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.”
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“Today, Tyrell is working at the City Centre Church, helping the less advantaged. He does not look for recognition. He looks for ways to help. I am grateful for Tyrell's service, and I hope his example inspires others. We all need more Tyrells in our life.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about a young man from Saskatoon's Hampton Village, Tyrell Harder. Tyrell is the kind of neighbour who quietly makes our community stronger simply by showing up and serving others. Raised right here in Saskatoon West, Tyrell is a proud graduate of Bedford Road Collegiate. For years, he has volunteered at the Bedford Road Invitational Tournament, giving his time so young athletes can compete, learn teamwork and build confidence. Tyrell has also worked and volunteered at Redberry Bible Camp, helping to create a positive, safe and welcoming environment for kids and families. When our community needs engaged citizens, he steps up, volunteering during civic elections and as a campaign volunteer for me. He brings energy, reliability and a great attitude to everything.”
“Mr. Speaker, we have never said that; it is the Liberals who keep saying that. I want to highlight that it is bogus asylum claimants we are focused on. I will give the House a really good example. In B.C. recently, there were 15 people who were going down the road of being convicted of a crime. Guess what they did. Every single one of them claimed asylum as a way to avoid the results of their actions in Canada. It puts them into the asylum system. It gives them a four-year pathway to protect themselves and avoid true justice in Canada. These are exactly the kinds of things we want to fix, and the government has been unable to do so.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on something the member said in that question, which are the accusations from the other side that we do not care about immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We absolutely do. What we are trying to do here is find a way to make the system work better so legitimate refugees and legitimate asylum seekers who come to our country are treated well, so regular Canadians are treated well, so we have the best possible use of the money that all Canadians contribute to the government, and so when we spend that money, we spend it wisely. That is not happening today. The government is not doing that well. I want to see that change and improve.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is definitely in poor taste to put forward incorrect information, which is what we have been hearing all day from the other side. The PBO did his analysis of $1.5 billion. The Liberals are going to do a copay system, so maybe the number is going to be a little smaller. It is still a billion-dollar program. What we have seen from the government is not a reduction in the number of refugee seekers in this country but a dramatic increase in numbers. There are 300,000 in the backlog today. The IRB can process only about 70,000 or so a year. That is how we end up with a four-year wait to process through the backlog. The government has not been able to demonstrate any kind of efficiency with respect to this, nor any possibility of getting control of the system. I highly doubt it is going to do that in the future.”
“If someone is a phony asylum claimant, if they are a foreign criminal or if they are a Liberal politician, then I guess it is worth that. However, if someone is a regular Canadian, I would say it is not. Let us remember that we do not want a two-tiered health care system in Canada. The Conservatives have a plan that is about fairness and about focus to protect emergency care but end the extras for rejected claims, reduce the strain on the system and ensure that Canadians get the health care they have earned and paid for.”
“The list of countries includes, for example, Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran. That is not in any way to say that everybody coming from those countries is bad. I am saying that when somebody comes to our country from, let us say, Iran, I want a government official to actually interview that person. Is the person a member of the IRGC? Does the person have military history? Is the person escaping their country with the rewards of something that they did unlawfully in their country and coming to Canada to stay here? I want somebody to actually ask those questions and check that out, and that is not happening. That is partly why our acceptance rates are so high in this country. Is the program worth $1.5 billion? I would suggest it is not.”
“We definitely have a pull factor for people wanting to come here, because the system is quite easy to game, but another thing that came to our attention this week related to this is something the Immigration and Refugee Board does, called a file review. With a file review, there are certain countries of origin that have been determined to be not worthy of having somebody look at the file, so if someone happens to be an asylum seeker from such a country, they basically get approved automatically by the system, and nobody actually even looks at the file. Nobody talks to that person. The countries on that list are kind of scary to me. They are the ones for which we might want to actually talk to those people just to make sure we are not allowing bad actors to come into our country.”
“They are the ones who are getting the benefits. The other interesting thing in the whole process is how many of the claims are actually accepted. In Canada right now, we are accepting roughly 80% of refugee claims, which seems like a high number, off the top. I did some looking into peer countries. The parliamentary secretary just talked about G7 countries, and I looked at some of these countries. Germany has an acceptance rate of 59%, versus ours of 80%. Sweden has an acceptance rate of 40%, and Ireland has an acceptance rate of 30%. Therefore, it seems odd to me that we are accepting 80% of refugee claims made in Canada, because that just does not seem to match up with what some of our peer countries are doing.”
