Brad Redekopp
Saskatoon West, Saskatchewan · Conservative · Canada
“Bill C-287. Introduction and first reading moved for leave to introduce Bill C-287, An Act to amend the National Research Council Act . He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present my private member's bill, the housing cost transparency act. Canada is in a housing crisis.”
“These summaries would show what a proposal does, what housing is affected, who pays, what benefits are expected and what assumptions are being made. It would also improve governance, transparency, public registry information and annual reporting.”
“Even by 2030-31, there is still going to be a deficit of over $50 billion, by their own estimate. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an officer appointed by the government, a person whom the government trusts, tells us it is going to be even worse than the government is saying; the government is actually not telling us the truth, th…”
“A car could be sold multiple times during its life, two, three, four times, and every single time, GST is charged, and the government makes money on that. We think that is unfair. The government should get the GST at the beginning, and that should be the end of it. I want to thank my colleague the member for Elgin—St.”
“The debt charges this year will be just about $60 billion. To put that into perspective, the amount of money the federal government gives to the provinces for health care is $55 billion, so we are actually spending more on interest than what the government gives for health care.”
“The Liberals do not want to have questions asked; they want to avoid all that. As they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, it appears that they are evading accountability. That is not a good look, and Canadians can see that. The decisions that would be made in this bill would impact Canadians for decades.”
The complete record
Every one of 397 lines we hold for Brad Redekopp, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 8.
“Mr. Chair, we know that new citizens can vote, obviously. Did the minister consult Elections Canada about where these new citizens through Bill C-3 will vote when they have never had a physical address in Canada?”
“Mr. Chair, the record shows that tens of thousands of people from the United States who are looking to trace their ancestry are starting to apply for citizenship. Did the minister tell cabinet that Bill C-3 could make millions of Americans eligible for Canadian citizenship?”
“Mr. Chair, we know there are certain things that have to be done, but this still allows millions of Americans, potentially, to become Canadian citizens. The minister never told Parliament about this. Did she deliberately hide this information from Parliament?”
“Mr. Chair, this is the exact opposite of what we heard in committee. We, Conservatives, suggested some conditions that people might have to adhere to, but the minister suggested the law is the law; if people check these boxes, they automatically come in. Does the minister want to revise her numbers up?”
“Mr. Chair, the minister seems very scared to give a number. The Liberal news organization, the CBC, says, “Millions of Americans can now claim Canadian citizenship”. How does the minister sleep at night, knowing her estimate of a few thousand might actually be a few million?”
“Mr. Chair, I think I will go with half a million, because I did not hear anything different. VFS Global runs 164 visa application centres for the government. Reports say that they charged extra for premium lounge access, which included faster turnaround and free drinks. If VFS was flagged for fraud and security risk, why is IRCC still relying on it?”
“Mr. Chair, I did not hear a number in there. I know that a couple years ago, IRCC at committee estimated that half a million undocumented people were in Canada. Is that number still accurate, or does the minister just not know?”
“Mr. Chair, we understand the rules, but my question is, how many are there? The department must have an estimate. I am sure the minister has a deputy minister sitting right there. They must have an estimate of how many undocumented people are in Canada right now.”
“Mr. Chair, it is important to note that the government has brought in millions of people using a system that does not work. The minister is expecting about two million temporary visas to expire this year. That is about 160,000 per month. She also expects them to leave. Can the minister confirm that temporary residents are leaving Canada at these rates?”
“Mr. Chair, the government will not tell the independent Immigration and Refugee Board what to do. I do not even know what to say about that. Let us talk about exit tracking. Does the government know exactly when temporary residents leave the country?”
“Mr. Chair, the minister is still confused. I know it is getting late. She is the one who appoints the IRB members, just for the minister's record. Is the minister in support of the IRB's making up these new rules so convicted criminals can delay deportation even more?”
“Mr. Chair, I am sure the minister is aware that the IRB chair just issued new guidelines to create new ways for serious criminals to delay deportation. Did the minister personally approve these new guidelines?”
“Mr. Chair, perhaps the minister remembers that I asked her questions just about 45 minutes ago. The IRB is independent, so does Parliament have no authority to set refugee policy in Canada? Is it all up to the independent IRB?”
