Nine years ago, newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flung Canada’s doors wide open. He drastically increased the number of legal immigrants Canada welcomed each year, and started with a marque campaign promise to admit 50,000 Syrian refugees in just two months’ time.
The pledge was reckless, and the results were predictable.
Trying to recruit tens of thousands of migrants in the midst of a civil war where ISIS terrorists easily mixed amongst fleeing families was an impossible task. Very bad people took advantage of the situation and made their way into Western countries – causing unbelievable carnage against civilians and plotting more terrorism.
As I outlined in my 2016 best-selling book Losing True North, the Trudeau government’s immigration efforts were met with one blunder after the next.
Against the wishes of level-headed civil servants in the Immigration Department, Canada skipped important national security screening steps. There were also no values tests to ensure newcomers would be compatible with Canadian culture and society. We didn’t check if they were sympathetic to ISIS, we didn’t care if they hated Jews or opposed same-sex marriage. We just let them all in.
Canada even welcomed Ibrahim Ali, a 27-year-old male who, within 18 months of being welcomed to Canada with open arms, raped and murdered 13-year-old Marissa Shen in broad daylight in Burnaby, BC.
That was just the beginning.
When Donald Trump was elected and took office in 2017, he quickly took action to prevent a rush of radical Islamists trying to enter the United States. He introduced a ham-fisted executive order to ban the entry of migrants from seven terrorist-harbouring countries.
Our reactive Prime Minister went onto social media and told the world’s migrants that “Canada would welcome” them. Canada then saw the largest surge of illegal border crossings in our nation’s history.
As I outlined in my follow-up 2019 book, No Border, Canada’s long-standing commitment to fair and secure immigration was thrown out the window. Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) officials became bellmen helping migrants carry their luggage across an unmanned international border.
Trudeau’s open-door policies made a mockery of the rule of law in Canada.
Things went from bad to worse when Trudeau again recklessly threw the gates wide open after the Covid pandemic. Trudeau’s astronomical borrowing and spending created a serious economic problem and the Liberal government needed an artificial boost to help the sluggish economy that they themselves created.
So Trudeau reached for his favourite tool in the toolkit: more immigration!
Canada saw record numbers of, again, both legal and illegal immigrants. This time, the large sudden influx served as a flame in a tinderbox. Millions of new arrivals juxtaposed with Canada’s strangling bureaucracy and endless red tape around building and housing pushed the cost of housing to astronomical levels.
Canada is now faced with a housing crisis that has pushed rent prices through the roof, effectively locked young Canadians out of the housing market and created one of the most asymmetrical income-to-housing cost ratios in the world.
Alongside the devastating economic impacts, Canada is also facing a cultural moment of truth.
We watch as ancient tribal hatreds from half-way around the world explode on our Canadian streets. Whether it’s Sikh and Hindu’s brawling in Surrey and Brampton, or radical Jew-hating Islamists rioting in Montreal or Toronto, Canada doesn’t quite feel Canadian anymore. To add insult to injury, Trudeau now wants to welcome even more radical migrants from Gaza.
It’s no surprise that Canada’s tattered immigration system has allowed all sorts of nefarious criminals and anti-Western thugs. As True North recently reported, Canada is legitimately more of a threat to US national security than Mexico.
According to US Customs and Border Protection, since 2022, 1155 individuals on the terrorist watch list were caught trying to enter the US through its northern border, compared to just 199 from the south.
You read that correctly. Five times as many terrorists entered the United States through Canada than through Mexico. And what were those 1155 terrorists doing in Canada in the first place? How did they get here and how many more remain?
Trudeau is the one that must answer for this colossal failure of national security and immigration.
So spare me the lecture about taking a “Team Canada” approach to Donald Trump and his pledge to implement a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports into the United States. Spare me the anger and frustration at Trump for wanting to secure his nation’s borders.
This crisis is entirely Trudeau’s own making. His unimaginably awful immigration policies have consequences. They are playing out now. Chickens are coming home to roost, as some of us have been warning for the past decade.
So let me be clear. Justin Trudeau: fix the problem you created and secure our country now!