“It could be as simple as not being able to get their paperwork extended and being requested to leave the country, or it could be something worse, such as being convicted of a crime, and then they are actually going to be deported. What do they do? They claim refugee status, claim asylum, and this is where there is a lot of abuse in the program and there a lot of people who take advantage of the generosity of the very bureaucratic system. The system takes almost four years to go through, with all the different ways that someone can appeal. We have talked about it, as have many other speakers, but someone can have a claim rejected by the IRB, and then there are several avenues of appeal they can take. This is the time period for the people who have been rejected, and they are trying to game the system.”
“They say that they are under some sort of persecution and that they fear going back to their country, or something like that, and of course some of those claims are legitimate as well. There are definitely people who arrive in Canada who truly fear going back to their country, and I would have no problem with letting a person like that go through the system and be found to be a legitimate refugee whom, should Canada have the capacity to bring them in, we could bring in. However, there are also many who take advantage of the system, and we have seen it so many times, where a person comes to our country and is here for a while. Maybe they are a student, or maybe they are working or doing whatever they might be doing, and then something bad happens to them.”
“We know that legitimate refugees are fleeing war, persecution and violence. There is a government sponsorship process for that. The UNHCR is involved in that process. There is also a private sponsorship method where groups of people can get together and sponsor refugees to come to Canada. Conservatives have no issues with that. These are what people think of when they think about asylum claimants and refugees, and we are a generous country so we want those kinds of benefits extended to people to the extent that we as a country can afford to do that. (1640) When we talk about asylum claimants, it is different. There is no real process for this. This is when people enter Canada either with a permit of some sort or illegally, and then they immediately claim asylum.”
“Another way to think about this is that if we take the entire budget for health care, which I think is somewhere in the order of about $55 billion for our country, the money that is given to the provinces for health care, that works out to about $1,275 per Canadian. If we take this line item and put it against how many asylum seekers there are, it works out to about $3,300 per Canadian. On a per capita basis, the government is spending almost three times as much money on this program as it does on benefits for all Canadians. What if the Liberals got the system under control and were able to manage it properly? That is what needs to be done and what I argue is not happening. Why are there so many refugee claims? Let me talk about legitimate refugees versus bogus refugee claims.”
“I would say this is an out-of-control program that definitely needs some help and some work to get it back under control. The Liberals proposed a solution, which they are calling copay. Let me talk about that. The copay they are proposing is four dollars for a prescription. Someone, let us say, getting a $1,500 Ozempic prescription is going to pay four dollars, and the government is going to pay $1,496. For the other supplementary services, the Cadillac services I spoke of before, the copay is going to be 30%. It will reduce the cost a little, but it is still going to be far more than $1 billion a year four years from now. We are kind of splitting hairs on cost. It is still going to be a more than $1-billion program four years from now.”
“As I said, physicians charge the federal government for this coverage, and they are charging in some cases up to five times what they would normally charge their provincial government for services, because the federal government does not manage the program very well and is willing to pay that extra cost. That shows the poor management happening with the program right now. Now let me talk about the cost. Four years ago the program cost about $200 million, and right now it is costing about $900 million. It has gone up more than four times in four years. The Parliamentary Budget Officer did a projection for four years from now, and the cost is going to be up to $1.5 billion. That is going to be eight times the cost within an eight-year period.”
“These are for things like, for example, vision care: glasses, contact lenses and getting a new pair of glasses every two years. They are part of supplemental benefits. Dental and drug coverage, ambulance visits, in-home nursing, medical supplies, hearing aids and these kinds of things are also supplemental benefits. They are things that many Canadians do not have and have to pay out of pocket for. Unfortunately, failed asylum claimants get that coverage for free through the program, and it accounts for nearly half of the cost of the program, a significant cost. I would also bring to the attention of the House the fact that there has been testimony at committee that showed that the program is badly managed.”
“There are the basic benefits, the things we would all agree people should have. That is coverage for things like emergency room visits, doctor visits, hospital treatments and required surgeries, any kind of emergencies that come up. That is basic health care, the basic health care that all Canadians have. Nobody would argue that people in our country should not have access to that kind of coverage, and Conservatives certainly agree. Provinces do not pay for that, because it is not for permanent residents or citizens, so they can rightly come back to the federal government and ask it to cover the costs, which it does. The second part is called supplemental benefits. These are benefits that many Canadians do not have.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to our motion. I am going to talk a bit about the interim federal health program and then a few other things. The first point I want to make clearly is that the program creates a two-tiered health system in our country. It has a Cadillac benefits system for failed asylum claimants and a basic system for regular Canadians. That is the design of this system. The costs are already nearing $1 billion a year, and they will be climbing to $1.5 billion within four years. Of course, the Liberals claim the system works. They have all kinds of answers, supposedly, to all the complaints, but I will demonstrate that it does not work. First of all, on two-tiered health care, in 2025, 300,000 asylum claimants received benefits. Let us get clear on the benefits. There are two kinds.”
“Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago we had a stable immigration system that Canadians were proud of. Now the Liberals have transferred to automated approvals and have abandoned security checks from certain countries. People can enter Canada, make a claim for asylum and receive approval in the mail without even talking to a government official. It is auto-approval. The countries listed will shock members. Iran is on the list, which encourages senior members of the dreaded IRGC to seek refuge here, all with no security checks. Why did the government, including the current Minister of Justice, remove safeguards on Canada's refugee system?”
“Mr. Speaker, I guess I will give credit where credit is due. The Liberals finally figured out that they should restrict this to building in Canada. I congratulate them for realizing that. Now the Liberals need to move on to the inputs, as my colleague identified. Of course, we should be focusing on Canadian inputs where we can, and there are many opportunities for that. This industry is great for creating jobs, and great for creating business and value in Canada. Let us get on it. Let us get houses built.”
“I think that is something that we could be doing with the billions of dollars that would be spent on this bureaucracy. We need to be doing some things and working with the municipalities to help them get pointed in the right direction so that we can actually make a difference for Canadians.”
“Mr. Speaker, of course we should not trust Build Canada Homes. It is like anything else with the Liberals. The bureaucracies that they create are inefficient. They do not work, and ultimately, there are no results. My colleague is right to talk about working together with municipalities, and he mentioned an example where there has not been a lot of progress. I also want to caution that this is not just a federal government issue. It is a provincial issue and a municipal issue. Sometimes our municipalities need a little help. They need a little kick in the pants, if I might say that. We need to make sure that we are relying on all of our partners to work together. Sometimes the federal government needs to provide some carrots.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member is not a very good student of history. The Conservatives built lots of houses. That is clear. The member also was not listening to what I was saying. What I said, especially right at the end of my speech, and he could have recalled that, is that is exactly what we need to do. We need to go to municipalities. We need to go directly to them with the bureaucracies that we have, with the minister's department, CMHC and Canada Lands Company. These all exist today. Instead of spending billions of dollars more on a new bureaucracy, we could take that money, talk to municipalities and provinces, find out what needs to be done and get it done. Building a new bureaucracy does nothing. It does nothing for the real problem, which is creating more houses in Canada.”
“There has been 10 years of inaction from our federal government with regard to municipalities. We could take the money that we would put into this bureaucracy and instead use it to find a way to help local governments reduce their development charges and reduce the cost of new houses. The bill is just adding more bureaucracy, and that is what we do not need to do. Conservatives will reduce costs. We will get Ottawa out of the way, and we will allow housing to be built.”
“Of course, energy efficiency is something we need to focus on, but I think we are seeing the conflict between what we truly need for energy efficiency and the Trudeau-era activism that has been going on. These things are colliding in our building codes. Building codes are based on electricity, of course, and that does not help a province such as Saskatchewan, which relies on natural gas to create electricity. Again, there are inconsistencies across our land. Finally, I just want to say what Conservatives want to do. We would like to recognize that builders are frustrated and that bureaucracy is not the solution to the problem we face. We need to work on things like building codes, as I talked about, as well as municipal government development charges and delays. This is another huge issue.”
“It would be good to have the information and have standards that people can work to, but having it mandated does not make a lot of sense. The other issue I want to speak briefly to is accessibility, for example, wheelchair accessibility. It is a good thing to have accessibility in houses that need it, but to mandate it into all houses, which is what the 2025 codes are moving toward, where all houses will need accessible washrooms, wide hallways and wide doorways, does not make sense for 100% of the houses. It does make sense for some houses, but it does not make sense for 100% of the houses. These are the kinds of changes that are being forced onto home builders through the activist methods being used today.”
