The Candice Malcolm Show - March 12, 2024


Canada’s immigration system is BROKEN


Episode Stats

Length

22 minutes

Words per Minute

178.17197

Word Count

4,078

Sentence Count

263

Hate Speech Sentences

21


Summary

By 2023, Canada had the largest number of illegal immigrants entering our country in the history of Canada. We re going to break down the reasons behind this huge surge in immigration, and why it s no wonder there s a labor shortage.


Transcript

00:00:00.160 Canada once had the strongest and most secure immigration system in the world. We had our
00:00:05.840 pick of the best and the hardest working immigrants, and illegal immigration was mostly
00:00:10.720 unheard of. But everything fell apart after Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015. And now,
00:00:16.160 by 2023, we saw the largest number of illegal immigrants entering our country in the history
00:00:22.240 of Canada. We're going to break down the numbers. We're going to break down the reasons behind this
00:00:26.640 huge surge in immigration on today's show. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:43.680 Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Today, we're going to return to
00:00:47.600 one of my favorite topics, one of the topics that I've written extensively about. In the early part
00:00:51.600 of my career, I was a beat writer on immigration. I broke countless stories in the Toronto Sun when
00:00:56.960 I used to write over there. And I've written two books on the topic, Losing True North, and then a
00:01:01.440 follow-up, No Border. I've written a lot about immigration, and I'm going to revisit a lot of
00:01:05.920 the work today. Now, before we get into it, don't forget to like this video. If you're new around
00:01:09.760 here, please subscribe to the True North channel. Leave us a five-star review if you enjoy the content.
00:01:14.080 Please head on over to our website, tnc.news, to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an episode.
00:01:19.760 Now, when most people think about immigration, when most people talk about our immigration system,
00:01:25.280 the number that we hear, the number that we're told is that Canada welcomes roughly half a million
00:01:29.360 people per year into our country. Now, most people, according to the polls, they believe that that
00:01:34.560 number is too high. Somewhere between half a million and somewhere between half and three-quarters,
00:01:39.760 sorry, of all Canadians tell pollsters that they believe that half a million number is too high,
00:01:45.040 and they would like it to be lower. But let me tell you, that half a million number
00:01:49.200 that's often quoted, that's thrown around, it is wildly misleading. Canada welcomes 500,000
00:01:54.720 newcomers each year into one of our immigration streams, permanent residencies, which is the
00:02:00.080 equivalent of a US green card, people who are on track to get their citizenship in Canada. Those are
00:02:06.240 not people who have been living in Canada for a while, who have finally obtained permanent residency.
00:02:10.560 These are people who are entering Canada for the first time. So for the numbers I'm talking about,
00:02:14.720 2023 was the first year that they came to Canada, and the visa that they were given is a permanent
00:02:19.840 residency. So that's the half a million number that we often hear thrown around. But it's not accurate.
00:02:25.200 It's not a full picture of the immigration system and the people that are entering our country. So on
00:02:29.920 top of that half a million, Canada also admits approximately 660,000 people as temporary foreign
00:02:36.800 workers. That's 2023 numbers again. And in 2023, the government put a cap of 900,000 international
00:02:43.840 students. So 600,000 temporary foreign workers, 900,000 international students. And then in 2023,
00:02:51.680 Canada saw an absolute explosion of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants coming into Canada,
00:02:57.280 we saw 143,870 people enter the country illegally and request political asylum. That is so out of step
00:03:06.480 with our historical numbers. For context, under Stephen Harper, Canada dealt with a range of between
00:03:12.080 10,000 and 25,000 illegal migrants each year. And we thought that was too high. You know,
00:03:17.680 the government took countless steps to try to lower that number to try to stop that illegal
00:03:22.640 immigration when the number was 25,000. Well, under Trudeau, the number has absolutely exploded.
