The Candice Malcolm Show - June 06, 2025


Immigration Minister EXPOSED as totally clueless, 817K newcomers in 4 MONTHS + D-Day Tribute

Hosted by
Candice Malcolm
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Michael Bonner Mario Norfolk Bill C-63 Michelle Rempel-Garner Jim Parks Speaker Juno Danielle Smith Mark Carney Vimy Ridge John Carpe Lena Diab Bill C9 Blink Diab
Carney LOSES vote in the House, refuses to open the books + it’s “pride season” now Is Carney REALLY better than Trudeau？ I asked Danielle Smith.

Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

161.03

Word count

3,724

Sentence count

239

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk all about immigration with Michael Bonner, an author, political consultant, and former policy director with the Ontario government. Michael talks about the new immigration minister, Michelle Rumpel-Garner, and her cluelessness when it comes to immigration.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Great. Knowing the sacrifices that you made, where you were, the importance of your role in shaping the country that we now enjoy and that we're so privileged to live in. So thank you so much for joining the podcast. God bless you. And thank you again for everything.
00:00:16.860 Thank you very much. It'd be nice stopping you.
00:00:18.700 Now, as you can see, I interviewed Jim Parks. Jim Parks is a tremendous, remarkable person. And I'm happy to report that he's still with us. He recently turned 100. And so back then when I interviewed him, he was 98 years old. It was three years ago. And it was an incredible interview. I urge you to go over and watch the entire interview. We will link that below.
00:00:40.580 And let me tell you that that tribute and that interview influenced me so much that that is why I named this organization Juno News. It was based on that reporting that day, that interview, and just the importance that this day had on our country, our nation. Canada really became the country it is today because of those efforts during the Second World War.
00:01:01.820 Obviously, there were other important moments, important battles, both in the First World War, Vimy Ridge comes to mind, and the Second World War. But really, the way that the Canadians fought had an outsized impact on the outcome of that war happened that day, D-Day today, that we pay homage to 81 years ago today.
00:01:20.400 And I definitely urge everybody to go watch that interview and take a moment to pay respects to those who fought for Canada, right? The Canada of 1944 was obviously a very different country than it was today. But the ideal that those men were fighting for should still inspire us and guide us today.
00:01:37.640 Okay, I want to switch gears a little bit and introduce Michael Bonner, our guest. So Michael is an author, political consultant, and a former policy director with the Ontario government. We're going to talk all about immigration.
00:01:49.500 So first, Michael, welcome to the show. It's great to have you.
00:01:52.740 Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
00:01:54.520 Okay, so let's start with the immigration minister who just appears absolutely clueless when it comes to immigration. So yesterday, in question period, Michelle Rumpel-Garner, the MP from Calgary, asked a very reasonable question about immigration, just asking a very simple question.
00:02:12.380 And the newly appointed immigration minister, Lina Dab, accused her of lying and spreading misinformation. Let's play that clip.
00:02:20.960 Why did the Liberals bring half a million foreign students to Canada during a massive housing shortage and while youth in Canada can't find jobs?
00:02:28.760 Mr. The Honourable Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.
00:02:33.280 Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for that question. Those figures are inaccurate. It's misinformation. This new government is hard at work to improve our immigration system and the introduction of Bill C-2.
00:02:50.840 Tuesday was an example of that. We are taking significant steps to preserve the integrity of our system while also upholding our humanitarian commitments because we understand a well-managed immigration system is essential to a safer, stronger Canada.
00:03:08.880 So, isn't that just a typical response from a liberal? Like, I don't like the numbers, so I'll just accuse you of lying and spreading misinformation.
00:03:16.720 Well, unfortunately for Ms. Diab, the immigration minister, Michelle Rumpel came back with this doozy. 1.00
00:03:23.120 I got those numbers from the minister's website. I went on the website and I read them.
00:03:29.020 So, in the middle of a housing crisis, she brought 500,000 people to Canada. These people compete with Canadians for jobs, require housing and health care.
