Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Bill
Third Reading--Debate Adjourned
March 10, 2026
Honourable senators, I rise today with mixed emotions and concerns to participate in the debate on the main motion of Bill C-12.
Honourable colleagues, I still remember the day I became a permanent resident of Canada and the feeling of holding that PR card in my hand. For me, coming to Canada meant stability, fairness and a life governed by the rule of law, equality and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is a country where the rules are known, applied consistently and can be relied upon when planning a future, a life and, of course, a livelihood.
Like many of you in this chamber, I was not born in Canada. I chose Canada. I came here as a young man. I wanted the best place in the world to raise a family. I wanted a place where hard work could translate into progress. Canada offered me that. It gave me the ability to build companies and participate in public life. It allowed me to create employment and contribute meaningfully to the country I had chosen.
In time, and in addition to establishing and running successful businesses, I, together with our former colleague, the Honourable Ratna Omidvar, had the honour of cofounding Lifeline Syria, which helped nearly 1,200 Syrian refugees become privately sponsored and to resettle in Canada. I helped establish a Canadian think-and-do tank to better understand and support the aspirations of one of the marginalized and racialized communities in Canada.
Through that work, I have seen Canada at its best: generous, principled and welcoming. However, I have also seen where our system does not function as well as it should. I have met engineers who are not engineering, internationally trained doctors who cannot help patients and other highly skilled professionals of all sorts who remain underemployed while our economy faces shortages. There are so many stories of individuals and their families who are held back from success due to economic inefficiencies and personal grief.
I understand that Canadians have questions about our immigration system, but many of those questions focus on how we support our labour market, ensure those coming here are set up to support themselves and make certain that everyone has access to services, housing and the like.
I believe we should do more to match newcomers with employment in their field upon arrival. Conditional job offers prior to arrival, supervised practice arrangements, bridging programs and more support for equivalency tests are worth serious consideration. This is a vision that focuses on capitalizing on the global demand to live in and contribute to this wonderful country.
When we bring folks in and help them to integrate quickly, they earn higher incomes, contribute more to taxes and often create employment for others. Integration is not only compassion; it is productivity, social cohesion and opportunity.
But, colleagues, this is not a speech about what we can do right. It is a speech about Bill C-12.
Bill C-12, as written, does very little to address my concerns with respect to Canada’s immigration system. Expanding discretionary powers and setting arbitrary timelines are not steps that strengthen confidence. They feed uncertainty and stoke fear among Canadians, who see this as a signal that their system is failing, and among those considering making a life in Canada, who perceive this as a shift away from clear rules toward a murkier, more personality-driven system.
After reviewing this legislation, I have concluded that Bill C-12 is a bill about trust. Trust is what allows individuals to choose Canada and invest in their future here. Trust is what allows international students to commit to our institutions and employers to plan hiring decisions. It is also what allows families to organize their lives with confidence. Trust is Canada’s greatest resource. We inspire it, and it inspires so many to want to come here to build a life.
Parts 5, 7 and 8 of this bill gave me pause because they risk reducing trust in our system. The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs said as much in their report. Our colleagues at the committee conducted a rigorous study of the immigration provisions. They heard from 35 witnesses and ultimately recommended the total deletion of Parts 5 through 8. Yet the Standing Senate Committee on National Security reported the bill without a single amendment. I will speak more to that in a moment.
I’m so pleased to see that Senator Senior’s amendment has passed. That gives me more comfort, but it does not address other parts of the bill.
I will speak to the substance of Part 5 and in particular clause 28, which enables broad disclosure of personal information. As currently drafted — and I’m pleased that it has now been amended — this clause would have resulted in naturalized citizens being treated differently from Canadian-born citizens. It would place newcomers and migrants at particular risk — one that Canadian-born citizens do not face.
Part 7 of this bill grants cabinet the authority to suspend or cancel immigration documents in the public interest. That phrase is too broadly defined. At the Social Affairs Committee, members heard concerns that this authority could permit category-wide cancellations of permits.
As an entrepreneur, I know that trust is the foundation of investment. If a worker, a student or a business owner can have their status documents revoked by cabinet without a clear process, we risk giving people reason to question whether the system will be there for them and whether they will have the opportunity to defend themselves and make their own case. Government officials have argued this will only be used in the most appropriate of circumstances. “Trust us,” they say.
Part 8 introduces a one-year bar for refugee claimants. The evidence I read from committee said that this measure would affect many recent claimants. In my work with Lifeline Syria, I saw that rigid timelines affect vulnerable people the most. They need help to learn the system, help to understand the system and help to trust the system.
At the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs, I brought forward amendments to build back trust in this bill on information sharing and on the provisions I have mentioned tonight. Those amendments did not carry.
Colleagues, when a subject-matter committee hears virtually unanimous expressions of concern from witnesses when they identify significant risks to the rule of law, risks to constitutionality and risks to the trust on which our system is built, I believe it is incumbent upon all of us to examine those concerns carefully. I have not heard a single witness who is not a government official suggest that this bill should pass without adjustment.