00:03:28.320 It's grown tenfold more than that 14 fold in the past decade. It's really unbelievable. So when you add
00:03:33.760 all these immigration streams together, the total number of newcomers you get arriving into Canada
00:03:39.200 each year is 2.2 million people. 2.2 million people. That's how many people Canada had welcomed,
00:03:48.400 entered our country, admitted in the last calendar year in 2023. So it's no wonder that our infrastructure
00:03:54.240 is crumbling. It's no wonder that there are housing shortages. It's no wonder that there are viral
00:03:58.560 videos showing dozens, if not hundreds of migrants lining up for minimum wage jobs in the service industry.
00:04:04.720 Remember, we're told that Canada has a labor shortage. And so we're bringing in these people
00:04:09.600 to do construction jobs and fill roles that Canadians supposedly can't fill. And yet we see them lining up
00:04:17.280 for minimum wage jobs, taking jobs away from young Canadians. It doesn't make any sense. So under the
00:04:23.520 current Trudeau government, Canada's range for landed immigrants, which are those permanent residents,
00:04:29.120 was 226 as a low during COVID, 226,000, and an average of just under 500,000 in the few years since the
00:04:37.760 pandemic. We're supposed to hit 500,000 in 2025. This is double the sustained averages of the past two
00:04:45.280 decades. So Trudeau has doubled that number of permanent residencies coming into Canada. And it's really
00:04:50.960 unprecedented in Canadian history, especially considering all the streams together, as mentioned, the true
00:04:56.880 numbers upwards of 2 million. So it's really hard to overstate how drastically out of step this is
00:05:01.920 with Canada's traditional approach to immigration. I like looking at the numbers. I like looking at the
00:05:06.480 stats. There's one page that I always look at that I find really interesting. Stats Canada tracks the
00:05:10.880 number of immigrants who have come here since 1850, so before Confederation. Now, curiously, Stats Canada has
00:05:18.160 all the data in one place from 1850 all the way up to 2015. For some reason, they stopped adding new
00:05:25.440 numbers and showing the new annual figures in 2015. Isn't that interesting? What else happened
00:05:30.080 in 2015? Well, anyway, we can look back at this graph and we can see the history of our immigration.
00:05:37.040 The graph is really interesting because what you really notice is that there are peaks and there
00:05:40.720 are valleys. So Canada has always had years where we've had huge influxes of newcomers coming into our
00:05:46.400 country. For instance, you can see this big peak that happened right before World War II in sort of 1910,
00:05:52.560 1911, 1912. There was a huge, huge spike in the number of folks coming and then we saw more spikes
00:05:59.360 sort of in the post-World War II years. So these peaks in immigration are then historically followed
00:06:05.760 by valleys, years when Canada significantly decreased its immigration intake. Now, the valleys are as
00:06:12.160 important as the peaks. These are the years when newcomers would acclimate to their new surroundings.
00:06:17.200 They would integrate into the Canadian community and into the Canadian economy and they would
00:06:22.400 adopt a Canadian identity. These are the years that ensured the continued success of our immigration
00:06:28.720 system. But you can see that everything changed starting in the 1990s. Canada abandoned this key
00:06:34.720 component of our immigration system. So starting in the 90s, we had successive governments, both liberal
00:06:40.080 and conservative, and they realized that they could sort of combat the demographic realities which were the
00:06:45.520 declining birth rates and the increased cost of social entitlement programs like health care, pensions,
00:06:50.320 and old age security OAS payments by simply importing more working age people. They kind of got addicted
00:06:57.840 to that artificial growth that you see when you bring in new people, all those new working age people
00:07:02.960 paying taxes and paying into the economy. And they didn't want to do the gaps. They didn't want to do
00:07:08.000 the valleys anymore. They didn't want to have years where they basically paused immigration intake
00:07:12.640 to let everybody integrate into the economy, into the community. Instead, they just kept it going,
00:07:19.520 kept the floodgates open, kept bringing more and more people. Well, the Trudeau government,
