Michelle Rempel Garner
Calgary Nose Hill, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, non-citizens' committing serious crimes in Canada and then getting sweetheart sentences in order to avoid deportation, which the Liberals are letting happen right now, is undermining Canadians' desire for immigration.”
“Mr. Speaker, after a year, how can she put that falsehood forward in the House? People are getting sweetheart sentences in order to avoid deportation. There is a story every week.”
“Mr. Speaker, Conservatives proposed a law that would ensure that non-citizens who commit serious crimes in Canada do not get sweetheart sentences so they can avoid deportation, but the Minister of Immigration voted against it. It is her job to maintain order in Canada's immigration system, but the system is clearly out of control.”
“Mr. Speaker, last year, the leader of the Bloc Québécois said this, referring to Alberta: “I am not certain that oil and gas qualifies” to define a culture. A leftist Canadian podcaster recently claimed, “Alberta has ZERO culture. None.”
“The people who try hard to beat the culture of self-determinism out of my province do so to their own detriment and to the detriment of the entire country. A stronger Alberta in a united Canada means acknowledging and giving thanks for Alberta's culture, and praying hard that Alberta will be lucky enough to get more of it.”
“Of all of the human virtues, these qualities are hardest to master, and there is no harder place to learn them than in front of the screens of millions of Canadians while sitting in the pressure cooker that is the Ottawa bubble as an elected leader. I see my colleague.”
The complete record
Every one of 546 lines we hold for Michelle Rempel Garner, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 11 of 11.
“Mr. Chair, that is baloney. All the statistics show that the government has actually increased those numbers. Meanwhile, Canadians cannot get into an emergency room. Why is the government persisting in bringing in hundreds of thousands of students and temporary foreign workers on temporary visas when people cannot find a job?”
“Mr. Chair, the minister has not. The government is letting in hundreds of thousands of foreign students and temporary foreign workers. Why is the minister persisting in letting in hundreds of thousands of people when Canada is in the middle of a health care crisis?”
“Mr. Chair, again, I have the CBC article right here. The minister asked for a full removal of caps on immigrants. Would she agree that the number of people coming into Canada must be immediately and massively reduced?”
“Mr. Chair, I will be splitting my time three ways. I have an article here from the CBC wherein the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship asked the federal government to fully eliminate the cap on new immigrants, with no limit. Does she still believe that there should be no limits on how many people enter Canada?”
“Rather, it is the Liberals' fault for breaking the immigration system while pushing inflationary spending and job-killing policies. The path forward is abundantly obvious. Conservatives demand that the Liberals immediately—”
“Madam Speaker, today we found out that unemployment has climbed to 7%. Canada's youth face a 14.2% unemployment rate, and Canadian students returning to school this fall face a whopping 20.1% rate. The future outlook is even more grim. TD Bank expects 100,000 job losses this fall, and the Bank of Canada just stated that businesses are planning to significantly reduce hiring, yet the Liberals issued over 500,000 foreign student visas and 101,000 temporary work permits last year and have enabled over 300,000 pending asylum claims, which is roughly a city the size of Ottawa, of non-Canadian labour. This means even bigger competition for scarce jobs. This situation is not fair to anyone, and it is not the fault of the immigrants who came to Canada hoping for a better life.”
“Mr. Speaker, millions of people in Canada are here on expired visas or visas that are about to expire. In order to fix the immigration system, the Canadian public should have publicly disclosed information on how many people exit. Why did the minister not include a departure-tracking mechanism in this bill? Is it because she does not want one?”
“Mr. Speaker, I doubt the hon. member my colleague is referring to who made the comment actually read the bill, because he has not. This is what the bill says. As my colleague across the way mentioned, there are some provisions, although not that one, that could ostensibly, maybe, help fix the mess that the Liberals created themselves. However, there are some things in there so egregious that I think the Liberals put them in there specifically as a poison pill. That means they are not serious about solving these issues and want them to continue. If the Liberals were serious about addressing these issues, they would not have put, as they did in Bill C-63 , poison pill civil liberties issues in there to bottleneck Parliament. I encourage all colleagues in this place to go to the minister and say that this is a dog's breakfast.”
