moved:
That, given that,
(i) the cost of the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) has more than quadrupled in the last four years, from $211 million to $896 million,
(ii) the cost of the IFHP is projected to rise to $1.5 billion by 2029-2030,
(iii) the IFHP provides non-citizens with failed asylum claims access to benefits that Canadian citizens do not have free access to, including vision care,
(iv) Canadians that have paid into the healthcare system their whole lives are unable to get the healthcare they deserve in part because resources are going to false asylum claimants,
the House call on the government to:
(a) review federal benefits provided to asylum claimants in order to find savings for taxpayers;
(b) restrict federal benefits received by rejected asylum claimants to emergency lifesaving healthcare only;
(c) provide transparency on federal spending on the IFHP by providing an annual report to Parliament, particularly regarding supplementary benefits which Canadian citizens do not have access to; and
(d) pass policies to immediately expel foreign nationals convicted of serious crime in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the wonderful, hard-working member for Riding Mountain.
Under the Liberal government, we have seen a dramatic drop in public support for immigration in Canada. Before the Liberal government, Canada's immigration system welcomed people who came to Canada to work hard and to contribute. It protected the world's most vulnerable people, but the Liberals' decision to bring too many people into Canada too fast changed all of that. Canada's crumbling immigration consensus can be attributed to another Liberal failure.
To keep the system fair for everyone, we must end two-tiered Liberal policies that reward non-citizens with no legal reason to be in Canada at the expense of Canadian citizens and legitimate refugees. For example, the law is clear that Canada must deport non-citizens convicted of serious crimes. However, the Liberals have allowed judges to sidestep the intent of that law, handing down lighter sentences precisely to help non-citizen criminals avoid deportation. This makes our streets less safe for everyone.
Failed asylum claimants, people who have made refugee claims but who have had their claims invalidated through Canadian due process, are now given access to better health care, such as vision care and physiotherapy, than Canadians. All anyone has to do is go into one of our ERs to see first-hand that Canada's health care system is crumbling. More than 100,000 Canadians have died waiting for care since 2018, which directly corresponds to the explosion of the cost of the interim federal health program.
To restore order and fairness, the government must end both of these practices. That is why today, Conservatives are delivering constructive policy options and calling upon the government to do the following: ensure that when foreign nationals are convicted of serious crimes in Canada, our policies and practices ensure that they leave, and restrict federal benefits received by rejected asylum claimants to emergency life-saving health care only. These are common-sense measures that are needed to restore order and fairness to Canada's immigration and health care systems and to keep Canada working for everyone.
In my speech today, I want to debunk some of the spin that the Liberals are using to defend some of these failures. I want to start with health care benefits for failed asylum claimants.
For starters, under the Liberals, the interim federal health program, the program that provides benefits to asylum claimants, has morphed well beyond its initial intent, which was to provide care to a small number of legitimate refugees who were fleeing to Canada from war zones. Today, it is a massive boondoggle that provides care to many bogus asylum claimants. The cost of this program has ballooned too. Conservatives uncovered that under the Liberals, the overall cost of the interim federal health program has skyrocketed by over 1,000%, from $66 million to nearly $900 million a year, and it is projected to reach $1.5 billion a year in very short order.
In fact, the Liberals have mismanaged the program so badly that they did not give the data to the Parliamentary Budget Officer on costs broken down by category. Right now, Liberals on the health committee are currently filibustering a motion that would ensure that the government provides the PBO with this data. That is because, contrary to Liberal claims, Canada's asylum backlog has gotten much worse and is still getting worse.
The backlog hit a record 300,000 cases in December 2025 and massive numbers of people in that backlog will be found to have made bogus claims. This is no accident. It results directly from Liberal failures like lifting visa requirements on countries like Mexico with no safeguards to prevent bogus claims, and refusing to tighten border laws to stop illegal crossings and fraudulent asylum applications.
