The Conservatives are accusing the Liberal government of “neglect and incompetence” in the immigration system for a failure to track fraudulent age misrepresentation by refugee and asylum claimants.
As exclusively reported by True North, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has said it does not keep track of such matters despite there being past cases where adults applying for asylum lied about their age.
Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec told True North in an emailed statement that the failure to keep track raises doubts about Canada’s ailing immigration system.
“This is yet another example of neglect and incompetence by the Liberal-NDP government. Over the last eight years under Justin Trudeau, we’ve seen chaos in our immigration system, with a backlog consistently over two million applications,” said Kmiec.
“Every case of fraud and misrepresentation that goes unaddressed raises serious and credible doubts for Canadians about the integrity of our immigration system. This is caused directly by Liberal government incompetence and failures.”
Kmiec went on to say immigration clearly isn’t a “priority department” for the Liberals given they’ve gone through five ministers in eight years.
Kmiec also pointed to the board’s backlog of 85,000 applications awaiting processing, vowing that a Conservative government would do better.
“Our immigration decisions will be tied to the capacity of our healthcare, education, and social welfare systems as well as housing as to ensure newcomers have the necessary supports to become successful taxpaying Canadians who are self-sufficient and can re-establish themselves in Canada as contributing members of society,” Kmiec said.
True North reached out to Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s office but did not receive a response.
Although Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will tie immigration targets to available housing and other factors using a special formula, Poilievre has yet to offer any specific targets as an alternative to the record-level ones set by the Liberals.
Last year, Canada let in over 500,000 new permanent residents, additionally, the Liberal government expected to allow 900,000 international students and 135,000 more temporary foreign workers than the year prior.
