Maxime Bernier's comments about mass immigration have been misconstrued to make it seem like he supports mass immigration. In fact, he is not in favor of mass immigration at all, and has long opposed it in other interviews.
00:00:00.000I just want to make a quick video to respond to the subject, a quick one, because I really don't think it actually deserves that much of my time.
00:00:07.520But PPC leader Maxime Bernier is going around, as well as a lot of other PPC influencer accounts on social media, claiming that Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev is in favor of mass immigration.
00:00:19.240No, Pierre Polyev is not in favor of mass immigration.
00:00:21.940Pierre Polyev opposes mass immigration.
00:00:23.640He has already said as much in other interviews, but they are taking this one interview clip of him talking and twisting it as hard as they can to try and find an angle in which it seems like Pierre Polyev supports mass immigration.
00:00:37.100I will show you the clip and I will explain why this is not supporting mass immigration.
00:00:42.660First, though, I actually do want to show you what Bernier specifically claimed about the post.
00:00:46.980He said, Polyev says he will give permanent residency to millions of temporary workers and refugees that Trudeau is bringing to Canada.
00:00:54.440PPC is the only political voice that opposes mass immigration.
00:00:57.880Support us so that this voice becomes stronger or else nothing will change.
00:01:03.160Mr. Polyev, there are about one million people who are here on work permits or refugees or, you know, they have very well in maybe a few months they will be running out of status.
00:01:16.980All those one million people whose work permits won't be renewed or they're expiring.
00:01:23.160So would you, with the stroke of the pen, will make them permanent residents of Canada or you let them go out of the country?
00:01:31.240Well, there's not a, I can't do anything with a stroke of a pen.
00:01:35.240And what I would do, though, is on a case by case, people who are making a contribution, paying their taxes, following the law, honoring that they honor the conditions of their work permits and are still needed in our economy should stay as permanent residents.
00:01:50.600If someone is here and they haven't worked, haven't paid taxes or have broken rules, worked under the table, that's a different story.
00:01:58.560Yeah, that is not support of mass immigration.
00:02:01.360I don't know why I even have to explain this to Maxime Bernier.
00:02:05.100Okay, what Pierre Polyev is saying and what he said in other interviews, like first let's say what he said in other interviews.
00:02:10.420Pierre Polyev has already said he will restrict immigration to the point that our housing supply can actually handle our current citizen population as well as whatever limited amount of immigrants that we can bring in.
00:02:22.160So he will lower the rate of immigration so that we can make housing cheaper again.
00:02:26.860So immediately, not in favor of mass immigration, wants to restrict immigration.
00:02:30.960And then in this video, what he's actually saying is that he wants a strict standard on temporary foreign workers who get permanent residency, that you actually have to be paying significant amounts of taxes.
00:02:41.480You actually have to still be working in a field that you are needed in.
00:02:44.760It's not just that you have had a job at some point while you're in Canada.
00:02:47.240You must still have that job, that job must still want to employ you, and then maybe you can stay in as a permanent resident.
00:02:53.400Even then, it makes it a case-by-case basis, not just the fact that you have a job so sure you can be a permanent resident.
00:02:59.320You'd be working in specific fields, you'd be paying taxes, you cannot have broken the law, and you can't be sort of, you know, working sometimes, not working sometimes, and collecting benefits from Canadians.
00:03:08.520It is actually only letting contributors stay in the country, also provided I would like to see things like values tests and other things, but Pierre Polyev wasn't talking about that in this interview.
00:03:17.780It just wasn't part of the subject matter.
00:03:19.620And so really, what he is saying is that we are both going to restrict immigration in favor of not actually having the housing crisis continue, and then some temporary foreign workers can become permanent residents, but they must hit these bars in order to actually qualify.
00:03:34.900And there's nothing wrong with giving permanent residency status to temporary foreign workers.
00:03:39.540If anything, it's actually kind of ideal.
00:03:41.660Let's say, in theory, we restrict the immigration rates to just being one-third of what they are today.
00:03:47.640If anything, it's actually good to make temporary foreign workers permanent residents rather than bringing in new people to be permanent residents, but then some of the temporary foreign workers are still here.
00:03:57.100I would rather reduce the amount of temporary foreign workers and immigrants and just make people, just bring in permanent residents and just stop doing the whole temporary foreign worker thing.
00:04:06.620If someone's going to be a worker here, they could just be a permanent resident as long as, again, they hit those bars of showing that they're qualified to work here.
00:04:14.580If anything, it's actually kind of a good pass.
00:04:16.500If they first show up, show that they can be contributing taxpayers who won't commit crimes.
00:04:20.460And if they can do that for a few years, maybe then they can be a permanent resident, and then later on, maybe they can be a citizen, rather than bringing in people sight unseen to be permanent residents when they haven't proven that they can actually contribute to tax revenues in Canada, and they're not simply, like, takers.
00:04:36.340They actually give, like, productivity and services to other people, and they're actually needed in the field of their employment.
00:04:43.680But, again, the PPC's only, the only way that they can actually keep any relevancy is claiming that the Conservative Party is not pure enough.
00:04:52.360It's just purity testing nonsense, and the PPC really doesn't have any reason to exist.
00:04:57.600Bernier, it's frankly his fault that the party's collapsing in on itself because he hasn't done nothing to actually grow credibility with Canadians.
00:05:04.780He sits on social media all day, not maintaining his EDAs.
00:05:07.800That's why so many of them keep getting deregistered and complaining that Conservatives are not nearly as conservative as he is.
00:05:13.680A man who sits on his couch all day and then speaks at a few rallies of only his most closest supporters.
00:05:47.000And our guest writer who wrote about him, about him donating to Aaron O'Toole during the 2020 leadership campaign, simply referenced Globe and Mail reporting about him.
00:05:56.560We basically said nothing new about him, but he didn't want to see the Globe and Mail because they could fight back.
00:06:00.980And he tried to sue us, even though nothing we said was actually wrong.
00:06:04.580Anyways, you contribute to that to help lighten the load of our legal burdens.
00:06:08.300We paid over $26,000 into defending ourselves.
00:06:10.800And we didn't even ask for anyone's money for like a full two years before starting up the Give, Send, Go because we wanted to exhaust our own funds before asking for anyone else's.
00:06:20.520Anyways, that should be it for me today.
00:06:22.540Hopefully, this is the last time I have to actually address this subject.