Further, Conservative Order Paper Question No. 556 asked how many failed asylum claimants have remained in Canada since 2020 alone. To give members a sense of the scope of the problem of the government giving health benefits to failed asylum claimants, the data in this Order Paper question showed that by adding up the refugee protection division and refugee appeal division's decisions, 86% of rejected claimants remain in Canada, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 90,000 people.
That aligns with recent government data showing that of at least 500,000 undocumented individuals in Canada, plus around two million people on expired or soon-to-expire work and other temporary permits, and thousands of failed asylum claimants, the Liberals only removed about 22,000 people last year. Millions of people minus 22,000 is still millions.
The government lacks both the operational capacity and the political will to accelerate deportations of non-citizens with no legal right to remain, so instead of removing them from Canada, as the law requires it to do, it is providing better access to health care to failed asylum claimants than to Canadians. That is not right. It is unfair to everyone. At a time when six million Canadians cannot find a family doctor, wait times to see a specialist have hit nearly 30 weeks and nearly 24,000 Canadians died on wait-lists in 2024-25, not a single person without a legal reason to be in Canada should receive better health care than Canadian citizens do.
Rejected asylum claimants should be removed from Canada instead. During the time they are awaiting removal, as we know it takes a long time under the Liberal government, their health benefits should be restricted to emergency life-saving care only. Failed asylum claimants would still have access to life-saving emergency care under the measures in our motion, but gone would be their access to receive benefits that Canadians are not eligible to receive. This would also serve to reduce the demand from non-citizens, who are essentially incentivized to abuse the system, and ensure that Canadians who pay into the system are prioritized.
Unfortunately, rather than ending the practice of giving failed asylum claimants better health care benefits than Canadians, the Liberals are now proposing to set up a costly bureaucracy that would still force Canadian taxpayers to foot the bill for 70% of the premium health care costs that failed asylum claimants incur. In fact, they have gotten things so backwards that they are, as a report stated this morning, cutting integration support for legitimate refugees who want to contribute and be a part of our country while giving premium health care benefits to failed asylum claimants. That is bananas.
Instead, the Liberals should support our motion, restore fairness and restrict the health benefits that failed asylum claimants can receive to emergency life-saving care only. Our proposal to restrict failed asylum claimants' health benefits to emergency life-saving care aligns with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our Constitution. Given the rapidly ballooning costs of the interim federal health program, it responds to pressing and substantive policy concerns.
The 2012 changes to the interim federal health program were struck down primarily because they created tiers based on country of origin. Our motion today would apply to all failed asylum claimants. The 2012 Federal Court of Appeal ruling explicitly rejected the argument that immigration status alone triggers protected equality rights, affirming that distinctions between citizens and non-citizens are often permissible. Our policy aligns with that ruling by applying equally to all failed applicants. Moreover, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned any notion of a section 12 violation in the 2012 case. The trial court also dismissed section 7 arguments, confirming the charter imposes no positive obligation to fund comprehensive health care for non-citizens.
The Liberals have also claimed that non-citizens convicted of serious crimes do not get more lenient sentences in order to help them avoid deportation. That too is a lie. Almost every week, another high-profile incident comes to light of a non-citizen convicted of serious crimes getting a lenient sentence and avoiding deportation. In the last three months alone, we have seen stories that included a man convicted of possession of child pornography, who knew it was a crime when he watched it, given leniency as the judge gave him six months less a day and explicitly stated that it was to avoid immigration consequences.
This practice is perpetuating a two-tier justice system in Canada where non-citizens are treated differently than Canadian citizens. That is wrong. It is a violation of the spirit of the law that has upheld Canada's immigration consensus for years. Having a two-tier justice system for non-citizens convicted of a serious crime and a two-tiered health care system for failed asylum claimants is unfair and needs to stop.
We need to get back to order and fairness in Canada's immigration system, as well as in our health care system. The motion today is a common-sense constructive proposal to get back on track. If the Liberals are serious about restoring order and fairness, they are going to have to support it. I encourage all parties in the House today to support this proposal.
