“I want Quebec to get less asylum seekers. I think we have too many.”
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.
“Does the minister think all the provinces should take in the same number of asylum seekers?”
“Okay, let's steer this back to a really broad-brush question. Does the minister think in general that refugees should be distributed evenly across different provinces? I'm not getting into details here.”
“You're dodging the question. Do you agree the money should be split evenly between provinces?”
“Just tell me yes or no, should we split up refugees between all the provinces?”
“You didn't answer the question. I'll ask again and maybe you'll look bad if you don't answer.”
“You say you're working on it. So tell me the concrete steps.”
“I want the minister to agree with me that Quebec shouldn't have to bear the cost and French-language burden of too many asylum seekers. I'm asking if the minister will restart an old committee to spread them out more evenly.”
“I want the minister to admit her plan to distribute asylum seekers evenly has failed since Quebec still has 39% of them.”
“Quebec has fewer asylum seekers, yes, but I need you to look bad anyway. The share of asylum seekers in Quebec is too high. Your work was bad and you should say so.”
“You haven't fixed it. Last guy must have been useless too.”
“The last guy screwed up, didn't he? When will you admit nothing got better?”
“Why hasn't this problem fixed itself yet? Some provinces should fix it.”
“I want Quebec to stop taking so many asylum seekers. I'm trying to whip up outrage by saying our large share is a bad thing.”
“How can you call it a success when Quebec still gets nearly twice as many asylum seekers as it should? This situation is not good enough.”
“Whether the number went down doesn't matter. Quebec still takes too many asylum seekers. I don't care about any progress. Only Quebec's share today matters.”
“I want to put you on the spot and make you admit your policy is failing.”
“The numbers still say Quebec is taking way more than its share. Try harder.”
“It's still bad. Why won't you admit nothing has improved?”
“You should know Europe has ways to distribute asylum seekers. Why don't we do that?”