00:07:23.360 Justin Trudeau, has taken this hack to an extreme. They've attempted to cover up ruinous economic policies
00:07:29.920 like the carbon tax and excessive runaway deficit spending by simply and dramatically increasing the
00:07:35.680 number of people who come into the country. So more people means a higher cumulative economic output,
00:07:41.200 which we measure as GDP. And so with a straight face, government officials can say that Canada's
00:07:46.560 economy is growing and our GDP continues to rise when we all know that that is not the real case.
00:07:51.600 It's not happening. And we recently had this pointed out to us. So a Waterloo economics professor
00:07:56.800 named Mikkel Scudderlin said this on Twitter. He wrote, Canada's GDP grew by 1.1% in the fourth quarter
00:08:03.680 of 2022, while our population grew by 3.2%. So that means the real GDP per capita is actually falling
00:08:13.040 at 2% annually, roughly the difference. So we can pretend that our economy is growing by 1%. But when
00:08:19.120 you subtract the fact that we've imported and grown our population by 3%, the reality is that per person,
00:08:25.760 the economy is much worse. So politicians will tell you the economy is growing. It's not true. It's only
00:08:30.720 technically true. And that is because of mass migration. They're using mass migration to cover
00:08:35.360 up their terrible economic policies. The average Canadian is much poorer under this system. And it
00:08:42.400 gets even worse because GDP figures are further distorted when you consider that it includes government
00:08:48.320 spending in their calculation. So government spending is part of GDP. The government can simply
00:08:53.680 increase the GDP by taxing and spending more of your money. And that has been the case in recent years.
00:08:59.280 So look, immigration only works when it is well managed and when it has the approval of the vast
00:09:04.080 majority of Canadians. Our current system is the opposite of that. It's being completely overrun.
00:09:09.120 It's being completely mismanaged. This is harmful to the economy. It's harmful to Canadians who are
00:09:14.560 struggling with the rising cost of living. Now, I want to zero in on one element of immigration that I
00:09:21.200 find to be the most alarming, the most disturbing, and sort of the worst when it comes to how poorly
00:09:27.120 managed, mismanaged the system is. And that is a surge in illegal immigration that happened in 2023.
00:09:32.880 I'm telling you, I look at these numbers closely and I've never seen anything like this. I've never
00:09:36.480 seen a jump or spike in one category of immigration look anything like this. So a shocking, shocking 143,830
00:09:46.160 people entered Canada illegally. Let me say that again. 143,830 people entered Canada illegally in
00:09:55.600 2023. They made an asylum claim. And this is according to raw data that I found on Canada's
00:10:00.640 immigration department website. So who are these people? These are wannabe refugees who entered
00:10:05.840 illegally. They either snuck across at an unmanned border crossing. They entered using fraudulent or
00:10:11.360 falsified passports and documents, or they entered under false pretenses. So they came as a temporary
00:10:17.360 visitor, pretending to be a tourist, only to later place an asylum claim and ask Canada for refugee
00:10:23.600 status. So they're trying to obtain refugee status, but they're not yet legal refugees. They still have
00:10:28.880 to have their case scrutinized by an immigration judge. And this is a process that has historically been
00:10:34.160 very difficult. Most claims ended up being rejected or abandoned. Although I must admit, in recent years
00:10:39.040 under the Trudeau government, they've significantly loosened the rules to allow more of these asylum
00:10:43.680 seekers to become permanent refugees and to stay in Canada permanently. Now, even if these individuals
00:10:50.160 have their claim rejected by an immigration judge, or they choose to abandon them, maybe they choose to
00:10:54.560 go to another country, usually the United States, or they just decide to go dark and live on the lam here
00:10:59.840 in Canada, there are significant benefits to just putting your name in that system and being in that
00:11:05.600 process as an asylum claimant. So asylum seekers receive government benefits, including welfare,
00:11:11.600 social housing, and a gold-plated program called the Interim Federal Health Program. This is a program
00:11:17.440 that the government spends about a billion dollars a year on. They send money, the federal government