It is therefore a matter of record that the Senate had an opportunity to refine these provisions at the committee stage and chose not to do so. If we describe ourselves as the chamber of sober second thought, we must take seriously the findings of the committees we task with detailed study.
Colleagues, I will not be introducing any amendments today or in the coming days, but I will support amendments — as I and many of you have done today — that improve this legislation.
Canada has been generous to me. Like so many others, I chose this country because it is governed by clear rules and strong institutions. It is a place where people can understand the system and rely on it as they build their future. We have a strong immigration system in Canada — one that is firm and credible. And while it may require improvements, I do not believe it will be strengthened by concentrating power and establishing arbitrary timelines.
I look forward to the debate on these matters at third reading, as we are doing today. I want to thank you for all your contributions, for listening to me and for your consideration of all the amendments in front of us. Thank you. Meegwetch. Shukran.
Would Senator Al Zaibak entertain a question?
With pleasure.
Thank you, Senator Al Zaibak. I have a couple of questions. I’ve been listening to the debate with a great deal of interest. Not so much in your case but in other interventions, there seems to be this suspicion that danger is lurking around the corner and that somehow Canada has something to worry about — not necessarily with this government but maybe with future governments.
Wouldn’t you agree that regardless of the governments in power, particularly in the last 70 or 80 years in this country, Canada has the most generous immigration history on this earth? We have been one of the most welcoming countries regardless of whether we had Conservative or Liberal governments and minister after minister. I pale at the thought that there is a country on this earth that has been more open and more generous than Canada.
That’s the first question. The second question I have is the following: There seems to be a rush to save the privacy of citizens and immigrants and applicants in this country because all of a sudden, we think we see something new in this bill, and it is not.
I started my working life as an intern to the Minister of Immigration in 1986. I can go right to the website of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, and there is the policy on information sharing before this bill becomes law. It’s been the policy for decades. IRCC shares applicant information including biometrics, travel history and status with federal, provincial and international partners, notably our U.S. partner, to ensure program integrity and border security and to detect fraud, security checks, et cetera. It goes on. What exactly are we trying to protect in information sharing that hasn’t been protected for the last 70 years?
Thank you, Senator Housakos. On the first question, I fully agree with you that Canada has one of the best immigration systems in the world. There is no doubt about that. However, there have been concerns. During the past 15 years, there have been calls — you may remember this — that give me concern about any change to the system of which we are so proud. There were calls about notions of barbaric cultural practices back in 2015, I believe, which targeted marginalized and racialized communities and threatened their belief in our system, in our principles and in our rule of law. I don’t know whether you recall those calls at that time in 2015 and also prior to that. In answering —
I’m sorry to interrupt, Senator Al Zaibak, but your time has expired. Are you asking for more time to answer Senator Housakos’ questions?
Yes.
Is leave granted, honourable senators?
Thank you, colleagues.
Prior to that, my honourable colleague Senator Woo referred to the case of Maher Arar. This is in answer to your second question about the sharing of information. I personally don’t have any issues or concerns with having information shared among departments and provinces and territories in Canada. I know what Canadians stand for. But sharing information about Canadian citizens — regardless of where they are born — with foreign entities can be dangerous, whether it’s shared by design or by coincidence with foreign entities. Once it goes out of our control, we don’t know how that information can be used or abused.
Maher Arar is a case in point. He is a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin. He was coming back from a visit to his wife’s country of Tunisia. He was intercepted in New York based on information provided by our government and sent to Jordan first and then to Syria. For two years, he was tortured. When he returned to Canada, he was totally traumatized. The entire Canadian-Arab and Canadian-Muslim communities were also traumatized. The government had to deal with the consequences of that. You may recall this case cost the government a settlement of, I think, $10 million or more. Many other examples followed as well. I hope that answers your questions dealing with my concerns.
Actually, it far from answers my question. Number one, you brought up a particular case of an ill-thought-out policy by a political party in 2015 that faced the consequences of the electorate for that ill-taken decision. It has nothing to do with legislation. It never came to pass, thank God.
Number two, and more importantly, you are bringing up specific cases where there was misinformation or where information was misjudged or exchanged in the most nefarious fashion or ill-intended fashion, and the consequences, again, were paid. Justice was found, even though, along the way, it was perfectly imperfect.
My point is very simple. When it comes to barometric information — information in terms of criminal cases — the exchange of all sorts of information is conducted on a daily basis by Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, and by all of our partners. When Canadians are applying for immigration abroad, there is a massive exchange of information between countries. When we are evaluating immigration cases, there has always been a massive exchange of information long before Bill C-12 ever hit our table.
Do you have any better alternatives for evaluating the validity of somebody who is applying to come into the country, ticking off the necessary boxes that all Canadians want when it comes to health checks, criminal checks, financial background, so on and so forth, before we grant someone citizenship?