“Mr. Chair, in Bill C-3 , Conservatives wanted to add security screening provisions, but Liberals voted no. Is the minister concerned that her chain migration bill will allow terrorists to gain Canadian citizenship?”
“Mr. Chair, the minister well knows that IRGC officials are here in Canada right now. There are many of them, up to 700 according to some numbers. Why is the government slow-walking the removal of IRGC officials from Canada?”
“However, Mr. Chair, it did not with immigration consultants, so I take it the minister has no concerns about immigration consultants. One category of people who did not have to enter fraudulently was IRGC terrorists. The government blindly approved these applications. How many permits have been flagged for review because of potential connections to IRGC regime officials?”
“Mr. Chair, does the minister really believe that all fraud has been found by the Auditor General? It sounds like she is not looking for any more in her department. That seems like a very naive belief. Much of the fraud in Canada originates with unscrupulous immigration consultants. Has IRCC opened up investigations into immigration consultants for fraud?”
“Mr. Chair, I take it that the minister does not know. The Auditor General found many cases of fraud that were missed by IRCC. The minister committed to fixing this problem. Since her committee appearance, how many new cases of fraud have been found?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has said that our immigration system is “under control”. Ordinary Canadians know this is not true. For example, in Canada, we have no idea who is here or not here, because the government has no way of tracking who is leaving the country or when they leave. When asked about this yesterday, the immigration minister said she wondered the same thing. The Prime Minister appointed this immigration minister. He kept her in her job. He meets with her on a weekly basis. He believes the immigration system is under control. Clearly, she is simply following the Prime Minister's orders. Can the Prime Minister confirm that this minister is doing a good job implementing his own ideas, or if not, why does he not just fire her?”
“Mr. Speaker, wow, I did not know that we had express entry for terrorists. It is clear that everyone has lost faith in the Minister of Immigration overseeing even the simplest parts of her job. This is the seventh Liberal immigration minister, and Conservatives knew from day one that she would make the mess worse. The media are now calling for the minister to be removed. Liberal MPs have called for this minister to be removed. This is now about the Prime Minister 's own judgment. She says that she meets with the Prime Minister every week. He seems oblivious to the mess she has created. Will the Prime Minister end this national embarrassment and fire this immigration minister?”
“Mr. Speaker, when someone has been denied entry into Canada, a temporary resident permit is their last resort. The Minister of Immigration recently issued one of these permits to Mehdi Taj, and he landed in Toronto this week. Anybody who knows how to google can quickly figure out that this man is a former commander of the murderous Iranian regime, which is listed as a terrorist entity in Canada. The immigration department has already let in hundreds of other IRGC officials, who are roaming free in Canada, leaving Canadians feeling unsafe. Why did the minister give a terrorist who is part of a murderous death cult the green light to come to Canada?”
“Mr. Speaker, for years, residents and businesses in Saskatoon West warned the Liberals that the drug injection site was creating chaos and disorder in the community. The Liberals approved and funded the site, even though it was within 200 metres of a school. Now, the whole operation has collapsed into bankruptcy and closure. That should be the end of this failed experiment. Saskatoon needs hope, recovery, treatment and safety, not a new licence for the same disaster under different management. Will the Minister of Health give the people of Saskatoon West a clear answer today and promise that she will not approve a new drug injection site in Saskatoon?”
“Mr. Speaker, yesterday at committee, the Auditor General revealed multiple situations where the immigration department failed to investigate, or even detect, significant cases of fraud. At the same meeting, the deputy minister of immigration pleaded ignorance on the topic, saying, “it's my fourth week on the job...so I can't answer the question”. In fact, for two straight hours, he had zero answers as to why the Auditor General found over 153,000 cases of immigration fraud yet his department only investigated 2%. The Prime Minister said the system was under control, but like everything else, that was an illusion. I have a simple question. Why has the immigration minister lost control?”
