Madam Speaker, after a decade of Liberal mismanagement, describing Canada's immigration system as a tire fire sorely in need of competent management and dramatic reform would not be an exaggeration. Therefore, Conservatives, to show we are a government in waiting, proposed multiple constructive amendments to the immigration components of Bill C-12 in an attempt to improve the legislation and fix Canada's broken immigration system.
Here is what we proposed and why we did it. First is the why. Recently, Britain's governing Labour Party proposed drastic, sweeping immigration reforms in response to the ongoing illegal migration and bogus asylum claim crisis in its country. Those who think the situation is better on our side of the pond are profoundly wrong. In fact, between January 2022 and October of this year, the United Kingdom had around 375,000 people enter the country and make asylum claims, representing about 0.5% of their population. During the same time frame in Canada, we saw nearly 500,000 claims, or roughly 1.2% of our population today.
The fact that the Liberals also paired the surge in illegal migration and bogus asylum claims with allowing record levels of temporary foreign worker and foreign study permits is extraproblematic. This is an incredibly serious situation that has strained Canada's public health care system and many other taxpayer-funded social programs past their breaking point. It has made housing unaffordable, caused a youth jobs crisis and led to heavier reliance on social programs. It has also begun to tear apart Canada's social fabric, just as it has in the U.K.
The volume of people the Liberals have allowed to enter Canada has also made security screening difficult. A recent explosive news story claimed there are, at a minimum, hundreds of people in Canada with links to a state-sponsored terrorist organization. All of this has led to a precipitous drop, very concerningly, in support for immigration among the Canadian public, and this must change.
If that is the why, then this is the how. Conservatives proposed a series of substantive reforms to address these issues, presented as amendments to Bill C-12 during its clause-by-clause review at committee. I want to thank my colleagues Miguel Ricin, Andrew Evans and Chloe Clifford for working literally endless hours with me, until 1 a.m. on a Friday a couple of weeks ago, over six months to develop nearly 40 substantive amendments that, taken in combination, present one of the most substantive sets of immigration policy reforms seen in decades.
Given Bill C-12's scope, our amendments had two objectives. The first was to truly fix Canada's broken asylum system. Once an efficient and compassionate means for Canada to welcome and protect the world's most vulnerable and truly persecuted persons, in the last decade the system has morphed into a backdoor, lucrative means for illegal migrants who likely would not have otherwise had a pathway to permanent residency in Canada to skip the line and stay here. The evidence of this is overwhelming.
Canada's asylum backlog has exploded from fewer than 10,000 claims in 2015 to nearly 300,000 today under the Liberals, due to their foolish #WelcometoCanada and open-border policies. We all remember the #WelcometoCanada tweet in 2017. We all remember the Roxham Road border crossing. We all remember the government lifting the visa requirement on Mexico with no plan to stop illegal, bogus asylum claims. Here we are today with a broken asylum system and a loss of faith in Canada's immigration system.
Unfortunately, the immigration measures in Liberal Bill C-12 would fail to substantively address these problems. Committee witnesses testified that the system changes Bill C-12 proposed were half measures, certain to face immediate court challenges that would further clog an already overburdened justice system instead of curbing their abuse. In effect, the Liberals would be off-loading their illegal migration mess onto strained courts and past the next election cycle.
Committee testimony exposed further flaws untouched by Bill C-12. It would fail to disincentivize people from coming to Canada to make bogus claims. For example, rejected asylum claimants have the right to appeal to a judge. While those cases work their way slowly through our clogged courts, they continue to receive full health care, housing and social benefits. The pedantic and loophole-ridden process for appealing a bogus claim and removing bogus claimants from Canada also begets system abuse and needs reform, which C-12, as written, would not provide. The asylum and deportation system also urgently requires greater accountability and transparency. It needs to be far easier for MPs to get the data they need in these areas in order to hold the government to account.
