200 that kind of got blown up, and then the government increased their limits, and more people came,

00:17:04.800 and then we got into this asylum problem where we were talking about. So it's crazy.

00:17:09.080 We had 10,000 people in the queue in asylum in 2015. Today, there's 300,000.

00:17:15.420 Don't forget the student visa issue. Tell us, can you go into that quickly?

00:17:20.500 Well, you know, if you add the whole number up, it's close to 3 million temporary residents that

00:17:25.340 are in Canada right now. And that would include-

00:17:26.700 Three million.

00:17:27.540 So that would include temporary workers, students,

00:17:30.260 refugee claimants, the whole group of people

00:17:32.600 who are temporary in our country.

00:17:34.280 And that works out to about 7% of our population.

00:17:37.680 It was 7.4% at its peak about a year ago.

00:17:40.080 And that's far too high, far too high.

00:17:43.360 And that's causing crisis in housing. 0.99

00:17:45.960 It's causing a crisis in jobs.

00:17:47.880 There aren't enough jobs for all those people.

00:17:49.720 It's causing a crisis in healthcare.

00:17:51.420 There's not enough healthcare for everybody.

00:17:52.700 And that's driven by just uncontrolled growth

00:17:55.720 and particularly in the non-citizen temporary category.

00:17:59.040 And we, as a country, grew in immigration very quickly.

00:18:02.000 In the span of a few years, we, I think it was 3 million, around 3 million, give or take,

00:18:07.960 that came to Canada to call home, and it did cause problems, right?

00:18:13.180 Immigration, for the most part, in the past, up until 10 minutes ago, as in the Liberal government,

00:18:18.160 it used to be a check on inflation, right?

00:18:19.820 If there were more jobs than people, we upped the immigration rate. 0.64

00:18:26.160 When that was the other side, we brought it down a bit just to even it out.

00:18:29.960 A check on inflation.

00:18:30.920 Right now, all you're doing when there's more people than there are jobs to be filled, it presses wages down.

00:18:38.960 Absolutely.

00:18:39.280 And when we have price inflation, currency inflation, because of what the government is doing, it's bringing everything up.

00:18:44.620 But the wages are going down or not moving up as fast as they should.

00:18:49.260 That's very true. And so we've allowed our economy to become dependent on temporary foreign workers, students, people that are in the country that need to work. And so guess what? Employers, there's a lot of unscrupulous employers that have taken advantage of them as well. I mean, there's lots of great employers that are doing really good work, and that's great. But there are unfortunately unscrupulous ones who take advantage of these people who are very vulnerable. They're not in a very strong position. They have to have money. They want to stay in Canada. And so they can be exploited. And that's a problem too.

00:19:18.880 But it also has kept those wages down so that ordinary Canadians don't want those jobs because the wages are minimum wage jobs.

00:19:26.960 And so I think there's cases where those wages do need to go up a little bit to allow people to be attracted to them.

00:19:32.520 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:33.480 Well, Brad, we're pretty much out of time.

00:19:35.160 I did keep it a bit over, so I do apologize.

00:19:37.440 As you may recall, the guests get the last word.

00:19:40.280 So the floor is yours to close us out.

00:19:42.920 Well, in 10 years, the Liberals have messed up our immigration system royally.

00:19:47.760 We see it in the cost of health care.

00:19:49.480 We see it in the number of temporary workers and temporary people that are in our country.

00:19:54.220 Even the normal regular number of permanent residents that we admit has been a very high number.

00:19:59.260 And so these have to get back under control.

00:20:01.700 We need to employ our youth who are unemployed. 1.00

00:20:05.360 We need to get our wages a little bit higher.

00:20:07.040 And we need to trust that our Canadians, our youth, and our Canadian seniors, people who don't have jobs, trust that they actually can do the jobs that need to be done.

00:20:15.380 and we need to rebuild our system and get it back to where it was 10 years ago

00:20:19.080 when we had a great system that all Canadians were proud of.

00:20:21.980 Brad Redekop, Member of Parliament for Saskatoon.

00:20:24.220 Wes, thanks for coming on the show.

00:20:25.460 My pleasure.

00:20:25.720 Thank you for your time. Thank you for yours.

00:20:27.580 Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and share this program.

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00:20:44.760 Until then, remember, low taxes, less governments, more freedom.

00:20:48.260 That's The Blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - February 24, 2026

We must stand up for Canadians.

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