“Mr. Speaker, I do not think anyone in Oakville West would think that going from absolutely crazy, insane levels of car theft to mucho, extra crazy levels of car theft is acceptable. The problem is that the Liberals are saying there was a drop, but it is still out of control. There are people in Oakville who have to buy bollards to put in front of their cars because their cars get stolen. The member talked about the detection of cars. The Liberal government cannot detect cars going out of a port. There is drone warfare happening, and we cannot even detect stolen cars in the port of Montreal.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think we are getting somewhere. I am sure my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois have concerns about some of the deep incursions into provincial jurisdiction as well. Again, we are getting some consensus in debate, and as with Bill C-63 , which had provisions about increased reporting requirements for child pornography, there might be a few things in this bill we can agree to agree on, or at least agree to study. However, there are some that are out of scope and designed to make us choose a false dichotomy. Hopefully, there can be something that resembles work here and that the government understands it has put a dog's breakfast forward and can somehow work something out to try again.”
“Mr. Speaker, as I said, there are elements of this bill that are worthy of study that could make things safer. The problem is that the Liberals have, once again, forced all of us, including my colleague, into a situation where we are supposed to choose between civil liberties and protecting our constituents. I am hoping there can be some sort of resolution here that does not involve that choice. I hope the government would be open to looking for ways to do that so some of the components of the bill that could be deemed acceptable could be studied and perhaps passed. For some of this other stuff that is clearly going to cause contention among everybody, perhaps the Liberals should not have put that in the bill.”
“Mr. Speaker, if 2025 me travelled back in time to 2015 and said, “The government is going to use the Emergencies Act to freeze Canadians' bank accounts and then introduce a bill to criminalize thought crimes and cause news bans,” in 2015, I would have said, “What?” However, that is exactly what happened. Call me skeptical, but I am saying no to any bill that has provisions that give the government more power to take away my right to free speech and my constituents' right to free speech.”
“Mr. Speaker, the government put this bill out and did not explain to Canadians specific instances or why Canadians should be giving up these liberties. I do not think we should be giving them up. It is completely unreasonable for the government to say “just trust us” when there is an entire burden of proof that we should not ignore. I remember the former finance minister, during her description of why the government unlawfully used the Emergencies Act, and she essentially said it was to suspend the rights for financial transactions for Canadians. The whole promise of Canada is freedom, and we do not have—”
“I think the one thing that all of my colleagues from all opposition parties can agree on is this: There are elements in this bill that are worthy of further study that might help fix the mess that the Liberals have made, but we should not have to choose between civil liberties and keeping our country safe.”
“Even if it does not, Bill C-2 can have these snooping provisions and would let foreign governments reciprocate on snooping provisions with all the foreign influence stuff that we have had without a foreign agent registry under this geopolitical situation. The fact that there is nothing in the bill that says what this means is crazy. Also, the government has not shown Canadians any specific situation, evidence or circumstance in granular detail about why we should be giving up our civil liberties to a government that unlawfully used the Emergencies Act and imposed draconian censorship bills, which resulted in news bans in this country. I will not do it.”
“There are things in the bill that give the government unfettered access into telecommunications companies. I am no fan of Canada's telcos' oligopoly, but where we can agree to agree is that I do not want the Liberal government further inserting itself into the management of Canada's telecommunications companies. There is another concerning component as well, which I saw this morning. The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group is sounding the alarm about provisions in Bill C-2 with respect to powers to allow the government to request information from foreign entities. This raises an important question: Will the government allow for reciprocal requests from foreign governments? Let us say Bill C-63 were to pass, too.”
“They did not think about what was in the best interests of their constituents. How do I know that? The Liberals did not put a charter statement in for this. I cannot wait to see that charter statement. It is going to be dance, dance, kitty, dance, I am sure of it. I am positive, because the information that I talked about is personal information. Even if this bill passes, I guarantee it will be challenged all the way up to the Supreme Court. It is not just that. My colleagues have talked about Canada Post opening mail. Was Canada Post consulted on this provision? I heard it was not. My colleagues heard that Canada Post found out about this after the bill was tabled. How are Canada Post employees going to deal with opening up fentanyl envelopes? That is new. What about the telco companies that this provision would affect?”
“I am not being hyperbolic. The government has, over and over again, at every opportunity, taken away Canadians' freedom of speech. Every bill that it has passed has been designed to control speech. My constituents should not have to make that choice. I am going to bet I know what happened with this bill. Some of these departments have had this policy sitting on the shelf for literally years and more savvy ministers have said, “Not today.” More savvy PMOs have said no, but there is a green minister , a green Prime Minister and a perfect cover, which is the fentanyl crisis. Some bureaucrats said that this is harmonizing with other things and that it is not going to have a big implication on Canadian civil liberties, and these guys fell for it. They did not politically question this.”
