Liberals admit they destroyed the immigration system
Plus, questioning the Liberal immigration minister, police officers fact check the PM, the conservative plan to fix the housing crisis, and Liberals waste hundreds of thousands taxpayer dollars on art
The NDP-Liberal government announced on Thursday this week that they are reversing course and dropping their immigrations levels by 21% with across the board reductions without checking to see where the problems were concentrated. After the exponential growth of the past years, their revised plan is to drop the number of permanent residents admitted per year from 500,000 to 395,000 in 2025, 500,000 to 380,000 in 2026, and a target of 365,000 permanent residents in 2027. There will also be large reductions in temporary permits issued for international workers that follows their cap on international students from last year. None of the changes are coordinated. No consultations were done with the public, businesses, and affected groups. There is again no explanation how they arrived to these new numbers. These are political changes that follow public anger at how mismanaged the immigration system has become further reflected by a series of polls that show the immigration consensus in Canada has frayed. Below 50% of Canadians now believe our immigration system is a net positive for Canada. That is the Liberal government's legacy as well as the personal legacy of this Prime Minister.
During the press conference, the Prime Minister even went so far as to say about the immigration system, “We didn't get the balance quite right,” while his own immigration minister admitted afterwards that they caused the system to “run out of control.”
Even as the NDP-Liberals attempt to correct their immigration failures, their proposal will not come close to fixing the system they broke. According to a report from Scotiabank on immigration, the government’s goal of reducing non-permanent residents to 5% is unrealistic, which has now blown past 7.3%. If they were to meet their own self-imposed 5% target, about 500,000 non-permanent residents would have to leave each year for the next two years. The same report also criticized this NDP-Liberal government for focusing too much on increasing population numbers and not enough on improving Canada’s productivity. The economic term to making Canadian workers make more or serve more people in the same amount of time. Work smarter, not longer hours or harder.
I have heard time and time again from my own constituents, including recent immigrants, about how the NDP-Liberal immigration failures are having a negative financial impact on their lives, and Canadians from across the country are in agreement. Three separate polls released within the past two weeks have shown that a majority of Canadians do not have any confidence in our government’s immigration policies. One of the surveys conducted by Leger for the Association of Canadian Studies found that nearly two-thirds of Canadians believe that immigration levels are too high, while another survey found that 58 percent of Canadians felt similarly.
As an immigrant myself, I am disheartened to see how unfair it has been for newcomers who thought if they played by the rules, paid their taxes and obeyed our laws they would a fair chance at the Canadian dream. Instead, like many other Canadians, they have often been forced to line up at food banks or live on the street. That is not the Canada I arrived in back in 1985.
Nine years ago, the sentiment amongst Canadians would have been unthinkable as Canada enjoyed a century long consensus that we had the best immigration system in the world if handled with common sense. Now, the NDP-Liberals have broken that consensus, and they should not be trusted again to fix the problem they created.
Only a common sense Conservative government will fix what the NDP-Liberals broke by bringing back the best immigration system—the way it was before they were in power. We will end the fraud and excess in the refugee system, temporary foreign worker program and international student stream, screen out terrorists and criminals from coming in, and cap population growth below the growth in the availability of homes, health care and jobs.
Watch Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre, respond to the NDP-Liberal’s immigration levels flip flop:
Following the NDP-Liberal’s policy announcement on Thursday, I held the Liberal immigration minister and the Prime Minister accountable in Parliament for their responsibility in shattering Canada’s immigration system. When I asked if they would stop blaming everyone else, including immigrants like myself, and admit they broke the immigration system and had caused lasting damage to Canada’s housing market, health care, and jobs, the immigration minister replied with a non-answer. I pressed again and called on the government to accept that their flip-flop had destroyed the system and for them to accept their own failures. However, the minister responded by calling the Conservative Leader a “circus clown.” Asking hard questions is part of the job and the immigration minister can't be trusted to do his especially losing his cool and behaving in this manner on the very first day of question period after his announcement.
Watch my exchange with the Liberal immigration minister in Parliament:
The Prime Minister bragged on social media this week that he was responsible for lowering gun violence. The only problem for him is that his statement was greatly misleading, and police associations across Canada were ready to fact-check his misinformation.
The Toronto Police Association (TPA) criticized the Prime Minister’s statement, saying shootings are up 45 percent and gun-related homicides are up 62 percent in Toronto this past year. The TPA also noted that the two-year old NDP-Liberal gun ban has made a minimal difference, as 85 percent of guns seized by Toronto police officers can be sourced back to the United States. “Your statement is out of touch and offensive to victims of crime and police officers everywhere. Whatever you think you’ve done to improve community safety has not worked,” the TPA added. The Vancouver, Surrey, York Regional, and Hamilton police associations all issued similar statements that condemned the Prime Minister’s false claims.
Canadian police officers are more than right to be upset about the Prime Minister’s irresponsible remarks as they have been on the frontlines witnessing violent gun crime increase by 116% under this NDP-Liberal government. The government is also making it easier for criminals to get away with violent gun crime by passing reckless legislation such as Bill C-5, which is making it easier to get bail, and Bill C-75, which is failing to stop the flow of illegal guns across the US border.
It would be good for the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government if they listened to actual police officers instead of misleading about the results of their soft-on-crime agenda.
A Conservative government will take real action to solve Canada’s housing crisis. We will require city governments to increase homebuilding by at least 15% to qualify for federal funding, ensuring more homes are built faster. Our common-sense plan includes selling federal land and buildings to spur housing projects, directing federal funds to support skilled trades, and eliminating the carbon tax on building materials to lower costs. Additionally, we will manage population growth alongside housing stock to prevent shortages and keep housing within reach for Canadians. That's the plan. Now let's bring it home.
Check out the video below:
Access to information documents reveal that the Liberal government has been wasting taxpayer dollars on excessive office artwork for their government offices. I have uncovered government documents that show how much taxpayer money is used on office artwork in federal buildings. Unsurprisingly, the numbers were high—between January 1 and November 28, 2022, one department called Global Affairs Canada, under Liberal management, spent over $329,000 on office artwork alone. This spending shows a total disregard for hard-working Canadians struggling to make ends meet. A common-sense Conservative government would put an end to such unnecessary waste.
Last weekend, I held another great coffee meetup with Cranston residents. Thank you to everyone who joined, asked questions, and shared your thoughts. Your insights help keep our community’s priorities front and center in Parliament.
The article posted by Mr. Kmiec is good, however the public also needs to have a more precise idea of exactly what a CPC government would do once in power. Our cities are being destroyed by excessive immigration and the quality of life has been diminished. It will simply not be possible to build enough houses to take care of everybody and reduce the pressure on housing costs, in the short to medium term, as there are currently simply too many people. Who would pay for these houses anyway ? Where is the economic analysis behind proposals to simply build more houses? We need to stop Canada's decline into becoming the third world and for that to happen government has to stop pandering to immigrants, (both legal and illegal) and take care of its existing citizens. In addition, WE NEED MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW !