moved that Bill C-220, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (immigration status in sentencing), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, should judges be allowed to use a non-citizen's immigration status to issue a more lenient sentence to non-citizens convicted of serious crimes like sexual assault, just so that they can avoid deportation? The answer is no.
Tonight, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-220, the one law for all bill, which represents and reasserts the principles already laid out in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act with regard to the deportation consequences associated with non-citizens convicted of serious crimes, such as sexual assaults, in Canada.
The vast majority of people in Canada who have immigrated here abide by our laws. Removal from Canada for non-citizens after being convicted of a serious crime is a no-brainer to protect everyone, the value of Canadian citizenship and, frankly, every person who resides in our country and plays by the rules.
After a decade of Liberal postnationalism and excessively high immigration levels, accepting this change would allow the government to demonstrate respect for Canadian citizenship by affirming that, at a minimum, the privilege of residing here for non-citizens depends on adherence to the rule of law. Everything that I have outlined and that I will outline tonight will show that beyond rote partisanship, there is no reason for the government not to support this bill. In fact, to save Canada's pluralism, the government must start admitting its errors with regard to immigration and working across party lines to accept common-sense solutions.
Recent public polling shows that support for immigration among both Canadians and newcomers is at an all-time low. This opinion should shock and spur every person in this place to action to find ways to solve this problem. That is what I am trying to do with this bill today. Thankfully, the reason Canadians do not support immigration the same way they used to is not because Canadians are pointing their fingers at immigrants. Rather, Canadians who are unhappy about immigration are pointing their fingers where the blame should be placed, at a federal government that has, over the past decade, brought too many people in too fast for housing, health care and jobs to keep up, while simultaneously legislating a doctrine of postnationalism that asserts that there is no Canadian national identity, which includes things like an equanimous judiciary, for non-citizens to integrate into.
Canada is at a tipping point. The government must quickly act to restore the immigration system that it broke. If the government will not act, which it has not, then Parliament must. In the spirit of non-partisanship, I have used my private member's bill slot to correct one of the many areas the government needs to act on to fix the immigration system. Later tonight, I and my colleagues will move many amendments to Bill C-12 in a further effort to do the same.
Going back to this bill, to be fair to everyone and to prevent the further erosion of Canada's tolerance for immigration, we must ensure that non-citizens who commit serious crimes like sexual assault face the consequences that are already set out in our laws. At a bare minimum, non-citizens who abuse the great privilege of being in our country by committing a serious crime like sexual assault should face the deportation consequences that are already outlined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Here is how we can do that. The bill before us tonight amends the Criminal Code by adding a new general sentencing principle under section 718. This is the section of the code where Parliament has exercised its right to provide guidance to the courts on how convicted offenders ought to be sentenced.
My bill proposes to add a simple, one-line new principle, section 718.202, which states that a court, when sentencing a convicted criminal “who is not a Canadian citizen shall not take into consideration any potential impact the sentence could have on the offender’s immigration status in Canada, or on that of a member of their family.”
This simple one-line provision ensures that provisions that are already outlined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act are enforced when sentencing non-citizens convicted of serious crimes, like sexual assault.
That is the how, and here is the why. In recent years, there have been multiple instances of judges issuing sentences to non-citizens convicted of serious crimes that were designed to allow them to evade deportation. The net effect of this practice in considering a non-citizen's immigration status in order to give them more lenient sentences to avoid deportation is to create a two-tiered justice system between non-citizens and those with Canadian citizenship.
This is unfair and antithetical to the principles of fundamental justice, and it has eroded Canada's immigration consensus. Here are but a few examples of the rampant, excessive number of times non-citizens convicted of serious crimes like sexual assault have been issued two-tiered, lenient sentences in very recent history, just so they would avoid the deportation consequences already set out in the law.
A non-citizen from India pleaded guilty to no fewer than four counts of voyeurism, which left his female victims with intense fear and anxiety and emotional distress. He was sentenced to five and a half months jail. Why? Despite the judge admitting that six to 12 months would have been a more appropriate sentence, this was to avoid deportation. The judge even said this.
In a 2024 Calgary case, another non-citizen from India was granted a conditional discharge for attempting to purchase sexual services from a 15-year-old girl. This was done to allow him to preserve his eligibility to become a Canadian citizen and avoid deportation. The judge cited in the sentence “the devastating collateral immigration consequences” of a harsher penalty. What about the victims'?
A non-citizen in Canada on a visitor permit was convicted of twice groping an 18-year-old woman's genitals under her skirt as she stood at a bar to buy a drink. This person, this non-citizen, received a discharge from the judge so he could have a deportation appeal.
In March 2024, a 24-year-old non-citizen from Surrey, B.C., received a conditional sentence of two years less a day for aggravated assault and possession of a weapon after stabbing a stranger. It sounds serious. What did the judge do? The judge rejected the Crown's four-year jail recommendation so the non-citizen would be able to avoid deportation.
In October 2025, just last month, Roosevelt Rush, a non-citizen from Jamaica, had his cocaine trafficking sentence halved from an expected term, while already serving six years for fentanyl and firearms offences, because the judge wanted to help him avoid deportation.
In 2024, in B.C., a non-citizen was convicted of fraud and received a six-month sentence, which a judge shortened from 10 months so he could avoid deportation.