“At the end of the day, like anything else the government does when it comes to removing civil liberties, it is law-abiding Canadians who get punished, not the criminals. When I read this bill, I see a road map of ways for criminals to avoid being tracked on where they could legally do this snooping stuff. What is going to happen? Hardened criminals who understand how to get around the system are going to get around the system, and then a government, which unlawfully used the Emergencies Act, froze Canadians' bank accounts, introduced censorship bills Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 , and introduced Bill C-63 , wants to insert itself. Can members imagine if the Liberals were to retable Bill C-63, with all of their suspicion of hate crime stuff? That bill would couple with this bill to form a mega Voltron of censorship and oppression.”
“Whether or not I use an online service, or where I use an online service, if I depart from an online service, start an online service or use an online service for an amount of time, everything that Bill C-2 says it would do involves my personal information. That is none of the government's business, certainly not without a warrant. There has to be a line drawn here. The government has severely under resourced our information-gathering departments. Sure, it takes time to get a warrant, but most police departments, after the “defund the police” movement, are so underfunded that they do not have cybercrime units. Now the government is trying to shortcut this by taking away the civil liberties of law-abiding Canadians, and that is not right.”
“Again, I do not understand why the Liberals would have put in this border component, and all of these missed opportunities and the immigration component with the following. There are some pretty big poison pills when it comes to civil liberties that every Canadian should be concerned about. If passed, Bill C-2 would allow CSIS, police and peace officers to demand personal information from online service providers without a warrant, based only on vague suspicions of potential crimes or legal breaches based on any act of Parliament. (1610) The Liberals today said that it is not personal information and we should not worry about it, but guess what.”
“We have to blame the Liberal government for failing the system so badly that people feel their only option is to go underground, into an underground economy where they live in slave-like working conditions. That happens here in Canada. It happens because the Liberal government has failed so profoundly on this file with minister after minister for a decade. The fact that in this bill the Liberals did not have any sort of plan to departure-track, to coordinate information across departments that already gather this information, and to express to Canadians and people who are here on expired visas how they will enable them to leave the country is only going to exacerbate the problem, particularly with the vagueness in some of these provisions. That is a huge problem.”
“First of all, it sends a message to the world that they can have all of the processing on the front end, but there is no consequence on the back end if they do not have a legal right to be in the country. It incentivizes people to come here because they know the system can be abused. The second thing that happens is that it pushes people underground. It creates an underground economy. We have to have empathy for people who come to Canada because there is a promise of Canada. We cannot blame the housing crisis, the health care crisis and the jobs crisis on people who are drawn to our country and our pluralism by every promise that makes it good.”
“She needs to be able to understand and explain why Canadians should vest more power in a minister who does not even know the numbers that are on her own website. The bigger problem that I have with the immigration provisions in the bill is that they do not address the bigger problem that is facing Canada's immigration system right now, which is that the government does not track exits. Did members know that the government does not coordinate information to track when people leave the country? It does not publicly disclose when people who are on expired visas, or who have deportation orders, actually leave. There is no way for parliamentarians to look into the data to see whether the government has enabled people to leave the country when they have no legal right to be here. What happens in that situation?”
“It would delegate more authority to the minister in vague ways, and it would delegate more responsibility into regulation. If there are problems with the system, why are they not just laying it out in this legislation to make it clear so that we will not have endless judicial appeals, which is also part of the problem here? People could appeal and appeal because too much authority would be put onto the minister, and there is vagueness and an endlessly changing regulatory structure. That is part of the problem here too. I need to look at this bill in more detail on those provisions to understand what is happening here. There was the minister 's performance in question period. She should get someone to practise with her. This is not going to get easier for her. Seriously, this is too big of an issue.”
“There are people who apply legally to come into Canada, who do everything right, are waiting for years and never get the chance to come here, or they want their children to come here. The government essentially rolled out the red carpet at Roxham. There was literally a red carpet with the RCMP pulling the luggage across the border and “#WelcomeToCanada”. What do members think happened when the Liberals sent the message “#WelcomeToCanada” to people who were already in upstate New York? They enabled an industry of people. There were human traffickers telling people how to make their way into Canada. What happened was that our asylum system was broken. It was abused. Now, the Liberals have this bill, which has a few minor provisions that would do a couple of things that I am concerned about.”
“Guess what: It was like I was Cassandra, doomed to know the future and have the Liberals call me racist. Honestly, what did the Liberals have to do last year? They had to reverse the visa imposition on Mexico. Then there was the next Cassandra moment. I said that maybe we should not let people who have reached the safety of upstate New York illegally cross the border into Canada and then claim benefits here while their asylum claims, which will likely be rejected, linger for years in Canada's broken asylum system, which the Liberals broke. (1605) I said that maybe we should close the loophole in the safe third country agreement. Once again, the implication was that Canada was anti-immigrant if we were to suggest that we restore order, balance and fairness.”