Thank you for repeating the question. I may be able to elaborate on that.
As I mentioned, I have no issue at all with sharing information among our departments and checking the information before granting entry. That is what we pride ourselves on.
When we have newcomers arriving here as landed immigrants, we know that stringent due diligence has been done on various fronts: criminal, security and professional. That makes our system one of the best in the world.
Although we have one of the best immigration systems in the world, abuses have occurred. With creeping changes that weaken the system, I am afraid that more abuses can be —
The time has expired. Thank you.
Honourable senators, I hadn’t planned on speaking, but over the past few weeks I have found myself reflecting deeply on this place and my place in it. Do I fit here? Do I need to fit here? More importantly, do I want to fit here?
A couple of weeks ago, my esteemed colleague, my dear friend Senator Peter Harder, framed the question in this way: Are we institutionalists or activists? I started reflecting on that.
As most of you know, I often speak of “two-eyed seeing,” a principle articulated by Elder Albert Marshall of Eskasoni, Nova Scotia. Two-eyed seeing teaches us to see from one eye with the strengths of our Mi’kmaw ways of knowing and from the other eye with the strengths of western systems, and to use both together for the benefit of all. So I applied that teaching here to our chamber, our work and this debate on Bill C-12.
First, I realize that I am both an institutionalist and an activist. I am an institutionalist because I really respect this chamber, its history, its constitutional role and the enormous responsibility we carry as a place of sober second thought.
I realize that, at heart, I am very much an activist because I carry the lived realities of people who, too often, feel that the system is built around them but not with them, people who feel that processes move on paper while our lives still stand still, and people who want fairness but not as an abstraction. Two-eyed seeing doesn’t allow me to choose one identity and abandon the other. It does something more demanding: It requires me to hold both responsibly.
So, colleagues, we’ve heard some thoughtful and serious interventions in this debate, including those of Senator Dean, Senator Senior and Senator Housakos. I thank you for that.
However, I also want to speak not only about the provisions before us but about the posture we bring to our scrutiny because posture shapes outcomes.
Honourable senators, part of what I’ve been wrestling with is this: The discipline of sober second thought can so easily become confused with something else, something more corrosive. I don’t like always speaking from a deficit.
Our role is to examine, test, probe and improve, but scrutiny doesn’t require cynicism, and rigour doesn’t demand distrust. We can carefully study something without starting from the deficit that there is something wrong, that there is something suspect.
I agree with what Senator Housakos was saying. We can’t live in a society where we always look at what is wrong. We have to start with the premise that the system works.
Colleagues, we live in a time in which confidence is fragile, political polarization is deepening, and conspiratorial thinking and populism are gaining ground globally. People are told every day that institutions can’t be trusted, public servants can’t be trusted, courts can’t be trusted, and in some cases, elections can’t be trusted.
Yes, we must be vigilant, but we also have to be responsible with our words.
In public discourse right now, there is a temptation to speak as though any attempt to recalibrate a system is, by definition, an assault on rights, and any mention of integrity or scrutiny is, by definition, an expression of fear.
I don’t subscribe to those views. With my two-eyed seeing, that is not the kind of absolutism that I hold. Immigration systems do not operate in abstraction; they operate within finite, administrative capacities in complex geopolitical times and increasingly global displacement. They operate in our real communities that must plan for housing, health care, schooling and settlement support. They operate under pressures, which if unaddressed, will produce more delays, inconsistencies and unfairness. That is the institutional responsibility that I speak of.
Senators, a restructuring of timelines is not automatically a denial of rights. An effort to close gaps in inconsistency is not automatically an attack on compassion. An existence of discretion is not automatically a power grab. Discretion exists throughout our whole statutory framework. The real question is whether it is exercised within constitutional constraints, whether it is reviewable, whether it’s guided and whether it can be challenged when wrongly used.
Now, colleagues, I’m sure you’re at the point where you are saying, “Well, maybe she doesn’t fit here,” but please bear with me as I find my notes.
Supporting this bill, to me, means not abandoning compassion. It does not mean dismissing human dignity. It means I’m persuaded that, on balance, this legislation remains within the bounds of fairness and responsibility, and that maintaining a credible, functioning system is in itself an act of protection, which is our role and our responsibility, because when the system collapses, it’s actually about the vulnerability of those who are left in the ruins.
So perhaps the question that our colleague and my friend Senator Harder posed — “Are we institutionalists or are we activists?” — was never meant as a choice. Perhaps it was an invitation to remember that institutions exist to serve people, and activism, at its best, seeks not to burn down legitimacy but to bring justice within it.
Two-eyed seeing teaches me that our task is not to choose between compassion and structure. Our task is to hold both responsibly, thoughtfully and with integrity. That is why, with both eyes — the activist eye and the institutional eye — I will support this bill. Wela’lin, thank you.