To fix these issues, Conservatives attempted to amend Bill C-12 to undertake the following system changes: removing the ability of migrants with failed asylum claims to claim any federal social benefits beyond emergency health care; disallowing asylum claims to be made by nationals of, or by those arriving in Canada having transited through, a G7 or EU country; modernizing security requirements; requiring educational institutions that accept foreign students to share the cost of any bogus asylum claims made by foreign students they welcome to Canada; requiring that claims made by migrants who return to their home country while their claim is pending be abandoned; rejecting claims made after a claimant is found to have lied to an officer; placing the onus on a claimant to prove they have made their claim in a timely manner, not the government; 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; creating a new, transparent and clear reporting requirement for the government to disclose the amount of federal benefits received by asylum claimants; updating the content of the annual report to Parliament; and introducing merit-based appointments at the Immigration and Refugee Board to better consider the provinces and to include more board members with law enforcement experience.
The second objective of our amendments was to strengthen Canada's border security vis-à-vis non-citizen criminals. Bill C-12 purports to strengthen Canada's border security, but it would leave gaping holes for non-citizens convicted of an indictable offence in Canada, such as sexual assault, to avoid deportation penalties. For a non-citizen, our laws and practices state that staying in Canada is a privilege, not a right. Non-citizens who are convicted of an indictable offence, like sexual assault, in Canada should face deportation. To be effective, those deportations should be carried out in an expeditious manner, which currently they are not. Recent reports show that the Liberals have lost track of nearly 600 non-citizen convicted criminals scheduled for deportations, and that there are tens of thousands of deportations that should have been carried out long ago but have not been.
To fix these issues, Conservatives attempted to constructively amend Bill C-12 and make the following changes that would strengthen our borders: clarifying the definition of “serious criminality” under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to be conviction by an indictable offence or a hybrid offence where the Crown proceeded with an indictable charge; preventing non-citizens ordered removed from blocking deportation by barring repeat pre-removal risk assessments unless substantive new evidence of changed circumstances was presented; and modernizing the time period and processes related to the enforcement of removal orders.
It is deeply disappointing that the Liberals opposed most of our amendments, which I suspect they will have to work into legislation in the near future anyway. They missed an opportunity to immediately fix the system. That said, I want to thank colleagues in the Bloc Québécois, particularly the members for Lac-Saint-Jean and Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, for working in good faith with us to pass close to half of our amendments.
However, when the bill was reported back to the House, the Liberals initiated procedures to try to gut many of the proposals that passed. In spite of their best efforts, I am pleased to report that several still remain in the bill. It is my understanding that, after negotiations, the government intends to support the amendments that remain in the bill today in order to receive our collective support for the bill. This is possible, because Bill C-12 included some supportable, but in need of amendment, components of Bill C-2 that exclude the non-supportable parts.
These Conservative amendments include one that would see a pending asylum claim deemed abandoned if a claimant returned to the country they were fleeing from. This is a no-brainer. I would just like to say that Conservatives will support the clarifying amendment from the government on this matter. Other Conservative amendments that remain in the bill include new substantive quarterly reporting requirements and new processes for terminating bogus asylum claims.
Finally, Conservatives also successfully amended Bill C-12 to better constrict and make transparent the extraordinary powers in part 7 that would allow officials to mass change, extend or cancel immigration documents. This amendment should give recourse to committee witnesses who raised concerns about the lack of clarity on how these powers should be used and how the government should be held to account after. Additionally, thanks to a Conservative amendment, use of these powers would now require a substantive reporting requirement to Parliament each time the powers are used.
Conservatives also amended the bill to prevent the Liberals from using the powers to turn temporary residents into permanent residents en masse. We would not want that to happen. It is my understanding that the amendment I am presenting today and speaking to now, to ensure part 7 powers could not be used to mass extend temporary work visas or foreign student permits, will also be supported by the government.
Colleagues, a minority Parliament means the government has to work with the opposition to develop legislation. I am proud to say that we forced the Liberals to do something that resembled work.