“The Canadian consensus on immigration can be boiled down to this: Do not bring more people into the country than our social and economic infrastructure can handle. By that I mean our health care system, our education system, and our capacity to provide language acquisition and provide jobs and housing as well. That is the basic consensus that our pluralism is based on, because if people are housed, if they have access to work, if they have access to health care and if they can speak one of Canada's official languages, then pluralism can be maintained, but the Liberals broke that promise. I remember that in 2016, first of all, the Liberal government essentially implied that I was racist for suggesting that the Liberals should not lift the visa requirement on Mexico, because there would be false asylum claims made.”
“As the leader of the Conservative Party said during the election, these are mass murderers, and they should be treated as such. The Liberals also failed to put in place compassionate measures that would allow for life-saving intervention for people who have lost agency due to addiction. These are the measures that we need to actually stop the drug production crisis in Canada. Are there other things? Sure there are. Are there things in this bill that Parliament could look at? Sure, but again, the Liberals have purposely structured a bill where Canadians have to choose between their civil liberties and trying to fix a deadly mess that the Liberals made. On immigration, here is a little history for colleagues who are new to this place.”
“That is a false dichotomy and something that this place should reject. I am going to briefly talk about two components of the bill. I am going to talk about some of the border issues and immigration, and then I want to talk about the civil liberties component very briefly. This bill is a missed opportunity, on the fentanyl and addiction crisis, to address the real problems of how we got here: the Liberals' catch-and-release bail policies. They could have tabled a bill on that, but they did not, so we are now forced to review this omnibus legislation without understanding whether or not the Liberals are going to address the true cause of this problem: the fact that they do not penalize people who produce these drugs. The Liberals could have increased penalties for people who produce these drugs.”
“There are people across the aisle who will get their backs up on this situation, but it is the reason we have zombie-like people walking across the streets of urban Canada and rural Canada. Our mothers, our daughters, our husbands, everybody from every demographic has been touched by the crisis that was caused by these extremely failed, ill-sighted policies that literally everybody was telling the Liberals were wrong, but they persisted. Today, we have this omnibus bill in front of us. As the Liberals did in the former Parliament with Bill C-63 , the so-called online harms bill, this bill is trying to suggest to Canadians a false dichotomy: that Canadians have to choose between their civil liberties and fixing epic messes with deadly consequences that the Liberal government set up.”
“A currently sitting Liberal member of Parliament even went as far as to table a bill that aimed to fully legalize all hard street drugs across the country. Then, in 2021, British Columbia's NDP government formally applied for a subsection 56(1) exemption under Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, requesting permission to effectively legalize possession of hard drugs, including fentanyl. In early 2022, Trudeau's federal Liberal government approved the request and allowed for a three-year pilot program. The program was expansive. The government even went as far as to set guidelines that would have allowed recreational fentanyl to be legally provided to children. The results were deadly.”
“However, Trudeau's incoming government, as well as Horgan's in British Columbia, all had long-held beliefs that so-called harm reduction, taxpayer-funded hard drugs and the effective legalization of hard drug possession were superior public policy alternatives on hard drug crime to those of their predecessors on the political right. Between 2015 and 2023, these governments went on to usher in a dramatic shift away from government policy that focused on criminalizing hard drug production and trafficking. (1600) At the federal level, the Liberal government expanded access to hard drug injection sites, ended mandatory minimum penalties for major hard drug offences and softened bail criteria for all crimes, including those related to the production and trafficking of hard drugs.”
“At that time, precisely the same time that the Canadian political landscape changed, Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau had a farther left platform, to put it mildly, than his predecessor government. In 2017, an ultra-left version of the NDP, led by the late premier John Horgan, formed government at the subnational level in the province of British Columbia, the region hardest hit by the drug. Prior to 2015, right-of-centre governments favoured a crackdown on criminal activity related to the emerging problem of fentanyl, coupled with enhanced recovery programs for addicts.”
“I rise today in debate on Bill C-2 , a 160-page omnibus bill from the Liberal government that raises serious concerns about the capacity of the government to address several crises of its own making. These were not problems prior to the Liberal government taking office in 2015: a rapid influx of migrants that Canada's social and economic infrastructure could not sustain; an open and porous border; and an illegal drug production, trafficking and addiction crisis. I would like to start with the issue of Canada's fentanyl crisis, because it is important context for new colleagues to understand how we got here. A decade of ultra-progressive policies juiced a deadly problem that really came into prevalence in late 2015.”