“It is lateral load. When the wind blows on a house, it needs to stand up. The requirements are getting very complicated and difficult, to the point where one has to, for any house, get it engineered so that the engineer says it is good enough. If not, one needs to add more lumber to make it stronger, which, again, we do not need in lots of places in our country. As for windows, this is a good one. The codes do not want too much sunlight coming into the house, which make the house hotter inside, and this makes sense on a hot summer day. Once again, in a place like Saskatchewan, what is the opposite of a hot summer day? It is a cold January day. On a cold January day, I want the sun to come in through my windows. Here we have a conflict, again, where it does not really make sense to mandate this.”
“That means one cannot build a house in Canada if it does not have air conditioning at some level in a house. I can understand the reason for that, because we do not want to live in hot houses, but that is going to add $3,000 to $5,000 to the cost of every house. There are places in my province where one does not really need air conditioning. One can survive quite well without it. That brings up the imbalance across our country. Trying to have a uniform set of standards across the country is difficult. Mandating this is not a good idea, in my opinion. A lot of of customers will pay for it if they want it, and that is great. That is the way it should be. If one does not want air conditioning, one should not be forced to have it because some activists said we need to have it. Another one is something that is a little more complicated.”
“It also makes a very important point that “building code changes have been driven by political mandates rather than technical evidence.” It goes on, stating, “Examples include operational [greenhouse gas] requirements, which were approved without any stated benefits and without recognition of known zero-emission technologies such as rooftop solar.” CHBA is calling for a pause on implementing these building code changes until these unresolved issues are dealt with. That is pretty significant because it represents the ones who actually have to implement the housing we are trying to do in Canada, and they are the ones calling for a pause. I will give members a couple of examples of this. We all understand air conditioning. It is mandatory in the new building code.”
“(1735) CHBA has observed that Canada's recently renewed building code development system is showing significant gaps and is advocating for a pause on all building code changes (as has been done in Australia for the same reasons) to restore the system, resolve outstanding issues, and ensure future code development supports safe homes, climate goals, affordability and housing objectives. It goes on to say: The high volume of new compliance areas and the high pace at which these significant subjects are being developed without national training or industry capacity support is not only impeding the federal priority to build 500,000 homes per year, it also leaves unfinished and often unclear provisions to builders and officials to solve in the field further reducing current levels of productivity.”
“Codes used to be done based on common sense, but now activists have gotten involved. Whether it is somebody who is an activist for energy, weather or health, there are all kinds of activists getting involved in building codes, and the changes being made are not necessarily based on common sense anymore. Right now there is a fight between cities, provinces and the federal NRC on adopting the new building code because there are some issues. The Canadian Home Builders' Association put out a policy position recently, and I want to read a bit from it: When a code system becomes overloaded or unbalanced, it can however reduce sector productivity, undermine housing affordability, increase risk for builders and limit the ability of builders and renovators to deliver needed housing.”
“Some things are good, but many things are not, and it creates uncertainty for builders and consumers. There is a government agency called the National Research Council that controls building codes. Once it creates a building code, the provinces have to adopt and use it. Cities also have the ability to modify codes and add things to them, which they are notoriously known for doing, and this creates even more complexity. It also creates a discontinuous set of rules across the country, even within a province. Even cities that are side by side can have different building requirements, making it extremely complicated for builders, and these add costs. Right now we are working on the 2025 code. It has not yet been adopted, to my knowledge, anywhere in Canada, but it is being worked on.”
“No matter where a house is built, it adds capacity, and it is another house built in our country. I want to talk today about the federal building code because it is an alternative plan. There are a lot of reasons why we are not building as many houses as we need to be and why houses are as expensive as they are in our country. The bill before us is a possible solution, which we all know is not going to work as it is a bureaucratic solution. I want to raise a real, practical solution, which is the building codes. Right now, the codes update every five years, and they dictate how housing has to be built in our country. There is one consistency in building codes, which is that they always get more complicated, and with complexity comes cost. Every time a new building code rolls around, costs go up. That is just the reality of building codes.”
“It was about 300,000 in 2021, and it just keeps getting lower. In my view, this bill would only reshuffle the chairs on the Liberal housing bureaucracy Titanic. It would not achieve any good result. Why do new homes matter so much? We get a lot of economic prosperity through building houses, the labour put into houses and all the materials that are there. The other interesting thing about building new houses is that it creates more flexibility and more housing in the country. It does not matter if someone is building a house on the smaller scale or the affordable side, where somebody can move into that house. Someone can build on the expensive side as well, and people just keep moving up. Someone will move into that house, which will free up another house.”