In 2024, a non-citizen from Somalia was convicted of assault with threats against police and had their jail time cut short to evade deportation too. It was a refugee who committed these crimes while getting the benefit of Canadian sanctuary.
There is all this consideration for non-citizens convicted of serious crime to avoid deportation, but what about the victims? What about the value of Canadian citizenship or the responsibilities associated with being in our country? Being in Canada cannot just be about receiving the privileges and benefits of being in Canada, which are great. It also has to be about adhering to the responsibilities associated with that privilege, which includes adhering to the rule of law.
There are many other examples that illustrate the trend of immigration status being considered in sentencing, with criminal lawyers now routinely arguing for lighter sentences so their non-citizen clients can evade deportation or a denial of citizenship under IRPA's current provisions. Let me explain why this is happening.
Ever since the Supreme Court ruling in R v. Pham, the courts have been giving greater consideration to collateral immigration consequences when sentencing. To be clear, this court ruling explicitly ruled that this consideration does not constitute a charter right, a remedy or a charter breach. In fact, this ruling does not even mention the charter once. Furthermore, the court ruling also made clear that “The flexibility of our sentencing process should not be misused by imposing inappropriate and artificial sentences” and that to do so would be “circumventing Parliament's will”. That is clearly not what is happening.
Activist judges have twisted this ruling, as evidenced by the proliferation of examples I have given, beyond its scope in order to allow non-citizens who have been convicted of serious crimes to get more lenient sentences to avoid deportation. That is what is happening. Meanwhile, Canadians would not be given the same consideration, so we have a two-tiered justice system. The will of the court cannot be trusted if it is allowed to go unchecked, as it clearly has in all of these cases. My friends and colleagues, it is long past time for Parliament to exert its will and rein this poison in.
To be very clear to every colleague here, the Supreme Court has been clear that the people of Canada who are concerned by crimes committed by non-citizens have every right, through their elected representatives, to provide guidance to sentencing judges. That is exactly what this simple, common-sense, non-partisan bill would do. Just this morning, the Globe and Mail editorial board said that judges in our current system are “protecting non-citizens from the consequences of their criminal conduct”, lamenting that no one seems to consider “whether Canadians would want these offenders as citizens” in the first place. That was from the Globe and Mail.
While it is tempting to blame judges for this state of affairs, the fault lies with the federal government. In spite of the increased evidence of leniency in sentencing due to consideration of immigration status in recent years, it has declined to provide more clarity to judges through legislation. That is why I introduced a bill to amend the Criminal Code and rectify this issue. The rationale for this change is straightforward: Anyone seeking residence or citizenship in Canada, as I said, has responsibilities as well as rights.
The citizenship guide clearly states that citizens must obey Canada's laws and respect the rights and freedoms of others, and IRPA outlines the potential consequences for non-citizens who fail to do so.
A non-citizen in Canada should accept individual responsibility for defending the democratic institutions of Canada's constitutional monarchy, which is an ordered liberty rooted in the principles of peace, order and good government. In practice, this means they will defend shared Canadian rights, like freedom of conscience and religion; freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of speech and freedom of the press; freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of association; and the equality of women and men. All Canadians and those seeking to become one are expected to abandon any violent, extreme or hateful prejudices and to contribute to Canada. They are expected to respect the rule of law and accept the consequences for not doing so.
Without legislative clarity on considering immigration status in sentencing, judges can apply aspects of the Pham ruling to undermine that principle for non-citizens, effectively end-running the deportation consequences already enacted by Parliament that exist in IRPA. To those who would say this bill offends the principle of judicial independence, I want to make it clear that it is entirely appropriate for Parliament to offer guidelines to the courts on sentencing. Section 718 already does this in countless ways, but I will highlight four examples.
First, the very beginning of section 718 in the Criminal Code states in part that the fundamental purpose of sentencing is “respect for the law”. I would argue that Canadians lose respect for the law when it is not applied equally, as it has not been done in the case of non-citizens convicted of serious crimes like sexual assault.
Second, section 718.1 states:
A sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.
I would assert that at no point has Parliament intended to say that the “responsibility of the offender” is reduced because of their immigration status. To suggest otherwise is to remove agency from an individual just because they were born in a different country, and that is wrong.
Third, subparagraph 718.2(a)(iii.1) lists the following as an aggravating factor for the purposes of sentencing:
evidence that the offence had a significant impact on the victim, considering their age and other personal circumstances, including their health and financial situation
Many of the cases I highlighted tonight involve sexual assaults, which obviously have a significant impact on the victim and disproportionately impact women. Our bill seeks to re-establish this general sentencing principle, which has too often been ignored.
Finally, paragraph 718.2(b) states:
a sentence should be similar to sentences imposed on similar offenders for similar offences committed in similar circumstances;
Obviously, giving the offender a lighter sentence just because of their immigration status offends this principle. It is well within Parliament's purview to reassert this general sentencing principle by further clarifying for judges that they should not take into account an offender's immigration status.
In closing, I would like to thank Sean Phelan, an unsung hero in Canadian history. A lot of people will not know this name, but he has single-handedly worked to reform Canada's justice system over the last 10 years. I thank him for his help on this bill tonight.
