Liberals go hog wild on immigration, hoping to secure victory in 2029 and beyond

One has to wonder if Trudeau has weaponized our Immigration system in an effort to build a new base of more than six million grateful future Liberal voters.

Things are usually as simple as they seem, and when it comes to the Liberal government’s ever-loosening approach to Immigration policy, I am confident that there’s method to their madness. I actually refer to it as “insanity,” but it may well be that “crazy-like-a-fox” type of insanity, for these aren’t stupid people. That’s what I tackled in this week’s Star column. You might think it cynical, but there’s no other explanation for the Trudeau government’s accumulated decisions on the immigration front.

In aggregate, their changes have largely diluted the wise, bi-partisan policies that a series of governments have honed since Lester B. Pearson was Prime Minister of Canada.

The Liberals sure can’t claim that they’ve been responding to the will Canadian public, as per this CBC News poll from 2019:

• 76% of respondents thought Canada should do more to encourage skilled labour immigration

• 57% said Canada should not be accepting more refugees

• 56% said that “accepting too many immigrants will change Canada”

In 2023, 97.6% of Canada's population growth came from “international migration” (both permanent and temporary immigration). It should come as no surprise then, in the wake of a national affordability crisis, that concerns are mounting. In late 2023, The Star reported an Abacus poll that found “two-thirds of Canadians say immigration target is too high.”

But this isn’t “alt-right nationalism” at work, as the Angus Reid Institute found earlier this summer that “Nearly 40% of new Canadians say they’re considering leaving their province — or Canada — over high housing costs. The sentiment is felt the strongest in Toronto, where 44 per cent of residents there say they’re mulling a move.”

Even bank economists are hitting the alarm bell (from Jan-24): “Trudeau botched immigration surge, Canada's top bank economists say. Rapid population growth causing economic damage and needs to be reconsidered.”

Earlier this summer, I noticed a woman and her pre-teen son looking confused as they slowly walked from the UP Express to Union Station. I asked her if she needed directions and we struck up a short conversation. “It was their first time in Toronto,” she reported. I asked where they were from, “Edmonton,” was her reply. Which was quickly followed by, “we’re from Romania.” I reminded her that “we’re all from somewhere.” Her response (“that’s nice to hear you say, most people don’t feel that way”) sadden me, and is a reminder of two things: i) six generation Canadians should never forget that our families were also immigrants at one time (see prior post “My Canada does not include the Hamas flag” Oct. 15-23 ), and ii) if there’s a new tension in the land on the topic of immigration, it’s very recent, and the Grits are to blame.

I’ve posted the first half of this week’s column below, and I’m told that it reflects lots of info that you might not have been keeping track of over the past eight years. If you want to see how the column ends, buy a print copy, use your Apple News, or subscribe to the Star online via my special discount code: www.thestar.com/informed.

You would think a government that’s down 20 points might want to telegraph an aura of sanity, rather than spend its days finding new ways to eviscerate an immigration policy that has served Canada well since Lester Pearson led the Liberal party.

In a vacuum, some of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s changes might seem justified: whether it be the streamlined $7 electronic visas, or broadening refugee claims beyond the U.N.’s definition of those facing “persecution” to include accumulated “intersectional” experiences.

You can see the logic in extending “citizenship to foreign-born children of parents who live abroad,” as we’re loosely mirroring U.S. policy. Ignoring for the moment that an American citizen who lives abroad must still file a U.S. tax return outlining their worldwide income — unlike we Canadians. Other Liberal policy choices seem manically self-defeating.

The trend started in 2016, when Trudeau made some diplomatic hay by removing the Harper government’s visa requirement for visitors from Mexico. Despite a 70-fold surge in Mexican asylum claims, the Liberals waited until 2024 to reverse themselves. A “majority of claims were abandoned or rejected,” and that single Liberal flip-flop cost Canadian taxpayers $600 million a year for health care and shelter costs.

Until recently, my nomination for the Most Idiotic Liberal Move on Immigration was the change that allowed any visitor visa applicant to “no longer have to prove they have sufficient funds to stay in Canada or demonstrate they will leave the country when their visas expire.”

The government explained the move, which expired in 2023, as an extraordinary measure to help clear immigration backlogs. But the ramifications were clear — two key tests to assess whether you intend to leave when your six-month visitor visa expires were out the window.

Is there a border guard anywhere else in the Western world who would waive you through if you had no return plane ticket and couldn’t prove that you could afford to feed yourself during your “holiday?”

Trudeau changed that particular rule at the exact moment he was amending the “Safe Third Country Agreement” with U.S. President Joe Biden to shut down the Roxham Road illegal border crossing. Trudeau responded to political pressure from Quebec Premier François Legault regarding the “influx” of overland economic migrants yet proceeded to remove the one test we use at Canadian airports to separate bona fide tourists from those individuals too impatient to join a legitimate immigration queue.

Hit the link to read the rest of the column.

MRM

(note: this post is an Opinion Piece)