“With that, I would like to acknowledge the six other women in the 45th Parliament who are now part of the “been around for a hot minute and have seen some things” five terms or more club: the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek , the member for Brossard—Saint-Lambert , the member for Vancouver Centre , the member for Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke , the member for Humber River—Black Creek and the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands . I thank my husband Jeff, my family, my staff, my volunteers and the good people of Calgary Nose Hill, with a special and deeply profound thanks to Sean Schnell, his wife Leeta and their children Charlize and Easton for bringing me to this place today. Colleagues, I pledge the true pledge of being a member of Parliament: to do my job, which is to hold the government to account to the best of my ability. Let us begin.”
“Getting here has meant that I have had to learn a lot of lessons: how to win primaries, the value of having my dogma challenged, how to earn the trust of my community and my colleagues, how to survive being in a government after an election loss and how to thrive in opposition, how to navigate leadership changes, which battles to pick and which ones to walk away from, but most importantly, how to be humble while refusing to let my voice be silenced.”
“On April 28, 2025, I was honoured to be re-elected by my constituents and joined the ranks of some of those giants, women like Agnes Mcphail, Flora MacDonald, Ellen Fairclough, Rona Ambrose, Sheila Copps and Alexa McDonough. The gravity and honour of standing here, once again, is hitting a little harder this time around. I am here on behalf of, and thanks to, another special and unique group of people, the people of Calgary Nose Hill, who are unique and special in this particular area of Canadian history too. The people I represent, in a riding that has existed for decades, have only ever elected a woman into federal office. Prior to me, my predecessor, Diane Ablonczy, served as a member of Parliament in an even more select group: women who have served as members of Parliament for seven or more terms.”
“Mr. Speaker, as I rise in debate for the first time in this 45th Parliament, I would like to present colleagues with some statistics about what a rare and unique privilege it is to serve in this place, if they will give me the floor. Of the millions upon millions of people who have lived in Canada throughout its entire history, fewer than 5,000 individual Canadians have served as members of Parliament. Of that number, fewer than 450 have been women, and of that number, by my count anyway, fewer than 40 Canadian women in the history of our country have been chosen to serve as a member of Parliament for five or more terms.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Earlier in question period, the Minister of Immigration accused me of misleading the House. I would like permission to table the date I referred to, which was from her website. It might help her out. I can deliver it by the page if that is what she would like. It is— Some hon. members: No.”
“Mr. Speaker, I got the numbers from the minister's website; I went onto the website and read them. In the middle of a housing crisis, she brought 500,000 people to Canada. These people compete with Canadians for jobs, and they require housing and health care. If the minister's department's numbers are not the real numbers, what are the real numbers?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals promised to cap foreign study permits, which also allow people to work in Canada, but new data shows that the Liberals blew their cap out of the water by handing out a whopping 500,000 foreign study permits last year, roughly the same population as all of Halifax. Why did the Liberals bring half a million foreign students to Canada during a massive housing shortage and while youth in Canada cannot find a job?”
“These snooping provisions are a massive poison pill that should not have been included in this bill. Why, as they did with Bill C-63 , are the Liberals making Canadians choose between their civil liberties and safety and fixing the broken immigration system that the Liberals broke themselves?”
“Mr. Speaker, if Bill C-2 passes, it would allow CSIS, police and peace officers to demand personal info from online service providers without a warrant based only on vague suspicions of potential crime or legal breaches of any act of Parliament. Whether or not a Canadian uses an online service, where they use it and when they use it are personal information, and the government has not provided a charter statement for the same. With Bill C-2 , combined with Bill C-63 , the government could target whatever it deems to be spreading hateful content. Bill C-2 would combine with Bill C-63 to essentially form Voltron -type censorship. The government has not indicated what policy concerns, aside from vague references to security, these provisions are needed for.”
“Mr. Speaker, just to reiterate, by the end of this year, nearly five million people will be in Canada with expired or expiring visas, and the government has no plan for how it is going to get them to leave. We have a housing crisis, a youth jobs crisis and a health care wait-time crisis. Knowing this, the Liberals have already issued nearly 177,000 new temporary foreign work permits this year, a 10% increase from the last quarter. That is the same amount of people as in Kelowna. With a youth unemployment crisis, why did the government increase the number of temporary work permits this year?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals invited millions of migrants into Canada, knowing full well they did not have the economic and social infrastructure to support them. Canada now has a massive housing crisis, endless health care wait times and countless Canadian youth without jobs. Newcomers themselves are not to blame. It is the Liberals who misled everybody about Canada's capacity to absorb millions, especially under their government's economy-killing policies. Millions of people are now in Canada with expired or imminently expiring visas. How is the government going to ensure that they will leave?”