Canada’s border cops are ringing the alarm bell about the record number of bogus asylum seekers who refuse to leave the country.

Every year, for the past few years, tens of thousands of people enter Canada illegally and make asylum claims. Once they apply to become refugees, their immigration status is normalized and Canada temporarily forgives the fact that they entered illegally. But only temporarily.

If the refugee claim is abandoned by the applicant or rejected by an immigration judge — as happens in about half of the cases — the temporary haven is lifted and the person goes back to their illegal status.

And, according to the head of the Canada Border Security Agency (CBSA) union, Canada is losing the battle when it comes to deporting these illegal migrants.

“For those asylum seekers that know that they are not going to be able to reach the stage that their claim will be granted in Canada, or they know they have a criminal history, the concern is they may disappear,” Jean-Pierre Fortin told Mercedes Stephenson on Global News.

They disappear. Including dangerous criminals.

To add insult to injury, the CBSA recently revealed that some of the claims they receive are from people of “unknown nationalities.”

“For various reasons, there are times when the CBSA cannot immediately determine a person’s country of origin upon their arrival in Canada,” said CBSA Western Canada Communications Officer, Luke Reimer.

An RCMP Freedom of Information request revealed that over half of the migrants crossing illegally into British Columbia were of “unknown nationality.”

“We certainly don’t have the resources to track them down and deport them,” said Fortin about the illegal migrants who “disappear.”

Fortin was advocating for more resources for his workers, as union bosses are known to do. But in this case, the stakes are high and CBSA workers are scrambling to deal with the record number of illegal border crossers and asylum seekers streaming into Canada.

As I reported in the Sun papers, Canada is on track to break its previous record of asylum claims in a single year. 2017 was the record year with 50,390 claims, then that number was topped in 2018 with 55,035. Now 2019 may beat them both.

In the first six months of this year, 26,860 people entered Canada illegally or under false pretenses to make asylum claims. That’s a higher number than at the half-way mark of the previous two years.

These 26,860 asylum seekers will join the queue of 156,155 people who have made refugee claims in Canada since 2016 — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first full year in office.

Despite these high numbers, fewer than 900 illegal migrants have been deported under Trudeau’s watch. According to a CBC report, fewer than half of rejected asylum claimants leave on their own, while the majority wait for the CBSA to find them and deport them.

No wonder Fortin and the CBSA want more resources. But how much should Canadians be forced to pay to keep illegal migrants out?

A CBSA report from 2015, prior to Trudeau becoming Prime Minister, showed that the agency spent more than $90 million per year on deportations.

That was before Trudeau welcomed the world’s migrants to come to Canada on social media, before his government rolled out the red carpet to illegal border crossers at Roxham Road, and before the Liberal Government dismantled the refugee determination system that once quickly rejected migrants from safe countries.

Our immigration system is a mess, and Canadian taxpayers are on the hook.

BY: ANTHONY FUREY

A document has been doing the rounds on social media that purports to be instructions on propaganda used by the Chinese government to deal with the Hong Kong protests.

The guidelines include minimizing the tally of people attending pro-democracy protests, framing the debate as one of riots (pro-democracy) versus the rule of law (Beijing Communists and the Hong Kong police), and labeling the protesters as puppets of the West.

It’s unclear whether this is a document for internal government use only or if it’s being pushed to Chinese Communist Party-controlled media. And there’s no way to confirm it.

It’s not like there’s a free press that can work their sources or file access to information requests to confirm these documents. But it certainly bears all the signs of CCP propaganda.

What sort of media would this, or similar directives, be distributed to though? The People’s Daily is a major publication in China that is directly owned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and it’s been publishing since 1948. It is the media mouthpiece of the CCP.

That’s not the only one though. There are other publications that routinely offer pro-Beijing coverage and commentary. And not because they’re independent papers that have, of their own volition, determined that’s what their editorial slant will be. But because they’re also under the sway of the CCP.

It’s a hard thing for a North American news consumer to wrap their hands around, but it’s true. It’s not just a phenomenon happening in China either, but also here in Canada.

Foreign affairs journalist Jonathan Manthorpe breaks all of this down in detail in his new book Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada.

“In 1990, the CCP launched a series of newspapers [the China Press] for the North American market that were directly under its control,” Manthorpe writes. “Editorially, China Press newspapers are cheerleaders for the CCP regime.”

Manthorpe adds that “The Sing Tao operation fell into the CCP’s grasp in the late 1980s when its then owner, Sally Aw Sian, had a corporate financial crisis and turned to Beijing for help.” The Sing Tao Daily is one of the more visible Chinese-language publications in Canada.

Recent coverage in The Sing Tao Daily of the Hong Kong-related events taking place in the Toronto area has slanted favourably towards those voices opposing the democracy activists.

There are even two Chinese media outlets under the control of their government that have membership in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa, meaning they have special privileges in the federal Parliament Buildings only granted to accredited media. One is the previously described People’s Daily, the other is Xinhua, the official news agency of the People’s Republic of China.

The question is not if there is Chinese language media in Canada under the sway of Beijing. That is an established fact. The question is just how much influence it will wield in Canada – whether it’s during the Hong Kong protests, the Meng Wanzhou affair, or any of the other issues that Beijing may wish to assert its position on. What is undeniable is that this is all a considerable cause for concern.

Lost in the news yesterday, or perhaps more accurately, not covered in the news by the mainstream media yesterday, was the successful victory by Dr. Tim Ball, a retired University of Winnipeg professor, in a defamation lawsuit brought against him by the notoriously thin-skinned Michael Mann of the infamous and thoroughly debunked ‘hockey stick’ theory related to global warming. 

This is the second lawsuit successfully defended by Dr. Ball. The first was dismissed last year in which B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver sued for defamation and lost. