“Will you stop using those rules to let dangerous criminals stay in our country longer?”
What they said. What they meant.
Plain-language translations from the House of Commons.
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A bill to make many changes to Canada's immigration and border control laws. During debate, Conservatives asked questions about specific cases and raised concerns about fraud, while the Liberal minister responded but often discussed unrelated topics like Canada Summer Jobs and praised a Liberal colleague.
“I don't want to answer that. The IRB says it won't happen much. It's not a big deal.”
“You said these rules will be used sometimes. If a criminal stays in Canada because of them, will you take responsibility for that?”
“We are focused on removing criminals. I am saying nothing about the rules you asked about.”
“The government doesn't know when temporary residents leave. You can't dodge that by talking about independence.”
“You caught me. I'm filling time with kind words and saying nothing anyone could pin down later.”
“Did you really have no way to track who leaves the country until now? Are you saying that's what was happening on your watch?”
“We could review some cases before. But we did not have a comprehensive system to track everyone leaving until now. I want you to think I am just fixing a problem. Do not ask why we did not do this earlier.”
“Why did you let in so many people without a way to track them leaving?”
“We didn't have an exit tracking system before. Now we're building one.”
“The government let in millions of people using a broken system. They expect 160,000 people per month to leave, but they can't confirm that they are. That's concerning.”
“The system is working. We are helping temporary residents follow the law.”
“I want you to admit the real numbers leaving, not just give happy talk.”
“I won't give the real numbers you asked for. Instead let me change the subject and talk about the small number of bad people we remove.”
“I want to skip your question about undocumented people and talk about rules for temporary residents instead.”
“You know the rules. How many undocumented people are in Canada? I think you are hiding the number.”
“I will talk about fraud detection and removal instead of the number you asked for.”
“Avoiding my question won't work. I want the number of undocumented people. I think there are many, and you don't have a real answer.”
“I don't want to give you the number you asked for. I will talk about other things instead. Look, we did some stuff. Doesn't that sound good?”
“You don't want to answer my question, so I'll ask it again more directly. Are there half a million people in Canada who shouldn't be here?”