00:03:42.660 If her department's numbers aren't the real numbers, what are the real numbers?
00:03:50.440 The Honourable Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.
00:03:55.120 Mr. Speaker, let me give the opposite member a lesson on immigration and on numbers and on permits of visas.
00:04:06.000 There's many applications and many individuals. We recognize that to balance our immigration and to have a good country, we need temporary and we need permanent residence.
00:04:19.460 Some applicants have multiple, multiple numbers. And so, therefore, I would suggest that we look into those numbers a little bit more in detail. Thank you.
00:04:29.840 So, she's quite animated there, but I don't think she's really making the point she's trying to make.
00:04:34.440 She's trying to say that what Michelle Rumpel-Garner doesn't really understand immigration and the reality is that we need temporary workers and permanent, but she doesn't really explain why that's the case.
00:04:43.580 To me, I mean, that just shows how totally clueless she is. She was totally exposed for being clueless not only about the numbers in her own department, but also wildly out of touch with Canadians with regards to what we want from our immigration system.
00:04:57.740 Michael, what do you make of it?
00:04:59.020 Yeah, I would agree. I mean, there's sort of the general sort of garden variety in competence, but there's also, you know, if we want to be charitable,
00:05:08.180 we can allow for the fact that she's still being briefed up or, you know, not fully on top of the file.
00:05:14.300 But I see all of that as secondary to a more fundamental problem, which is that the way immigration numbers are presented to the public is really untransparent, opaque, confusing.
00:05:30.820 And, you know, the levels are set in a sort of quasi-secretive way by cabinet and so forth.
00:05:39.640 What it means to have, you know, what exactly is temporary, in fact, about temporary immigration, you know, all of this stuff is sort of unclear.
00:05:51.160 And as you say, the case for this stuff is pretty dubious, if you actually sort of get into it.
00:05:59.480 Multiple people might be or sort of a single individual might be holding multiple visas.
00:06:06.400 And, you know, that number can be sort of confusing.
00:06:10.580 People can disappear and go underground and what have you.
00:06:13.880 But, you know, the numbers that get presented to the public when it comes to, you know, how many people actually come here every year, you know, whether we're talking about permanent residents, student visas, temporary foreign worker permits and so forth, you know, depending on how you present this information,
00:06:36.520 you can either fudge it to make it look like there are far fewer people in the country, which I think is what she's trying to do there.
00:06:43.900 Or if you actually look at the number of the number of permits and persons that are that are on the books at the moment, the number is significantly higher than I think most Canadians would be would be comfortable with.
00:06:59.240 Right. Well, I think survey after survey shows that Canadians almost unanimously want immigration to go down significantly.
00:07:07.100 This is True North reporting over at Juneau News just a couple of days ago.
00:07:10.960 Canada took in 817,000 new immigrants in the first four months of 2025.
00:07:16.780 And to your point, Michael, this sort of like opaque, like, you know, they have different targets.
00:07:20.860 They have different numbers. They have different streams. Right.
00:07:22.920 So it's like, OK, they'll say how many permanent residents come in and that's what they consider immigration.
00:07:27.360 But then on top of that, they have temporary foreign workers. And on top of that, they have the student, the student workers.
00:07:32.800 And so when True North tallied that all up, we got 817,000.
00:07:38.420 The thing I want to go back to with the minister's point there is somehow she's like talking about how Canada needs both temporary and permanent immigrants.
00:07:48.300 I think this is totally counter to what the liberals have long advocated for.
00:07:52.380 Right. When Justin Trudeau became prime minister, one of the first things he did was make it much, much easier to become a citizen.
00:07:58.600 They cut the number of days you had to be in Canada. They cut the language requirements for almost all immigrants.
00:08:04.040 They made it easier in every single way. And the justification was that they want the people in Canada to be like fully bought into the Canadian community and culture and society.
00:08:13.240 They didn't want two tiers of people. They didn't like the idea that you could come and leave.
