Yes.
Evidence of meeting #35 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was seekers.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #35 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was seekers.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
We've seen asylum claimants filling up shelters, hotels and other accommodations across the country due to the Liberal mismanagement of the file. Can you please elaborate on what the consequences of tens of thousands of additional asylum claimants coming to Calgary would be?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
We'll have more of our Canadian citizens being pushed to the back of the line or having to compete with the additional asylum seekers—or any immigrants, to that point—who require the same services. It's just more competition for the people who already live here.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
The interim housing program, IHAP, which the ministry of immigration is managing, has divvied out about $1.5 billion to municipalities to move people from hotels into permanent locations for a period of time. Do you know if Calgary has applied for any of that money?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
I wouldn't be able to speak to that. I'm not sure.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Okay. I know you have not received any. I just wanted to know if you had applied for any of it.
Do you agree that municipal taxpayers are funding, at least in part, the Liberal immigration disaster?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
I'd say that we're funding the brunt of it, yes.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
You're feeling it. Do you think it's fair that taxpayers are left holding the cost of Liberal immigration failures?
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
You do not.
Do you know if your municipality has communicated this or has met with the Minister of Immigration or her department officials to discuss these important issues and the impact they're having on the municipality?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
If they did, those talks didn't go very well.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Do you think that moving asylum claimants to Calgary when services are already strained is a good idea at this time?
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Residents in Calgary and across the country are facing high property taxes. If a swell of asylum claimants were to arrive in Calgary, would the municipality be forced to raise municipal property taxes?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
We already have, and we'll have to do it again. Yes.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Have you communicated that to any department in the federal government?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
No, but I plan on doing it.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
You plan on doing it. Okay.
Well, we've seen a lot of movement from the government to try to divert—I don't want to say “hide”—attention from renting, or at least leasing, hotel rooms to house refugees and asylum claimants by creating IHAP. Of course, it's questionable, as you know, because a lot of municipalities either don't know about it or have not availed themselves of it.
Do you think it's a good thing for the government to be focusing on that when we have homeless Canadians living on the streets in Calgary and other municipalities across the country?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
No. It's a simple economics problem. Right now we are struggling.
Conservative
Costas Menegakis Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Can you give us a bit of a breakdown on Calgary? Do you have asylum claimants today, for example, living in shelters or living on the streets? Are they homeless? Are you aware of this?
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
I am aware of this, yes, in a lot of areas. Some of them have found some sort of shelter, but then again, last year I was fixing a furnace in a basement where nine people were living on four—
Councillor, City of Calgary, As an Individual
That's not a one-off. That's happened in a lot of different instances across the city.
Part of this is abuse of the system, but it's also abuse of the actual claimants who are coming into Calgary.
Conservative
Bloc
The Vice-Chair Bloc Alexis Deschênes
Thank you, Mr. Johnston.
Mr. Fragiskatos, you have the floor for five minutes.