“Now there is this fourth organization called Build Canada Homes. This would be an opportunity to give patronage appointments to good Liberal supporters and to funnel a lot of money into the pockets of good Liberal supporters. There would be an advisory council, and I am sure there would be lots of money funnelled to certain people through that. Of course, it would also allow a lot of money to be spent, which is the whole point of these bureaucracies. As we all know, the Liberals are very good at spending money, no matter what. The one thing missing from this act is an actual requirement to build homes. There is nothing in here about that; it is just about establishing the bureaucracy. We need somewhere around 500,000 homes a year to be built. Unfortunately, right now we are building about half that, and that number has been coming down.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek . I am going to start by making sure that everybody is aware that I was a home builder in my previous life. I was a small home builder, but I still believe that I built more houses in 10 years than the government has built in 10 years. Conservatives want to build homes. We do not want to build bureaucracy, whereas Bill C-20 would build bureaucracy and not homes. I think that is pretty clear. The government is great at building bureaucracies. I do not know how many bills have come to the House that have been all about bureaucracy, and this is just another one of them. This bill would establish a new Crown corporation on top of the existing ones. We already have the department, for one, and then there is CMHC and Canada Lands Company.”
“Mr. Speaker, it does not change the fact that the Liberals have created a two-tier health care system that disadvantages ordinary Canadians. The Liberals continue to betray Canadians, putting bogus asylum claimants first by giving them access to health care benefits that regular citizens do not get. We just learned that the government automatically gives residency to refugees from North Korea, Afghanistan and Yemen without even talking to them. Instead of an in-person interview, these Liberals are blindly granting residency, all while giving generous health care benefits. Therefore, I ask again: Will the Liberals support our motion and ensure that asylum claimants do not get better health care than regular Canadians?”
“Mr. Speaker, six million Canadians do not have access to a family doctor, and it takes 30 weeks for the average Canadian to see a specialist. However, the Liberals use Canadian taxpayer dollars to fund a Cadillac health care system for asylum claimants, including free access to glasses and contact lenses, physiotherapy, nursing homes and hearing aids. These are free benefits that regular citizens do not get and this does not come cheap. It cost nearly $1 billion this year. Will the Liberals support our motion and ensure that asylum claimants do not get better health care than regular Canadians?”
“Mr. Speaker, apparently the minister was not around on Tuesday. Extortion is real, and newcomers to Canada are the ones who suffer. Here is an example of an extortion letter from Abbotsford: WARNING...we are Indian gang members, we want our share from your business like protection money.... We are asking only 2 million...in cash...we have links all over do not ignore us, it will efect you realy bad.... we gave you 1 month to decide.... Threats like this one are followed by arson, shootings and murder. If caught, they claim refugee status. Will the government support our motion to stop people who are charged with serious crimes from claiming refugee status in order to avoid justice?”
“Madam Speaker, I am actually very excited to hear about all the co-operation from the Liberal side to allow things that we want to do to come through the House. We are excited to propose good amendments. We are excited to work with the government on legislation that works for Canadians. We will be helpful. We are doing our best to get good legislation. We are not going to pass bad legislation. The Liberals are not going to trick us into passing something bad, but we are very much ready to help good legislation get through the House for Canadians' benefit.”
“Madam Speaker, that is the million-dollar question. There is partisanship in this place. It is alive and well today. When we propose something that is good and constructive, it gets rejected. That is the mode of operating of the Liberal government. We want to see this country work. We want to see legislation that affects people in a positive way passed. We want to be helpful. We want to do what we can. That is why we are proposing amendments that we think are good amendments that everybody can agree with. The problem is that the other side, the Liberal side, tends to say that, just because it came from us, it is a bad idea and therefore they are not going to support it. That happened multiple times on Bill C-12 . I mentioned the example of barring criminals from claiming asylum, which is a great example of that. That is why we need to—”
“Madam Speaker, there are a lot of very specific cases that can be cited, and that is why we have the system that we have. We have to make sure, though, that we are also able to deal with those people who do commit serious crimes in our country. It needs to be very clear that the system cannot be abused. That is what is happening today. People are taking a system that had a very legitimate purpose and are abusing it. The government has done nothing to fix that. It did not even recognize that it was a problem until very recently. It has allowed the queue to grow to 300,000 people, four years' worth of work, before it finally decided to do something. That is why we need to fix this. We need to make sure that this cannot be done again.”
“Madam Speaker, the bad news is that a significant minister of our country is very confused about her own legislation. It is Bill C-12 that is doing this. We were actually very co-operative with the government on the bill. We wanted to see it passed. We supplied many good suggestions and many good amendments, some of which were adopted. Most were not, as I described in my speech. This is what we have been doing to help the House, to get good legislation passed, so that we can protect Canadians from things like this. That is what we want to do, and that is what we will continue to do.”
