QUESTION PERIOD — Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Immigration System
November 6, 2024
Leader, my question is a follow-up to one I asked last week regarding the terrible mismanagement of Canada’s immigration system by the NDP-Liberals.
I previously raised with you a media report which indicated that cabinet ministers attending an affordability retreat in August 2023 were briefed that their government was undercounting the number of people in Canada and underestimating the number of homes needed.
Last year, I asked you about media reports of international students who were homeless, living under a bridge or in cars.
These questions, like so many others that we pose, were just brushed aside. Leader, why didn’t your government take any of these warnings seriously?
Thank you for your question. Neither I nor this government is brushing aside the legitimate concerns that students or, indeed, Canadians are facing with regard to housing.
It has taken steps to recalibrate our immigration levels in order to take that into account, and in that regard, the minister has been forthcoming and candid. And on housing, the government has made major investments and initiated major programs to increase, accelerate and help encourage the creation of new housing.
I will not repeat what I have said before about how this program has been received by the leader of your party or by caucus members who rather like aspects of the government’s program, but this is not a question of the government being indifferent. Quite on the contrary, it is being responsible.
In January, the Mayor of Brampton, Ontario, revealed that city officials had found 25 international students living in a single basement apartment. He said that wasn’t the first such instance they had discovered. How many similar occurrences is the NDP-Liberal government aware of over the last several years — not just in Brampton, but across Canada?
The fact that students or anyone should be living in such cramped quarters is unacceptable. I will not play political football. The question could very well be asked of the Ontario government, which allowed institutions to churn and mislead students into coming here without proper support and without properly understanding what they were getting into. The fact is that the government is seized with this issue and has taken steps to remediate it.
