Madam Speaker, on April 29, 2024, I asked the immigration minister to explain to Canadians why an individual convicted five times of criminal charges facing a deportation order upheld by a Federal Court managed to get ministerial intervention to stop his removal. Ministerial interventions are for serious, extreme circumstances, often life-and-death situations. I asked the minister if it was his intention to make a mockery of our legal and immigration systems, or if his intervention was guided by a political calculation to get more votes for his party. Regrettably, the minister responded by stating that these are not matters that we talk about publicly, much less on the floor of the House of Commons.
Given the total mess of the immigration system under the government's watch, I do not blame the minister for not wanting to talk about it. For the record, the minister was not asked to divulge protected, private information. I was asking him why he personally intervened in such a clear case of deportation, as it was upheld by his own department and the courts.
It is worth giving the background on this case as there are important questions that any reasonable Canadian would ask as to why that particular deportation was not carried out. First and foremost, why did a five-time convicted person receive preferential treatment? What warranted special consideration by the minister to personally overrule not only his own department but also the Federal Court?
I have constituents who have been waiting almost three years for family sponsorship and others with loved ones who have been waiting over a year for visitor visas, but a person with five convictions who blocked the building of national pipeline infrastructure, someone who was sentenced to two weeks of imprisonment for criminal contempt of court, who has also served time for blocking the main road to Vancouver's international airport warranted the minister's special attention and his personal intervention. Is there something Canadians do not know about that person which made him so special to the minister that he was willing to throw out the rule of law and the integrity of our immigration system?
At a time when Canada is still struggling to deal with the full scope of foreign interference in our country, the minister personally intervened to stop the deportation of a five-time convicted person who boasted about having $170,000 U.S. in foreign money to fund illegal blockades of roads, bridges and highways in B.C.'s Lower Mainland. At a time when the immigration system is leaking like a sieve, where literal terrorists are being granted citizenship after taking part in ISIS terror videos dismembering the bodies of people who were murdered, that was what the minister thought deserved his intervention. What was the criteria? Thousands upon thousands of applicants would love to know. Is there a new Liberal two-tier immigration policy? Does the new Liberal policy have a limit on how many criminal convictions is too many? Clearly, five criminal convictions were not a problem for the minister.
It is no wonder that the government has been such a doormat for foreign interference when people who boast about being foreign funded as they block key roads, bridges and other infrastructure are saved from deportation. Therefore, I am going to ask my question again. Now that the parliamentary secretary understands what I am asking, was the minister's intervention intended to make a mockery of our legal and immigration systems or was his intervention politically motivated to get a few more votes?