Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's point, but I think it is important to say this in English.
However, that cannot be accomplished at the expense of our values.
We have already taken steps to ensure the sustainability of the interim federal health program and make sure that vulnerable people have access to care. We are maintaining necessary health care coverage while taking important steps to manage public funds. Recognizing these pressures, the government has taken a number of targeted and concrete steps to control costs and strengthen sustainability.
What did we do?
First, to control costs and strengthen sustainability, we implemented a copayment model for certain products and services. In budget 2025, the government introduced copayments to cover the supplemental benefits offered under the program. As of May 1 of this year, beneficiaries will cover part of the cost of their products and services. Basic medical services, such as doctor's visits and hospital care, will remain fully covered. However, beneficiaries must now cover part of the cost of supplemental benefits to ensure a certain balance with provincial public programs.
Let us be clear. Eliminating health care does not eliminate health care needs. Postponing essential care until provincial insurance can cover it, as the Conservatives are proposing, would be counterproductive for provincial finances. We would simply be shifting these expenses to the provinces.
Second, we suspended some updates to the interim federal health program benefit grids to make the program more rigorous. These benefits are continually adjusted to match the provincial and territorial benefits available to Canadians. I want to emphasize here that the federal assistance program for asylum seekers is not a deluxe program. The beneficiaries of this program do not receive benefits that go well beyond what the average Canadian receives.
Finally, and this does not pertain exclusively to the program, we have also put an end to hotel accommodations to make the program more affordable.
One of the most significant changes we are making stems from Bill C‑12, which was passed by the House and is now before the Senate. Bill C‑12, passed by the House, is part of the ongoing efforts to reduce the number of refugee claims. The bill will establish new grounds of ineligibility, strengthen system integrity and support the implementation of more efficient decision-making timelines for refugee claims. By cutting down abuse, improving efficiency and optimizing claims processing, these reforms will shorten the period during which people rely on temporary federal supports.
By putting measures in place that support the long-term sustainability of the interim federal health program, we are ensuring that people continue to have access to essential services until they become eligible for provincial health insurance. It is important to note that this set of measures demonstrates that our government is actively monitoring the real financial pressures associated with the federal refugee assistance program and managing them responsibly. We will ensure that this program remains fair and sustainable through structural changes, cost sharing, strengthened oversight and audit mechanisms, and the alignment of benefits with provincial systems.
It is also important to note that in 2025, the number of asylum claims dropped by roughly one third compared to the previous year. This decrease shows that the measures already in place are helping to ease the pressure on the system. We are already taking action. Our Conservative colleagues mention in their motion that the cost of the system has skyrocketed, from $211 million to almost $900 million.
What they did not mention was the reason for such an increase. Essentially, it related to an increase in the number of people using the program. What caused this increase in the number of people using the program and claiming asylum in Canada? We do not live on an island, cut off from everything going on around us.
I clearly remember the Roxham Road situation in 2018, because I was working for a different government at the time. Thousands of people arrived in Canada. Why did these thousands of people come to Canada? I am sure that the Conservatives would have set up a barrier or built a wall and told all these people to go away. Back in 2018 and 2019, they came hoping that Canada would help them following the election of a U.S. president who is still around today and who sparked a mass movement of people who wanted to leave the United States for a more welcoming country like ours. Naturally, this caused a lot of disruption, and we had a hard time adjusting our programs to cope with it. However, we could not look the other way either. Barricading the border or telling people to leave because we could care less about their problems was out of the question. That is not the Canadian way. Canada has never been like that.
It has cost us a lot and it is still costing us a lot, but we will be able to normalize this situation. Again, we do not live on an island that is completely isolated from what is happening on the rest of the planet. That is why our government has taken steps to deal with the situation and normalize things by ensuring that benefits are harmonized with provincial programs. It is not true that asylum seekers have a deluxe health care system. Frankly, people need to get out there and see what is actually happening.
We have also introduced copayment mechanisms to improve the system's viability. We have passed legislation to ease the pressure.
What I find least acceptable about our opposition colleagues' motion is point (iv), which suggests that Canadians do not have access to health care services because people from elsewhere are monopolizing the system. Frankly, that is an unacceptable correlation. By that logic, it is the fault of foreigners, of asylum seekers, that poor old Canadians do not have access to health services. That is what we call rabble-rousing.