Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here and to talk on behalf of the great people of Dufferin—Caledon, who have re-elected me to come to the House of Commons and fight for common sense, which is often a difficult thing to do with the Liberal government.
This piece of legislation is the perfect example of why we have to fight. I want to talk a bit about how the Liberals have absolutely destroyed the consensus in Canada on immigration, botched the immigration system in so many ways and brought that incompetent approach to this particular piece of legislation. The consequences for this will be far and wide, and, ultimately, Canadians will pay the price, as they have done for all the Liberal mistakes, errors, debacles and corruption over the past 10 years.
What pains me the most in talking about the breakdown of the consensus on immigration and refugees in this country is the fact that my wife came to Canada as a refugee. She is a Kosovar Albanian. Canada had a wonderful program, Operation Parasol, to bring Kosovar Albanians fleeing the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo at that time.
To see the reports from the past 10 years on the decline of the consensus in Canada, known as a beacon of acceptance for immigration and refugees, because of Liberal incompetence is really heartbreaking. I think most Canadians are heartbroken because of this.
There are a couple of polls that address this, which are really, in my estimation, tragic. Pollara had a study in 2025 that compared views from 2002 to 2025. In 2002, immigration was viewed as a positive plus 31. In 2025, it is now down to a plus 2. That is a 29-point decline as a result of the mess that the Liberals have made with respect to the immigration system. These are catastrophic declines.
Looking at the share of people who believe that Canada is accepting too many immigrants, again, we go back to 2002 and it was 34%. We look at 2025 and it is now at 60%.
Who is responsible for that? It is not the fault of the people who have come to Canada. They came to Canada because they wanted the opportunities and better life Canada provides, just as my wife and her family did. My wife came to Canada with English as a second language. In fact, she spoke no English and went to high school; she went on to get a master's degree, and she has had a great career. That is the epitome of why people come to Canada, because of the opportunities this great country affords.
When we look at what the Liberals have done, at the mess they have made of the immigration system, it is a tragedy for all Canadians. The buck stops 100% with the people on the other side. It is their fault because they have made this absolute mess.
I could talk for three hours about the actual specifics of the mess, but I would point out that at one point, the Liberal government allowed an accused ISIS terrorist to immigrate to Canada. This person was accused of being in a video in 2015 in which they dismembered someone, and the Liberals let this person come to Canada. This is the disrepute they have brought the system into.
In 2024, I did an OPQ, and I asked how many people were processing applications in CIC and how many applications were actually coming in. Then we could do some simple math. I know math is not great for the Liberals; they think that an affordable housing program is 4,000 houses for $13 billion, so math is not their strong suit. However, when we actually broke down the number of people who were processing the applications and the number of applications coming in, because the Liberals had set the levels so high, it worked out that someone assessing an immigration application had 30 minutes per application. One can imagine how someone such as the person I just described ended up in Canada. When we increase the volumes of people to such high levels and have no security screening, we end up with the challenges we have.
Now the Liberals have brought forward a piece of legislation on citizenship. I will say, I am a proud Canadian. I know my wife is a proud Canadian, and her whole family are proud Canadians as well.
The Liberals have created a very weak substantial connection test. What does that mean?
Most people who are listening will not understand what that means, so I am going to explain it. It means that, according to the Liberals, if a person wants to have Canadian citizenship extended to them and their children for generations, they have to spend 1,095 nonconsecutive days in Canada.
They have not even said what the proof for that is. Somebody can say they spent 1,095 days in Canada over the last 25 years, and their children, their children's children and so on will all get Canadian citizenship. This is weakening Canadian citizenship.
The Liberals do not even know the numbers of people this would affect, how many people this citizenship is going to be extended to. Also, there would be no security checks. We just talked about how the lack of security checks let an alleged ISIS terrorist into Canada, someone who was on a video in 2015 dismembering someone, but they do not think security checks would be an important part of extending citizenship to people who have no real connection to Canada.
Maybe they spent 1,095 days in Canada at some point over their lifetime, maybe not, because we do not know how they are going to prove it, and they do not have to have a security check. The Liberals are going to try to say that this is all very normal, that they are solving a problem. It is not normal. This approach is not normal in the developed world. The United States, Britain, France and Italy all cap citizenship to the first generation born abroad.
This is important because there is value in Canadian citizenship, and they are going to extend this to all kinds of people who have very little connection to Canada. We actually do not have the numbers on how far that will extend. We have maybe some estimates, but even the government does not know.
This, of course, does not surprise me, because the Liberals come up with things on the back of a napkin and never know what the consequence is going to be. It was much like this when I was the shadow minister for the environment, and I asked the deputy minister at the time what the actual build-out of the cost of the charging network all across Canada would be when we get to the 100% zero-emission vehicle mandate.
They looked at me and said they have not calculated that to the end point. They are going to mandate that no one gets to drive a gas-powered vehicle, that all vehicles have to be zero-emission vehicles, but they do not know what the cost of the charging network is going to be. That is how Liberals have run this country for the last 10 years, which is why we are in the mess we are in on a whole host of levels.
I just had a town hall in the town of Bolton a couple of weeks ago, and immigration was absolutely on the agenda. When I talk about the statistics of the decline in support for immigration, I can say that I felt it in person at that meeting. People are saying the numbers are too high.
I did not get the opportunity to do so, but if I had talked about this particular piece of legislation, I know what the good people of Dufferin—Caledon would have said. They would have said it is ridiculous. Many of the people in that town hall are immigrants; they came to this country because they wanted the opportunity Canada provides. They would have been outraged by the decision to do this.
What has been the consequence of the mess the Liberals have made of immigration in Canada? We can look at the jobs market. The big topic of discussion at my town hall was that my constituents' sons and daughters cannot get jobs. This is one of the reasons we have said we are eliminating the temporary foreign worker program: Far too many people have come into this country and taken jobs away from Canadians. The TFW program is a part of that problem.
The Liberal mess on immigration is going to take a very long time to fix. When we look at this, we see another absolute mess happening that the Liberals did not need to make. They could have fixed this problem very simply, but they did not. They chose a weak test; with 1,095 days at any point in someone's life, they get Canadian citizenship and they can then pass it on to their children.
This is a terrible piece of legislation. Conservatives fought it in the last Parliament. We will fight it in this Parliament, and we will seek to make amendments to bring some common sense to this terrible piece of legislation.