“Mr. Speaker, he forgot scurvy in his riding, check mark. The Prime Minister says things are under control, but with seven ministers in 11 years, the system is getting worse and worse. Yesterday, the justice minister issued a fake apology for his failed tenure as immigration minister by blaming the provinces, as if he held no responsibility. His successor, the current Minister of Culture , oversaw the surge in asylum claims that have overwhelmed our health care system and housing supply. The current immigration minister is so incompetent that her own Liberal colleagues are calling for her to be fired. The Prime Minister chose these people. Will he take responsibility for their failure and fire these cabinet ministers?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister stood in this place and tried to tell Canadians that immigration is under control. Well, here are the facts. The temporary foreign worker program has ballooned by 178% since 2015. The Auditor General revealed that 97% of student fraud cases are not even being investigated, and the asylum backlog is a staggering 300,000 cases. However, Canadians cannot find jobs, housing or health care. This did not happen by accident. This was the work of three incompetent ministers, and all three are still in cabinet. When will the Prime Minister fire these ministers and fix the core issues in our immigration system?”
“They are calling for the government to, first, reform the catch-and-release bail system to prevent dangerous, repeat and violent offenders from serving their sentences in their community; second, establish new indictable offences, reporting obligations and limitations on weapons possession for previous offenders who break conditions or are unlawfully at large; and third, pass legislation wherein an accused charged more than twice with certain indictable offences must be detained in custody while subject to a summons, appearance notice or release order.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am happy to present a petition today on behalf of residents of Fairhaven, Meadowgreen, Parkridge and Confederation Park in Saskatoon, all of which have faced significant challenges as crime, chaos and disorder take over the neighbourhoods. Violent crime is up 10% in Saskatoon, with increases in assaults, murders and robberies, and Saskatoon residents feel unsafe in their homes and on the streets.”
“Mr. Speaker, unlike that member, I do not work for the PMO. The truth is that the immigration minister is so incompetent that her own Liberal colleagues told CBC that she was not fit for the job. The mess created by the previous two is self-evident, yet Liberals are pushing ahead with hundreds of thousands of new foreign work permits with no plans to remove the millions of expiring foreign visa holders who remain in Canada. All while Canadian youth face 14% unemployment rates and non-permanent residents outnumber unemployed Canadians. This insanity has to stop. Why are three of the most incompetent and destructive immigration ministers in Canadian history still in his cabinet?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal incompetence in our immigration system keeps getting worse. Yesterday, the Auditor General revealed widespread fraud in the Liberals' international student program. Even worse, of the 150,000 suspected fraud cases, the department reviewed less than 3% of them. This is only part of the Liberal immigration mess. Did the Liberal Prime Minister fix this? Not at all. Besides keeping his terrible minister in place, he promoted the last two incompetent ministers. They are raining down destruction as his justice minister and culture minister . Why are three of the most incompetent and destructive immigration ministers still in his cabinet?”
“I just want to conclude by saying this bill, Bill C-220 , is a good bill. It fixes a major gap that we have in our system. It is a wonderful, simple bill that I support wholeheartedly. I would implore all members to pass this bill when it comes time to vote.”
“I am reading from an article from the National Post. I just want to read a couple of things from of it. It says: In 2013, Toronto lawyer Avvy Yao-Yao Go described herself as a “loudmouth activist for politicians to contend with.” This person was very aggressive in providing leniency to people who were not citizens of Canada. The government, in its wisdom, decided to make her a federal court judge in 2021. She has done incredible things to halt revocation proceedings against people. There have been all kinds of things that she has done to provide leniency through her court. At the very end, it says: ...decisions in the last year alone show a pattern of leniency for rule-breakers, country-shoppers.... Each instance takes state capacity away from cases that truly matter. There are many examples we can think of.”
“Judges took this principle of restraint, married it up with the immigration issues that we have been talking about to this point and started applying this to immigration cases. That is how we ended up with sentences that were disproportionate to the crime, and how we ended up with this two-tiered sentencing system that we have. This is something that is a big problem and that is why I am happy to stand to speak to this bill today, because this bill that was submitted by my great colleague fixes this in a very simple way. It creates a single system of sentencing for all people in Canada. There are other problems that we have in our sentencing system. I also wanted to mention, and I talked about it earlier, activist judges. I just want to highlight this one example that really describes the problem.”
“Everyone has heard that comment many times. We have talked about it a lot. It really comes from Bill C-75 , which was passed by the Liberal government. The principle of restraint was the new thing introduced in this bill, and it essentially means this: It instructs judges to give sentences that are no more restrictive than necessary. They are to release the accused at the earliest opportunity. They are to release them on the least onerous conditions, and imprisonment should only be used when absolutely necessary and for the shortest duration possible. These were the instructions given by the Liberal government to judges. Go easy on people is essentially what this means. The judge has the ability to go easy on the person. Guess what.”