00:11:21.680 sends money to the provinces, and the provinces provide health care to these asylum seekers. It is
00:11:27.040 above and beyond what Canadians receive. It includes the cost of any medication, dental visits, eye doctor
00:11:33.200 visits, and other services that Canadians typically pay out of pocket for. So when you when you look
00:11:39.920 back at historic numbers of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, the numbers just look so quaint
00:11:45.440 in comparison to what we're seeing today. So here's a graph that I found on the Immigration Department
00:11:50.160 website. It shows illegal immigration from 2000 to 2018. It's interesting because according to the IRCC,
00:11:58.720 which is the Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, prior to the Trudeau government
00:12:03.520 forming in late 2015, Canada's previous high in asylum seekers was in 2001 when we have 44,000,
00:12:11.040 and in 2008 when we had 37,000, and the low was in 2013 when there were only 10,365 illegal immigrants
00:12:20.800 entering the country and claiming asylum. And even the government's own sort of communication on this,
00:12:26.320 you can see what the bureaucrats wrote here. They said that the number of asylum claims more than
00:12:30.480 tripled since 2015, increasing from 16,000 in 2015 to over 50,000 in 2017. So in 2017, when there were
00:12:39.360 50,000 illegal immigrants coming to Canada, the bureaucrats thought it was a big deal. They were
00:12:43.120 worried about it. They noted that they had tripled in just a few years and you could tell that they
00:12:47.120 didn't like that. Now Trudeau had an opportunity to put this all to an end because during COVID,
00:12:51.840 the Trudeau government implemented incredibly tight restrictions on who could fly in and who could fly
00:12:57.040 out, who could enter and who could leave Canada. So in 2020, we only had 23,600 asylum claims,
00:13:03.440 and in 2021, we only had 24,900. But rather than take advantage of the natural reduction that happened
00:13:11.360 in illegal immigration caused mostly by the global travel restrictions that governments implemented
00:13:16.720 during the pandemic, instead of taking advantage of that, the immigration department under the Trudeau
00:13:21.840 government made a series of policy errors that led to the 6x jump in illegal immigration in just two
00:13:27.280 years from 2021 to 2023. And that staggering 14 fold increase from 10 years prior from 2013. So I'm
00:13:35.760 going to go through what I believe are the four factors behind this unprecedented surge in illegal
00:13:42.160 immigration. The first reason why this is happening is because of the Prime Minister, because of Prime
00:13:47.280 Minister Justin Trudeau and his messaging. So you'll remember this. This was back in 2017,
00:13:52.880 the same day that US President Donald Trump announced an executive order that would restrict
00:13:57.840 travel from seven countries that were known state sponsors of terrorism. That's why those seven countries
00:14:02.720 were picked. It became known as the Muslim ban, even though it wasn't a Muslim ban per se, but
00:14:08.240 it blocked people from coming from those seven countries that were state sponsors of terrorism.
00:14:13.120 On that same day, January 28, 2017, we had our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say, give a completely
00:14:19.440 different message. So this is what he tweeted. To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians
00:14:24.400 will welcome you regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. So that was Justin Trudeau virtue
00:14:30.320 signaling. Well, according to records obtained from bureaucrats inside the immigration department,
00:14:35.280 Trudeau's tweet created an absolute frenzy, created a frenzy at embassies, consulates,
00:14:40.400 immigration offices around the world. As many people, many potential wannabe refugees,
00:14:46.320 interpreted Trudeau's statement as a literal invitation. They thought that Trudeau was literally
00:14:51.360 inviting everybody to come be refugees in Canada. And the reality is that hundreds of thousands of
00:14:57.520 people around the world heeded this call. This contributed to the tripling of asylum claims in that
00:15:03.120 calendar year, in the year that Trudeau put out that tweet, which was 2017. And it still contributes
00:15:09.680 to the earth shattering figures that we see today. So that was number one reason is Prime Minister's
