Mr. Speaker, I rise today in response to an issue that came up a few months ago when we first saw the immigration ban that the American administration had put in place, and our response to that. There was a lot of confusion at the time.
Fast forwarding to today, what I am concerned about, frankly, is the government's complete incompetence in managing the integrity of our immigration system, and now I feel that is bleeding over to border security as well.
I am going to be perfectly honest. The response that the government has had, not only its response to keeping the rights of Canadians intact as it relates to our American friends, but its response to virtually any immigration issue, has been “nothing to see here, folks”, and talking points about the Syrian refugee initiative. In fact, I think it is a disservice that the government said during the campaign that the Syrian refugee initiative is going to cost $250 million. It is well north of a billion dollars. When we look at provincial costs, it is probably $3 billion or $4 billion. Now we are seeing that the government does not even want to address the fact that the increase of asylum claimants from the U.S., coming across the border through illegal means, is an issue.
My question is very pragmatic. Canada is a nation that has been built on immigration. The question is on how we do it. I know that the government is going to have a serious public policy challenge five or 10 years down the road that is much more magnified than now, because it will have lost the social licence in Canada to see any further immigration. It has not thought about treating people who are coming to this country like people. We do not talk about long-term integration programming. It will lack social licence from a lot of Canadians, in that it refuses to look at issues such as border integrity.
I want to start from a very simple place tonight. Does the government acknowledge that there is a problem?