“The judge said the conviction would not only delay his citizenship by four years but could prevent him from sponsoring his wife and obtaining his engineering licence, and that those immigration and professional consequences were far more severe than jail. Again, here was a judge who was using immigration status to determine a sentence. All of these cases and many more show why this private member's bill is so important. They show why this bill is critical to closing a loophole that exists in our system and that judges are abusing to give people lesser sentences, thus giving us this two-tiered system. How did we get here? A big part of this is because of the Liberal justice reforms that happened. I want to focus on Bill C-75 , which is a bill that fundamentally shifted the power balance to criminals. We talk about bail, not jail.”
“The higher court found that the judge had used the collateral immigration consequences at issue here to reduce the respondent's sentence to the point where it became disproportionate to both the gravity of the offence and the moral blameworthiness of the offender. Thankfully, in this case, the B.C. Court of Appeal was able to catch this and fix it, but there have been many other cases where it has not been caught. Another example is a non-citizen who was out on bail for trafficking cocaine. The judge cut his sentence in half, citing the tough life the criminal had, injuries and immigration status. Another example was a man who was trying to procure sex from a 15-year-old girl.”
“It was because it would avoid the deportation angle and also allow the accused the ability to appeal their immigration status, should they need to do so. What did the judge do? (1745) The judge said, “Oh, you are right. We need to be careful about this because of the immigration status, so we are going to go with the conditional sentence”, which is not what would have happened to any other Canadian citizen had they been in this situation. Here, again, we have a case where the judge was lenient to an extreme degree, so much so that the Crown appealed this to the B.C. Court of Appeal.”
“This person somewhat understood, but still wanted to plead guilty, yet, even then, the judge stopped the trial and essentially forced this guy to talk to an immigration lawyer, almost as if to say, wink, wink, he needed to talk to somebody because he could get a better deal if he just waited. The judge was essentially acting as the lawyer for the person he was sentencing. By the way, this same person was facing a manslaughter charge, so this was not a one-off thing. This person was facing some serious time. A second example is another non-citizen who stabbed a victim with a knife. The victim required 18 stitches and 50 staples to heal their body. This was a serious crime. The Crown asked for four years, and the defence asked for a conditional sentence. Why did it ask for a conditional sentence?”
“I will give an example of this later, but, unfortunately, some judges are activists who want to impose their own thinking and take advantage of the the laws to do things that are not really fair and that create this two-tiered sentencing system. In the first example, a non-citizen was facing charges of drug trafficking and possession of a weapon. This person was facing a three-year sentence and deportation because of that. This person wanted to plead guilty and the judge did not want to accept that because the judge was concerned that the accused did not understand the implications to his immigration status. The judge stopped the trial and tried to get the person to understand the implications of pleading guilty.”
“First of all, I want to make it clear that we are talking about non-citizens, people who are not yet Canadians. In our current law, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, it is very clear that, when certain thresholds are met for crimes, such as the length of time that has been imposed for a sentence, there are consequences. The one that most people are aware of is, if a person gets a sentence of more than six months, it means that they have to be deported. That is often a major consideration when judges are looking at sentences. I want to give some examples because I think the help everybody to understand. We would like to think that our system is clean, that everybody is looking at it in a fair, common-sense and logical way, and it just does not work that way.”
“It says, “A court that imposes a sentence on an offender who is not a Canadian citizen shall not take into consideration any potential impact the sentence could have on the offender’s immigration status in Canada, or on that of a member of their family.” Simply put, a judge considering a sentence for somebody found guilty of a crime would not be able to consider the impact it would have on their immigration status. In other words, there would not be a two-tiered system of sentencing in Canada. Today, we have a two-tiered system where judges take into account immigration status, where one criminal gets a lesser sentence than another simply because of immigration status. I am going to give some examples of that and show why that is a problem.”
