Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has lost track of over 28,000 foreign fugitives who have active deportation orders, according to newly released documents, with hundreds having prior criminal convictions in Canada or abroad.
The information was provided in a response to an Inquiry of Ministry filed by Conservative MP Brad Redekopp, the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
Someone, somewhere, appears to have taken a blowtorch to Canada’s immigration system. It’s a mess. We have too many people, and not enough homes, not enough transit, not enough health care infrastructure. International students are lining up at food banks and homeless shelters. Canadians’ attitudes on immigration are becoming more negative.
Who set fire to our once-enviable immigration system? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on a mission to find out. Just as soon as he gets all of this soot out of his hair.
Among this week’s many disturbing revelations about the Trudeau government’s official indifference to Beijing’s interference operations during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, what might come as the biggest shock to most Canadians is just how easy it was for Chinese high school students to be bused in to vote for Beijing’s favoured candidate in a Liberal party nomination race in the Ontario riding of Don Valley North.
Canada is battling a 130 percent spike in the number of Mexicans, Haitians, and others seeking asylum there, overwhelming shelters and leaving officials scrambling with an $822 million crisis.
Shelter systems in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, and other Canadian cities are over capacity, prompting its liberal government to take steps to deter the flows of people north.
Canada’s migrant headache mirrors similar problems seen in the US, Britain, and the European Union, which are all struggling to cope with their own influxes of people from poorer countries.
Canada’s electronic spying agency obtained “significant” intelligence related to the “distribution of funds” shortly after the 2021 elections, the interference inquiry heard April 4.
The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is responsible for collecting signals intelligence (SIGINT) and generally cannot collect intelligence on Canadians or in Canada. Information presented to the inquiry suggests it was able to intercept or hack into foreign communications to retrieve information about elections interference.
From 2021 to 2022, the number of international students in Canada grew 116 per cent. In 2023, it rose another 60 per cent, to roughly 900,000. In 2000, Canada had just 122,665 international students. We now have seven times that number.
Part of the problem is a rush in applications after pandemic restrictions were lifted. But Ottawa predicts the growth in applications will continue — reaching 1.4 million in 2027. If so, foreign students will continue to be a significant element in Canada’s record population growth — and in the attendant pressure on housing, infrastructure and health care.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pushed back Thursday on comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about an Israeli military airstrike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza, including one Canadian.
In a video statement released earlier this week, Netanyahu expressed regret over the incident and called it a “tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip.” He also said “this happens in wartime” and that Israel was looking into the situation.
“No, it doesn’t just happen,” Trudeau said Thursday during an event in Winnipeg. “And it shouldn’t just happen when you have aid workers for an extraordinary organization like World Central Kitchen risking their lives every day in an incredibly dangerous place to deliver food to people who are experiencing a horrific humanitarian catastrophe.”
Netanyahu won’t be losing sleep.
Last summer, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a master class in the art of tone deafness when he said the following: “I’ll be blunt as well — housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility. It’s not something that we have direct carriage of, but it is something that we can and must help with.”
Today, however, Canadians could be forgiven if they assumed that housing was the federal government’s only responsibility because at present it seems the prime minister can’t roll out new housing announcements fast enough.
A Windsor police officer is asking an Ontario court to review his discreditable conduct charge for donating $50 to the Freedom Convoy protest in 2022.
Constable Michael Brisco is petitioning the Ontario Divisional Court in Toronto to review the decisions made in his case.
Canada’s largest bank is warning that housing has never been less affordable. New data from RBC shows housing affordability is now the worst it has ever been as of Q4 2023. Income failed to keep up with mortgage payments, resulting in affordability erosion in every market they track. Forecast interest rate cuts are expected to make a slight improvement, but not much.
Jurisdictional jousting has begun over federal funding for housing projects as provincial leaders tell the Trudeau government to stay in its lane.
Over the last week, the Trudeau Liberals have announced billions in funding to kick-start home building in the country. Much of that money comes with conditions that the provinces meet certain criteria and a number of benchmarks.
“This is a significant overreach by the federal government to come in and attempt to nationalize housing,” said Jason Nixon, Alberta’s Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dodged questions about MP Han Dong after an intelligence report presented at the foreign interference inquiry said Mr. Dong advised a Chinese official on the two Michaels’ detention in China.
“Foreign interference is a real challenge,” responded Mr. Trudeau when asked by reporters about the information and whether it changes his opinion of Mr. Dong’s fitness for caucus.
When pressed by reporters about not having answered the question, Mr. Trudeau said “obviously, these are ongoing conversations that need to be taken very seriously.”
Inarguably bigger and more seasoned than it was when it was born from the ashes of the Second World War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — the West’s great military alliance — celebrated a milestone Thursday: three-quarters of a century of keeping the peace in Europe.
NATO formally came into being with the signing of the Washington Treaty in the U.S. capital 75 years ago, when 12 western democracies — including Canada — banded together against what they saw as Soviet Russia’s expansionism in Europe.
Its creation helped to inaugurate the Cold War and, six years later, brought about the creation of the rival Warsaw Pact of communist countries, led by the Soviet Union.
The flurry of housing announcements by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in recent days just proves that nothing is ever new in politics.
When governments are in trouble at the polls, they start throwing our money at the wall, hoping enough of it sticks to boost their sagging political fortunes.
Federally-funded women’s contraception can safely be said to do one thing: maintain the Liberals’ feminist image.
It won’t realistically improve access for most among the young and the poor, because most provinces already offer targeted coverage for these groups. It won’t help the privately insured. It will provide a nice, but unnecessary, break to everyone else who can front the mild cost. And for those women who don’t want to use any medically prescribed contraception, it provides nothing.