00:08:17.620 Like they wanted everyone to have a pathway to citizenship and for it to happen quickly.
00:08:21.520 And so the case for these temporary foreign workers and for the students, it doesn't align with it.
00:08:28.860 I think that post-COVID, Canada was experiencing a serious sluggish economy and Justin Trudeau needed fast growth.
00:08:37.980 And the easiest way to do that is just to open up the doors and let in as many people as they can find and basically say anyone who wants to come can come.
00:08:46.920 We saw millions of people come to Canada that way.
00:08:50.400 And yes, it boosts GDP, like just increasing the number of people in the country will increase the GDP.
00:08:54.840 But actually, GDP per capita has been trending downwards.
00:08:58.720 And so it's sort of like, you know, it was a cheap, cheap trick to try to boost the economy.
00:09:02.980 It didn't work. And recall that Justin Trudeau actually came out and apologized and recognized that they let in too many people.
00:09:10.540 This was back in November 2024. Let's play that clip.
00:09:14.420 Immigration. Let's talk about it. 1.00
00:09:16.680 In the last two years, our population has grown really fast, like baby boom fast. 1.00
00:09:21.600 And increasingly, bad actors like fake colleges and big chain corporations have been exploiting our immigration system for their own interests.
00:09:29.740 So we're doing something major.
00:09:31.260 We're reducing the numbers of immigrants that will come to Canada for the next three years.
00:09:36.520 So, like, if they announced that they made a mistake and that they were increasing it, yeah, Justin Trudeau blames other people.
00:09:42.460 But it's his system that he set up.
00:09:44.740 Like, why is it that here we are six months later and we're still experiencing those incredibly high numbers of immigration?
00:09:50.840 Yeah, if only our economy could run on apologies from Justin Trudeau.
00:09:56.220 You know, we might all be, you know, rich by now.
00:09:59.340 But the per capita thing that you just mentioned is at the heart of the problem.
00:10:07.360 And I think that a lot of politicians and as far as I can tell, you know, the entire media, you know, don't understand what per capita means.
00:10:17.500 But the kind of GDP growth that we have had, as you allude, is not the kind that we need.
00:10:26.900 What we need is greater productivity in this country, which would normally imply a much higher level of skill being deployed within the economy.
00:10:44.760 A huge number of temporary foreign workers being brought in at the low wage, low skill end of the economy has had an extremely depressing effect on wages.
00:11:03.800 And it has priced, you know, priced Canadians out of those what are normally considered entry level jobs, especially in something like the service industry.
00:11:18.620 I completely reject the idea, and I think most Canadians would agree, that there's anything about that equation that we actually need.
00:11:29.040 We don't need that.
00:11:30.140 What we need, if we need, if we need immigration at all, it's at a higher skill level and at a higher wage. 0.94
00:11:39.200 Okay.
00:11:39.860 That is what we had until, for the most part, until, you know, comparatively recently.
00:11:46.900 And what Trudeau has left out of his explanation or apology there is that the avoidance, you know, the avoidance of a recession or, you know, the kind of temporary boost to GDP or to economic growth that we had is kind of like, you know, a drink in the morning to ward off a hangover.
00:12:16.020 You know, it hasn't addressed the problem.
00:12:19.460 Our economy has suffered since at least the early 1970s from underinvestment, low productivity, in fact, decreasing productivity, and the per capita GDP has been slowly declining with maybe tiny bumps to the contrary along the way.
00:12:42.140 But the general trend has not been positive.
00:12:46.020 And, you know, the net result is the kind of sluggishness and almost like a kind of stagnancy that we all feel right now.
00:12:59.440 The solution has nothing to do with bringing in more low-wage, cheap labor.
00:13:08.840 That is the equivalent of an unhealthy government subsidy to unproductive businesses that don't want to invest in Canadians.
00:13:22.380 It's that simple.
00:13:24.080 Well, and it doesn't seem like the government is really listening because I think that, I mean, from my perspective, Canadians have just had enough of open border immigration.
00:13:34.420 They want change.
00:13:35.060 We saw Bill C2 introduced to crack down on some asylum seeker cheats.
00:13:40.880 And we'll talk about that in a moment.
00:13:42.540 But I want to just point to this chart that was sort of going viral on social media.