“In the immigration system, we have problems with asylum, temporary foreign workers, international students and wait-lists. The intersection is when judges in the criminal system consider sentencing and take immigration status into account when they sentence individuals. That is what this bill aims to address. Many bills in the House, I would say, are quite complicated. Members often have to look at them multiple times to understand what they say. Others are very simple, and this bill happens to be a very simple one. I am going to read part of it.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to a great private member's bill from my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill . This is a good bill. What I like about it is its simplicity. It is very simple and common sense. I want to commend the member for her hard work on this and her understanding of where Canadians are. This bill resides at the intersection of two key areas. One is crime, which people have lots of things to say about, and immigration is the other. When we look at polling and talk to people in, say, my riding, and I know that all of us talk to people in ridings every day, we hear about crime and immigration. People are very concerned about the system we have today, so this bill really comes at the intersection of that. In crime, we have things like revolving doors and low or no penalties.”
“They want to end the dangerous safe supply experiments that have lowered the cost and increased the supply of narcotics on the street and, most importantly, they want to invest in real treatment for drug users, such as rehabilitation beds, that encourage people to get off drugs.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition on behalf of residents of Fairhaven, Meadowgreen, Parkridge and Confederation in Saskatoon, who are all concerned about the significant challenges they are facing because of crime, chaos and disorder in their neighbourhoods. They are concerned about the drug use and homelessness that have overrun their neighbourhoods, making public area schools and even private backyards unsafe. Of course, safe supply and harm reduction programs paid for by the federal government have prolonged and encouraged drug use instead of offering treatment. The petitioners are asking for the government to bring back mandatory minimums for the trafficking, importing and production of illegal narcotics, which were removed in Bill C-5 .”
“Our immigration system is broken, and Canadians are fed up. The reality is that the Liberal immigration minister has failed to protect our borders, while hundreds of IRGC agents safely reside in Canada. She is allowing bad actors into Canada and doing nothing to stop them from terrorizing Canadians. Why does the immigration minister still have her job after failing Canadians so badly?”
“Mr. Speaker, under the present Liberal government, foreign conflicts are spilling into Canadian streets, and Jewish Canadians are paying the price. Just last week, three synagogues were damaged by gunfire. This is not really surprising, since Liberal immigration policies approve some asylum claims without even talking to the claimant. After the fact, some are found to be foreign agents who should be deported. Yesterday at the immigration committee, the government said it could not deport IRGC regime officials, for several reasons. The first excuse is that the Liberals protected their right to claim asylum. The second excuse is that there are currently no flights to Iran. The third excuse is that the IRGC regime officials' privacy is more important than the safety of Canadians. It is ridiculous.”
“They want to end the dangerous safe supply experiment, which has lowered the cost and increased the supply of narcotics on the street. Finally, they want the government to invest in real treatment for drug users, such as rehabilitation beds, that encourage people to get off drugs.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Fairhaven, Meadow Green, Parkridge and Confederation Park in Saskatoon about the challenges they are facing because of the crime, chaos and disorder that has taken over their neighbourhoods. The petition speaks to how neighbourhoods have been overrun with drug use and homelessness, making public areas unsafe. It also talks about how the safe supply and harm reduction programs paid for by the federal government have prolonged and encouraged drug use instead of offering treatment for addictions. The petitioners are calling on the government to bring back the mandatory minimum sentences for the trafficking and importing of illegal narcotics, which were removed in Bill C-5 .”
“Mr. Speaker, it is embarrassing. The ministers do not even know how their own system works. Yesterday, the Prime Minister falsely claimed he had the immigration system under control. He blindly expressed full confidence in his immigration minister . These are the facts: 300,000 asylum claims, a four-year backlog, nearly three million temporary residents with expiring permits and no plan to remove them, auto-approving asylum claims from terrorist-sponsoring countries without any human intervention. Ask any Canadian. Immigration is far from under control. Now even Liberal MPs are questioning her place at the cabinet table, so will the Prime Minister finally wake up, listen to his own MPs and fire his incompetent immigration minister ?”
“Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Prime Minister falsely stated that he had the immigration system under control. Does he realize his own immigration department is rubber-stamping asylum claims from terrorist-sponsoring countries like Afghanistan, Yemen and Iran? We just heard that the minister does not even realize that she is auto-approving claims from Pakistan, one of whose nationals was trying to claim asylum when he was arrested in Quebec for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack against Jews in New York City. This incompetence hurts legitimate refugees and all Canadians. Now even his own caucus is calling for the Prime Minister 's hand-picked immigration hire to be fired. When will the Prime Minister wake up and fire this immigration minister ?”