00:15:14.560 messaging. Number two reason is Canada's decision to abandon the visa requirement for Mexican nationals.
00:15:21.680 So Mexico, Mexicans are the number one source country of illegal immigration into Canada, the number
00:15:27.120 one source of asylum seekers. So just under 10,000 Mexican nationals enter Canada, they overstay their
00:15:34.320 visas, and they eventually make refugee claims each year. And there's a really easy way to fix this
00:15:40.480 problem. There's a policy tool that was previously introduced by the by the Stephen Harper government
00:15:45.520 back in 2009. It really works. It's simple. It's just a visa requirement, a simple visa that requires
00:15:52.000 Mexican visitors to submit some basic paperwork prior to coming to Canada, just basically proving
00:15:57.440 that they have a place to stay, that their stay is temporary, and that they have purchased a flight
00:16:01.840 home. It's really, really basic. Most countries that you go to will ask to see your flight home when
00:16:07.040 you're entering. And that's just sort of part of traveling to a different country. So personally,
00:16:11.920 again, as a Canadian, I've traveled extensively around the world. And many countries that you go to
00:16:16.960 require some kind of visa. I've had to do one when I've gone to places like Brazil,
00:16:21.360 Russia, India, China, Vietnam, so many countries require visas. And so it's not that big of a deal
00:16:26.800 for candidates to say to Mexicans, have a visa when you come. We used to have that. But in 2016,
00:16:33.040 the federal government under Justin Trudeau decided to eliminate this visa requirement for Mexicans.
00:16:38.160 And as a result, I mean, it was completely predictable. There was a huge surge in asylum
00:16:42.880 claims for Mexicans. They come to Canada pretending to be tourists, and then they never leave.
00:16:47.120 Okay, the third reason why we've had this huge spike in illegal immigration is because the government
00:16:53.600 has eliminated important rules that are meant to limit other streams of immigration that could
00:16:58.080 potentially be misused. So over the past several years, Canada's seen an explosion in two categories,
00:17:05.200 temporary foreign workers and students coming to Canada. So as I reported in True North, the number of
00:17:11.760 international students has tripled in the last decade. We used to welcome about 300,000 back in
00:17:17.280 2013. And then as I mentioned, in 2023, the government had to actually cap the number of student visas
00:17:22.640 because they were just getting so many applications. We now allow 900,000 students into the country
00:17:28.880 each year. Likewise, there's been a jump in those temporary foreign workers that went from about half a
00:17:32.800 million in 2013, up to 700,000 2021, which is the last figures that we have available. So by allowing all of
00:17:40.560 those people to come into Canada on a temporary basis, you're basically inviting them, there's
00:17:45.520 opportunity for fraud and abuse. Because once a migrant is legally in Canada, there's nothing stopping
00:17:51.840 them from asking for refugee status. They literally just have to go to an office, throw up their hands,
00:17:55.920 say, I'm a refugee, fill out a bit of paperwork. And all of a sudden, they're placed in that stream
00:18:01.280 of refugees, they get all the benefits that I mentioned earlier, including that interim federal health
00:18:06.160 care. So really, you're kind of creating incentives by allowing 1.5 million people to come into the
00:18:12.480 country under the guise of either a visa or temporary firm worker. And all they have to do to jump to that
00:18:18.320 other category where they could become a refugee and potentially state in Canada as a permanent resident,
00:18:24.000 all they have to do is pretend that they're a refugee. And there you have it. So again, that's a huge
00:18:30.320 mistake. And finally, the fourth reason why Canada has seen this unprecedented surge in illegal immigration
00:18:36.800 is because of the bureaucracy. It seems to me by looking at the numbers and reading into it,
00:18:41.440 that the bureaucracy has basically taken over. They're not being tamed by the political staff.
00:18:45.600 The Liberals aren't stopping them from doing what they want. It's a situation where the sort of the
00:18:49.920 inmates are running the asylum. The bureaucrats are obsessed and focused on reducing the backlog. So
00:18:55.680 Canada gets 2.5 million applications for visitor visas each year. And the bureaucracy has to process