00:13:48.540 So the account Mario Narfal, which is one of the biggest news accounts on X, he posted that Canada's immigration graph just turned into a rocket ship.
00:13:56.540 Canada's bringing 2.5 million people by 2025.
00:13:58.700 It's the biggest peacetime immigration spike ever for a country its size.
00:14:01.840 The chart literally goes vertical after 2021.
00:14:04.080 Blink, the population jumps 25%. 0.95
00:14:06.380 Now, I think that Mario might have misunderstood what was happening this year in 2025.
00:14:12.520 But the graph is like the original graph from Stats Canada looks like this.
00:14:17.980 It's the same graph.
00:14:18.760 It's just the one that Mario had added a year that I don't think he quite understood the real immigration numbers.
00:14:23.760 So this is what the Statistics Canada graph looks like from 1952 to 2023.
00:14:29.080 Like it just doesn't make any sense that we would have this spike.
00:14:32.780 Nobody's asking for this.
00:14:33.960 In fact, during the election, Mark Carney even walked away from it.
00:14:37.760 And yet we're still getting those wild numbers.
00:14:40.480 Earlier this week, the liberals tabled a new bill, Bill C-2.
00:14:45.960 We talked about it in depth yesterday with constitutional lawyer John Carpe and some of our concerns when it comes to civil liberties.
00:14:51.060 But the purpose of the bill was to crack down on, in some ways, to help fix the border, to strengthen the border, protect the border, to meet the demands of our American counterparts.
00:15:03.760 And one of the things that I think is actually a step in the right direction is the changes for asylum seekers.
00:15:09.860 So I'll just go through a little bit of what the bill actually did, the Strong Borders Act that was tabled by the Liberal government this week.
00:15:16.960 One of the things it does is it puts time limits on asylum claims.
00:15:19.920 So there is a one-year limit for in-Canada asylum claims.
00:15:23.280 I mean, honestly, I think there should be like a one-day time limit.
00:15:26.560 Like, if you're actually fleeing persecution and you come to Canada, you should probably just declare refugee status or ask for refugee status the moment you get here.
00:15:36.100 Instead, what we're seeing happen is people come on visas and then their visas are about to get revoked or run out and they can't renew them.
00:15:42.920 So they just make an asylum claim after being in Canada for like five years.
00:15:45.500 It's really just a way to game the system.
00:15:47.380 So this is saying a one-year limit asylum claims made more than one year after an individual's arrival in Canada will not be referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board, the IRB, for a hearing.
00:15:57.720 And so this is at least a step in the right direction.
00:16:00.200 There's also a 14-day deadline for U.S. border entrance, even though, I mean, hello, the whole purpose of the Safe Third Country Agreement is that there should be zero applications coming from the United States border.
00:16:10.240 So a 14-day deadline for U.S. border entrance is interesting because it's kind of saying, okay, well, we don't actually really care about the Safe Third Country Agreement.
00:16:20.080 Anyway, the bill also strengthens the Safe Third Country Agreement.
00:16:23.900 So it introduces a measure to prevent circumvention of the Safe Third Country Agreement, which mandates that asylum seekers make their claim in the first safe country.
00:16:33.200 Maybe you can help me understand what's happening there.
00:16:35.780 Next, they also have enhanced control over immigration documents.
00:16:40.780 And so at least they're addressing that there is a problem when it comes to some claimants.
00:16:45.880 These are some of the reforms that have been needed for years upon years.
00:16:50.020 Recall that the former prime minister, Justin Trudeau, basically didn't apply this rule at all, the Safe Third Country Agreement, the entire debacle at Roxham Road.
00:16:59.820 For years upon years, we had a steady stream of migrants just walking across our border to be met by police and CBSA officers putting them in buses and taking them to Montreal or Toronto.
00:17:12.560 Like, yes, they finally closed that, but after years upon years of it happening.
00:17:16.660 So what do you make of these specific changes with regards to Bill C-2?
00:17:20.820 Well, as you say, I approve of tightening up the asylum regime. 0.94
00:17:31.840 I approve of that in principle.
00:17:33.260 The, you know, I have read, as I think you have also, that there are potentially aspects of the bill that could be susceptible to constitutional challenges and which may be on the wrong side of civil liberties questions.
