OTTAWA — With another wave of illegal immigration threatening the Canadian border, Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel said Tuesday that she wants the Trudeau goverment to take “immediate action” to secure the borders and stop illegal immigrants from crossing.
So far this year, more than three times as many people have illegally entered Canada — in the province of Quebec alone — than in 2017.
“This is the second summer that we’re going into a potential immigration crisis without a plan,” the Calgary Member of Parliament told reporters. The official opposition Conservatives tabled a motion Tuesday that insists that Liberal government address the chronic border crisis that threatens to be even worse than last summer’s experience, when tens of thousands of Haitians illegally came into Canada at a remote and unofficial crossing on the New York-Quebec border.
Almost 5,000 have already illegally entered the province since January.
Rempel says if the Liberals do nothing to impede unrestricted illegal immigration Canadians will begin to pushback against immigration in general.
“My concern is that if the government does not take steps to rectify [its] failure to manage our borders, we are going to rapidly see Canadians lose that social licence for immigration, because there will be a lack of faith in the ability of the government to ensure planned and orderly migration,” Rempel told reporters.
The Liberal government has allocated most new spending in the federal immigration department not for border security but for “protection of refugees” and family reunification programs. It also intends to reduce the pressure on the Quebec border by diverting illegals to other parts of Canada.
Rempel says the Trudeau government needs a better plan. “They knew that this was going to happen and they have done absolutely nothing to restore order and to manage our borders.”