Madam Speaker, the safety of our communities is of utmost importance. For 10 years, we have seen the soft-on-crime Liberal government prioritize the interests of criminals over the safety of law-abiding Canadians.
Just a few months ago in my riding, Amir Shafei, an innocent man, a quiet man, walked outside in front of his house and was accosted by a repeat violent offender who was out on bail. Amir would be alive today if this heinous killer had been in jail.
Since the Liberals took power in 2015, extortion has skyrocketed by a staggering 330%. This, along with many other types of crime, is the direct, predictable result of the government's soft-on-crime agenda. Its record on crime, defined by Bill C-75 and Bill C-5, has replaced a culture of accountability with a catch-and-release revolving door. Criminal organizations have seen the signals coming from the government, and they have concluded that the risk of consequence justifies their actions.
Families in Surrey, Brampton and right across the GTA, including in my riding, are waking up to threats, firebombings and bullets through their windows. Small business owners, many of whom came to Canada to build a better life for their families, are being told to pay protection money or face the consequences. This is the Canada the Liberals have created, one where thugs feel emboldened and citizens feel abandoned.
When we gut our judicial system and then tell the judges to use the principle of restraint for repeat violent offenders, we are not just being lenient; we are fanning the flames of the crime wave that follows. This failure is compounded by a loophole within our judicial and immigration systems. We are witnessing a pattern whereby judges are granting reduced sentences specifically to ensure that a non-citizen's immigration status remains unaffected.
Under current law, a sentence of six months or more triggers a serious criminality designation, making a non-citizen inadmissible and eligible for deportation. Instead of applying the law, we see sentences of five months and 29 days handed out to bypass this threshold. Even NDP Premier David Eby has called for these laws to be changed, describing these loopholes as “corrosive” to public confidence.
Here are some real criminal cases in which judges have considered immigration status in sentencing: A man, Aswin V Sajeevan, spied on a woman in a bathroom, where he made video recordings; another man raped a 13-year-old girl; Rajbir Singh sexually assaulted a young woman in Calgary.
My question to the Liberals is this: Is it really the position of the government that we should give rapists, peepers and those who sexually assault women in Canada a second chance to stay here? If it is not, they should vote with the Conservatives to end the practice of leniency to non-citizens convicted of serious crimes to avoid deportation.
It makes sense: When a judge considers a criminal's immigration status as a mitigating factor in sentencing, they are essentially saying that a non-citizen deserves lighter punishment for the same crime than if it had been committed by a Canadian citizen. This is the definition of a two-tier justice system.
We cannot have a safe society if the right to stay in Canada is placed over the right to be safe for those already here.
Conservatives have repeatedly raised concerns about how our immigration system is being gamed. We have seen cases where individuals accused of violent crimes use our asylum system as a shield to protect themselves. NDP Premier David Eby called this out as “ludicrous”. I do not agree much with David Eby, but I agree with him on this. It is crazy that individuals who come to our country and proceed to terrorize our citizens would be allowed to stay here.
Canada is a country built on immigrants, my own family included, who came here to work hard, play by the rules and contribute to the peace and prosperity of this great nation. When we allow violent extortionists to claim refugee status to avoid being sent back to their home countries, we are making a mockery of the genuine refugees who are fleeing actual persecution. It is a slap in the face to every law-abiding immigrant who waited years, followed every rule and respected all of our laws.
Conservatives proposed an amendment that would have updated the immigration protection act to bar asylum claims from being made by those who have been convicted of serious crimes in Canada. The Liberals rejected it. In fact, they rejected removing the ability of migrants with failed asylum claims to claim any federal social benefits beyond emergency health care. The Liberals rejected disallowing asylum claims to be made by nationals of, or by those arriving in Canada having transited through, a G7 or an EU country. They rejected modernizing screening requirements. They rejected requiring educational institutions who accept foreign students to share the cost of any bogus asylum claims made by the foreign students they welcomed to Canada.
The Liberals rejected requiring that claims made by migrants who return to their home country while their claim is pending be abandoned. They rejected rejecting claims made after a claimant is found to have lied to an officer. They rejected placing the onus on a claimant to prove they made their claim in a timely manner, not the government. They rejected requiring asylum claimants arriving in Canada to immediately provide, on the record, their full grounds for seeking protection, preventing the later use of unscrupulous lawyers to game the system.
They rejected modernizing the appeals and judicial review processes associated with the asylum system. In fact, they also rejected creating a new transparent and clear reporting requirement for the government to disclose the amount of federal benefits received by asylum claimants. They rejected modernizing the content of the annual report to Parliament. They also rejected modernizing the IRB appointment process to better consider the provinces and include more merit-based candidates, particularly those with law enforcement experience.
Our opposition motion today would make our streets safer. It would restore order and increase fairness in our judicial system. By barring non-citizens with active judicial proceedings related to serious crimes from making refugee claims, we would send a clear message that our asylum system is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for organized crime and for those who want to unscrupulously use it. This closes the loophole through which a criminal can delay their deportation by filing a claim the moment they are caught. They are here, they get caught and, all of a sudden, they are claiming asylum.
By barring non-citizens convicted of serious crimes from making refugee claims, we are actually protecting Canadians. That is our job. The primary responsibility of any government, of any Parliament, is to protect citizens, our citizens.
We must end the practice of leniency, in order to avoid deportation, for non-citizens convicted of serious crimes. A crime is a crime. It does not matter who commits it. We cannot look at one group of people differently than another group of people when they are, in fact, executing the exact same crime. That is not what a judicial system is. Our judicial system is one based on democracy. It should be one based on fairness. The government has allowed the opposite to happen.
The punishment should fit the offence, not the immigration status of the offender. It does not make sense to Canadians, it does not make sense to anybody, that the immigration status of somebody should be considered when making a determination as to whether they should be sentenced as fairly and as equally as everybody else committing the same crime. Ending this practice ensures that our judges focus on justice and public safety.
These measures make sense because they protect the integrity of the immigration system that so many of us value. I invite my Liberal colleagues to stand with Conservatives and send a clear message. Canada is a land of opportunity for those who follow the law, but there is no place here for those who seek to destroy our peace. In closing, let us put the safety of Canadians first, restore the rule of law and end this era of Liberal leniency once and for all.