00:17:57.000 If that's the case, you know, that, that would be unfortunate, but this is the reason why we should never allow ourselves to get into this position.
00:18:08.220 Whenever the balance of public trust in, in, in, in policy is, is disrupted, there's always a reaction that has to go in the, in the opposite direction.
00:18:22.480 And, you know, what the liberals did in the previous, in, in, you know, in the last, uh, uh, 10 years, uh, was to wear out public trust, to wear out public trust to the point where, um, some would say an overreaction, uh, is, is required.
00:18:41.960 And, you know, this is not, this is not the position that, that, that, that, that we should be in.
00:18:48.760 And it's not a good one to, you know, it, it can have potentially disastrous effects for, for civil, civil, for civil liberties or for people who, you know, are, I don't know, potentially tourists crossing the border.
00:19:02.380 I'm not sure. Like, there's a lot in there that seems to pertain to forcing people to hand over documents, you know, this, like the, it's not hard to foresee how that, how that could, how that could, uh, could go wrong.
00:19:14.100 But keeping that equilibrium of, you know, a relatively generous, uh, uh, immigration system with one that the public is willing to support and tolerate, or at least not, uh, complain about, you know, that has been completely thrown out of whack.
00:19:30.320 And that's why we are at this point, uh, right now.
00:19:35.180 Now, I, I can easily foresee some very difficult conversations and debates that will go on about this bill.
00:19:42.240 Um, not, you know, from conservatives who, who are in favor of tighter, uh, who are in favor of a tighter regime, but who may, you know, be uneasy about, um, increasing, uh, government powers.
00:19:58.400 And conversely, there, there, there will be the, the, the, the, the sort of inverse from, um, uh, more left-leaning organizations who would prefer to, to things, to, things to, to, to, to go the opposite way.
00:20:14.600 So the liberals are potentially open to a great deal of uncomfortable criticism and, uh, you know, sort of awkward, awkward political fights in the, in, in the coming weeks over this.
00:20:27.520 Uh, so, you know, I wish them the best of luck in, in sorting this out, but the bill that we have before us right now may not be the one that eventually, uh, you know, gets, get, gets passed and so forth.
00:20:40.720 But the answer to this problem is, you know, not to have got into this position in the first place.
00:20:46.240 And, you know, for this, like, you know, the Trudeau regime is going to have to, uh, take most of the blame.
00:20:51.580 Well, it seems that the liberals aren't really getting the memo that Canadians want real change with immigration.
00:20:58.760 You had a piece over in the hub saying it was time to basically drastically overhaul, totally overhaul our immigration system.
00:21:07.360 I hope the liberals will go on over and read that because I, I agree.
00:21:10.920 I don't understand why we have these temporary workers.
00:21:13.340 I, I do see that there are industries that say that there are labor market, uh, labor shortages.
00:21:18.040 Great. Let's train and hire Canadians to do those jobs. 1.00
00:21:21.080 There is a lot of, there are a lot of young Canadians that are looking for work, looking for a career, and we should do a better job matching Canadians to industry as opposed to just importing a third world, uh, which we get all kinds of problems, uh, from that. 1.00
00:21:35.000 Well, Michael, I really appreciate, uh, your time and your insights.
00:21:37.520 I encourage everyone to go read Michael Bonner's piece over at the hub.
00:21:40.740 Thanks so much for joining us today.
00:21:42.120 Pleasure. Thank you.
00:21:42.980 All right, folks, we have an exciting bonus episode of the Candace Malcolm show coming out later this evening.
00:21:48.400 I sit down with premier Danielle Smith, Alberta premier, and that is going to be streamed live at 8 p.m. on Juno news.
00:21:56.460 You need to be a premium subscriber in order to watch it.
00:21:59.240 So I encourage you to head on over and check that out.
00:22:02.000 It is going to be a great interview.
00:22:04.240 All right, folks, that's all the time we have for today.
00:22:05.840 Have a wonderful weekend.
00:22:06.720 Take a minute to appreciate and, uh, have a moment of silence, uh, for D-Day and for the brave men that sacrificed everything for Canada.
00:22:15.160 We'll be back again on Monday with all the news.
00:22:17.120 I'm Candace Malcolm.
00:22:17.720 This is the Candace Malcolm show.
00:22:18.580 Thank you and God bless.
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