00:19:02.800 each of those. This is a huge undertaking. It's a huge problem. They don't have enough staff to do it.
00:19:08.080 And so they're always looking for shortcuts and tricks to get through that backlog as fast as possible.
00:19:14.080 You know what would stop the backlog and what would make it all much more obtainable would just be to
00:19:19.760 put a fee on an application. Like you want to apply for a visa to Canada, you have to pay 50 bucks to pay for it.
00:19:25.280 To get processed, but they don't want to do that. And so it's this huge undertaking for the bureaucracy.
00:19:29.680 They're obsessed with reducing their backlog. And so that's why they take they take shortcuts.
00:19:34.720 They take steps that lead to problems in other areas. And this is what we've seen happen.
00:19:39.200 So I found this Globe and Mail report from October 2023. It says asylum claims jump at Canadian airports
00:19:45.360 after Ottawa eases some visitor visa requirements. So let me just read a little bit from the story.
00:19:50.480 It says earlier this year, Ottawa waived some eligibility requirements for visa visitor
00:19:55.200 applications. In particular, those individuals no longer have to prove that they have sufficient
00:20:00.080 funds to stay in Canada or demonstrate that they will leave the country when the visa expires.
00:20:04.960 The policy went into effect on February 28th and last through the end of 2023. So think about that.
00:20:12.080 People who are coming to Canada no longer have to prove that they have a return flight.
00:20:16.000 They no longer have to prove that they actually have money in order to fund their stay or pay for
00:20:21.440 their trip to Canada. They just they just get the visa. Basically, they apply and they get the visa.
00:20:26.720 So what could possibly be the reason for eliminating this is an important safeguard
00:20:30.960 for Canada's immigration system to stop fake tourists who plan to just stay in Canada indefinitely.
00:20:37.360 Well, there is a memo that was leaked from the immigration department,
00:20:41.120 and it says exactly what the issue is. And so this is from the same Global Mail report says
00:20:46.560 the IRCC memo, which dates to December, said waiving eligibility requirements would apply to roughly
00:20:52.160 450,000 visa applications in the system. The documents of the stockpile of application was eroding
00:20:58.960 the public's trust in the department and its ability to manage migration.
00:21:03.360 Hopeful immigrants and visitors often complain that can take years for the government
00:21:07.360 to render a decision on their files. So they're talking about how basically foreigners from
00:21:13.280 other countries, foreign nationals in foreign countries, are complaining that it takes too long
00:21:18.720 to get their visa approved. And the bureaucracy thinks that this is going to erode public trust.
00:21:24.080 Okay, so that's the reason why there's a huge surge. They got rid of all these shortcuts
00:21:28.400 because they didn't want to erode the public's trust. When they're talking about the public,
00:21:32.480 let's just be perfectly clear. They're not talking about you and I. They're not talking about
00:21:35.760 Canadians. Canadians don't know anything about the backlog. They don't care how long it takes
00:21:40.320 for someone visiting from India to get a visa. They don't care about that at all.
00:21:44.480 What the bureaucracy cares about when they talk about the public trust, they're talking about
00:21:48.000 the public in foreign countries. They're talking about non-Canadians, the public in places like
00:21:53.200 India and China and people who want to come visit Canada. The bureaucrats are literally more concerned
00:21:58.640 with quelling the concerns of hopeful immigrants and visitors rather than protecting the integrity of
00:22:05.520 our immigration system. It's really unbelievable. So these are the four factors that I believe
00:22:10.080 are contributing and led to that 140,000 illegal immigrants entering Canada, that shocking figure,
00:22:16.880 and those people who are pleading for asylum. Look, it is clear that the system is broken.
00:22:22.320 It is clear that Canada needs a total overhaul. We need a total redesign of our system
00:22:27.360 from top to bottom. The only question that remains here is who will have the political courage to take
00:22:34.720 on this issue and finally fix Canada's immigration system. That's the only question that remains.
00:22:39.920 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.