Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 4th, 2026

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

The entry is there.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Okay. You don't know if people leave. Thank you for clarifying that.

Minister, you also said that there were no caps on this program until 2024. Is that correct?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I said that Canada's system did not have an appropriate cap on temporary resident applications for people coming into the country.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

To be clear, have you revoked the ability of colleges that issued permits to fraudulent applicants to issue new permits? Have you said no to any of the colleges that were—

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

That was absolutely done prior to my being the minister. That was ongoing in the last number of years.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Which ones did you revoke?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Again, I am a former minister of labour and advanced education, provincially. I know how it works from a provincial perspective.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I'm asking about your purview right now.

Which colleges have you revoked access to?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Provinces and territories have a large role to play in designating learning institutions. A number of those were dedesignated. I know that for sure.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Which ones?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

We can get you the information, in terms of names.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

My colleague brought up the question of the light-touch system, which had a lot of that fraud.

Have you abolished it?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

There is no such thing, in terms of the way you're describing it.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

It's the file system.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

We have many systems in place to take care of those.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Okay.

To be clear, you said that 14% of the cases of fraud that were identified by the Auditor General—which, by my math, is about 21,400 people—claimed asylum. Is that correct?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

It's 14% of 153,000, so that's correct.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Do you know what the cost to taxpayers was, in terms of providing social services to people let into the country—potentially fraudulently—who then went on to make asylum claims? Have you done that analysis?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

That's exactly why we brought in Bill C-12, in order to curb that practice, because that is not the way to gain entry into Canada's immigration system.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

You still don't know where these people are. You still don't know if they've left the country.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Those who have put in asylum claims, Canada knows who they are. There are claims before the—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

This is my question. There are a lot of gaps in the system, yet your government is on track to issue roughly 215,000 new permits, between foreign students and temporary foreign workers. Why are you letting in so many more temporary foreign labourers when you don't have a way to track people whose permits might have expired? Why are you doing that?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I've travelled across the country. Businesses and communities in all parts of the country need temporary workers—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Yes, but what about Canadian kids?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

—for many different sectors in our economy—