On Parliament Hill

“A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” Those were the words of Justin Trudeau explaining – if you can call it that – why he believed that terrorists should be able to keep their Canadian citizenship. Yet Trudeau’s immigration minister had no trouble labelling Ontario’s provincial immigration minister as “not Canadian” when she raised concerns about his handling of the illegal border crossings crisis.

This past Friday, Ontario’s minister responsible for immigration, Lisa McLeod, walked out of a First Ministers meeting, citing Federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen’s unwillingness to collaborate with the provinces to deal with Justin Trudeau’s border mess.

Rather than listen to the concerns of those impacted by this crisis, Minister Hussen responded by calling McLeod – and by extension all those Canadians who think the Liberal’s open borders policy has been a disaster, “not Canadian”.

By now, we all know about Justin Trudeau’s infamous “#WelcomeToCanada” tweet, published in January 2017. It lead to tens of thousands of individuals illegally entering Canada from the United States by crossing through unguarded sections of our border. At the time, I questioned where this would all lead to. Now, with nearly a year and a half having passed since the Prime Minister’s invitation, we can see just how reckless this virtue-signalling tweet was.

Canada’s largest provinces, Quebec and Ontario, have both run out of space to house the thousands of illegal migrants who have crossed since that time, yet we are still waiting for Justin Trudeau to take this issue seriously.

To date, Trudeau’s only solution – as it is with so many issues – has been to throw more money at the problem. Unfortunately this does nothing to address the problem he has created; it just means more tax dollars are being spent to manage the crisis, instead of resolving the issue.

The Liberal government knows it must act – or at least it should by now – yet this week we saw the Liberals resort to name-calling and grand-standing to distract from their lack of action.

With responses such as this, it’s understandable that Canadians are asking why the Liberal government refuses to defend the integrity of our border. Canadians aren’t asking for much, we simply want our border laws respected.

Canada is a nation of immigrants. The majority of Canadians, including myself, are in favour of a compassionate and fair immigration system for all those who want to make Canada their home.

However, it is not compassionate, nor fair, when individuals are forced to live in homeless shelters, university dormitories, and tent cities because the Prime Minister has broken our immigration system.

Sadly, what we are left with instead is a backlogged boondoggle that is costing Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars with no end in sight. Justin Trudeau has created a situation where resources that could be helping those facing genuine danger and persecution around the world are instead being employed to process illegal border crossers.

We cannot let the current crisis undermine our immigration and border rules any further. And by the way – saying that there’s a problem doesn’t make you any less Canadian. Canadians must know their government is taking this situation seriously, but as long as the immigration minister spends his time name-calling instead of problem-solving, it’s clear that they are not.

Canada’s Conservatives will continue to call for policy solutions that go beyond simply spending more money and that will enable our immigration system to run in a safe, orderly, and compassionate basis that prioritizes the world’s most vulnerable. That’s what Canadians expect.