Mr. Speaker, 10 years of radical open borders policies and mass migration have undermined confidence in what was the best system of immigration anywhere in the world. The Liberals imposed this radical approach without any care, consideration or thought for the strains it would place on our housing, health care and job market. The result is chaos in our streets.
Nowhere is this problem more acute than in the area of lawlessness and criminality that the Liberals have invited through the system. They have allowed people to come to this country and get visitor visas and other permits to enter Canada without actually performing any criminal background checks. To this day, there are 400 criminals who have since been ordered deported but have not left and have vanished completely into Canadian society.
Furthermore, our legal system now discriminates against Canadians and in favour of non-Canadian, non-citizen criminals who are here, in fact, lowering the sentences they receive for convictions in order to allow them to stay. This is an unbelievable perversion of justice that does exactly the opposite of what we should seek. It should be a stated policy of our system to get criminals out of Canada. If someone is not a citizen, not a Canadian and commits a crime, then they should be shown the door because becoming a citizen of this country requires good, law-abiding behaviour that will protect the well-being and the interests of this country.
I will read through some examples of the kind of backward thinking that has pervaded our system.
In the Pham decision, a key matter was that the sentence had to be reduced in order to allow the defendant to stay in the country.
In 2023, in another case, a 30-year-old man, Akashkumar Khant, tried to have sex with a 15-year-old at a Mississauga hotel for $140. He received only a conditional sentence because a stronger penalty would have hindered his and his wife's ability to obtain Canadian citizenship. On June 25, Khant was sentenced to a conditional discharge for committing an indecent act. For three months, he was placed under house arrest, during which time he was able to go shopping for three hours every Sunday, attend religious services and medical appointments, and travel to and from work, with 12 months of probation afterward. In other words, his sentence was specifically reduced so that he could stay in Canada.
In 2024, a 25-year-old non-citizen, originally in Canada on a study permit and then a visitor permit, sexually assaulted an 18-year-old at a club in Calgary. Despite being found guilty, the court, led by Justice Anne Brown, took into account that he would be deported without appeal if the charge was one of sexual assault. Therefore, the court decided to discharge him and subject him to 15 months of probation. If he had been a Canadian, he would have been convicted of sexual assault and actually gone to jail, but as a privilege for being here as a non-citizen non-Canadian, he had his sentence reduced to no jail time and therefore was allowed to stay in this country.
On July 22, 2025, a Canadian judge hit the brakes on a guilty plea from a non-citizen linked to a homicide and facing serious criminal charges, citing discomfort with the fact that the accused would likely be deported if found guilty.
Victor Bueron, a 22-year-old Filipino national, was set to plead guilty on multiple charges stemming from a high-risk takedown by Barrie Police earlier this year. He was arrested on January 17, along with several co-accused, after officers stopped a vehicle in a north end plaza and allegedly found drugs and firearms. His sentence was reduced to preserve citizenship possibility.
In October 2025, Roosevelt Rush, a Jamaican national convicted of smuggling 55 grams of cocaine while already on bail, had his sentence slashed in half to just 12 months from what would have been a proportionate due sentence. In part, this was because of his immigration status.
Again, on October 2, a judge reduced the sentence of Aswin Sajeevan, who was here on a study visa, to just five and a half months in jail because a sentence of six months would have made him inadmissible to Canada on grounds of serious criminality. According to an article, the judge specifically weighed the “immigration consequences” for the former international student, who spied on his female housemates through a peephole in the bathroom wall; he made videos recording the four of them in various stages of undress over a period of six months.
We see example after example in which judges are specifically lowering the sentences of non-Canadian citizens in order to allow them to stay in Canada. We welcome law-abiding, hard-working Canadian immigrants, people who want to come and productively build our country while following our laws. We do not welcome people who want to come here and commit crimes. That is why I am very pleased that the member for Calgary Nose Hill has introduced the bill which I rise to speak to today, Bill C-220, an act to amend the Criminal Code, which would prohibit judges from lowering sentences or penalties on the basis of immigration status. We have one law. It should apply to every person equally. A person who does the crime should do the time, and if that makes them ineligible to stay in Canada, then they must leave, full stop. That is just the reality.
Canadians have the right to live in peace and tranquility. They have the right to know that when they walk out the front door, they will not be harmed. They should also have the right to valued citizenship. We do not give away citizenship to anyone who comes here and breaks our laws. Arriving here as an immigrant means that there is a certain degree of responsibility, just as there is for those who are born here. Those responsibilities include following the laws, respecting others and protecting the safety of fellow Canadians and newcomers to this country.
We believe in a system of controlled, merit-based immigration, in which we welcome people who want to join the Canadian family, work hard, succeed and build a better life. The vast majority of immigrants seek exactly that. They come, often fleeing violence and danger, but when they arrive here, they do not expect to be victimized by criminals who then use loopholes in order to stay in Canada and avoid penalty under the law.
As Conservatives, we believe that Canada can once again be a safe place where all people feel that they live in peace and harmony, where their property and their persons are protected, where everyone is equal under the law, where people are held accountable for their behaviour and where, most of all, Canadian law becomes paramount and anyone who comes here understands that following the law is the basic responsibility that is necessary to graduate from visitor to temporary resident, permanent resident and, eventually, citizen. Citizenship in Canada must have restored value, and that value starts with respecting the safety and the security of every Canadian and the rule of law in our land.