“There are multiple examples of this. It happens all the time. We need to fix this by undoing Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 so that there are true consequences. The member for Oxford brought in Bill C-242 , which is the jail not bail act. We need to fix Bill C-12 , as I just described, but we also need to implement Bill C-220 , which is from the member for Calgary Nose Hill . It would forbid judges from giving sentencing discounts where it impacts deportation. Criminals who are convicted of a crime greater than six months are subject to deportation, so judges are giving them sentences of less than six months so they are not subject to deportation. (1035) We need to fix this. Something is wrong in Canada. We have to get crime and immigration back under control. The motion today would do that.”
“Because our system cannot process them, 100,000 of those people are simply waiting for security clearance. This why NDP Premier David Eby from British Columbia called the situation “ludicrous”. He said that something had to change, that something has to be different. We proposed these changes. My colleague from Calgary Nose Hill proposed a change like this to Bill C-12 that would have barred asylum claims from people who are convicted of a crime. Premier Eby actually wants to go further by barring people from claiming asylum if they are in a judicial process for a serious crime. We think that is a good idea. We want to partner with the House to make that kind of thing happen. Let us remember that Bill C-5 removed mandatory minimums for extortion with a handgun. There are also sentencing discounts, which allow judges to reduce sentences.”
“This an example of an extortion letter that people are getting, and it is not just one. There were 36 incidents like that in Surrey in the month of January alone. There was a situation on January 19 where a business received a message like that, and their place was shot up overnight. People do not necessarily even report these things. Also in Surrey, there were 15 suspects of this type of crime who were arrested by the police, and they immediately claimed asylum. This a problem in our system. The asylum system is broken. There are 300,000 people in our asylum queue right now waiting for a hearing. That is the size of Saskatoon. The equivalent of the entire city of Saskatoon is currently waiting for nearly four years, which is how long it is going to take to process them.”
“We talk a lot about immigration, and some of my constituents do not necessarily have experience with this, so I want to read this because it is shocking. This is an example of an extortion letter. It says: WARNING...we are...gang members, we want our share from your busineses like protection money. as you seen on news on November...two shotting on houses...were targeted because we asked them [little] money they...denied.... We want...peacefully from you this amount if you...do...business here in abbotsford— This is in Abbotsford. —you have no other way...please make sure do not contact...POLICE.... We asking only 2 million...in cash...here or we might get...INDIA we have links all over do not ignore us, it will efect you realy bad. we will contact you next month we gave you 1 month to decide....”
“Those same youth are faced with high rents while not having a job. They cannot find a place to live. At the same time as that, we are letting in criminals, as I said, because we cannot really screen properly. We have, for example, IRGC members from Iran here in Canada, who have been able to come here, launder their money and have a pretty good life, and they should not be able to do that. We have scam artists who are taking advantage of the immigration system. Let us remember that immigrants are not the criminals here. Immigrants are not the problem. There is a very small fraction of people who are the problem, but when we have a system we can take advantage of, bad things happen. This leads me to the unholy marriage of an out-of-control crime system with an out-of-control immigration system. This is where we find ourselves.”
“It has overwhelmed our system. Sometimes people forget about this, but we have a system in our country that was designed to process tens of thousands of people a year. It has now been dealing with millions of people a year, and it cannot keep up with that volume. Something like security screening, for example, is woefully inadequate and behind. As a result, someone can sneak into our country as a criminal and we probably will not catch it. This is a sad thing to say, but it is the reality. We see it every day. We also have low-wage people coming into the country, which suppresses wages. It gives employers an opportunity to have a temporary foreign worker they can pay a low amount of money to, so Canadians do not have jobs. This is why we have such high unemployment among the youth in our country.”
“We had a system that picked the brightest and the best people because that is what benefited Canada the most. If one talks to an economist, they will say that we should be selecting people who have the potential to earn higher-than-average incomes in our country to bring all of us up as a country. (1030) This worked well, but we also left room to help those in need. We all recognize that there are refugees who come to our country, and we need to help those people too. This system worked, and immigrants would be the first to say that. Then the Liberals completely lost control. They allowed in way too many people, and we have seen the impacts of that on our housing, our jobs and our health care. Trying to buy a house is expensive. Trying to pay rent is expensive. Jobs are hard to find. Our unemployment rate for youth is very high.”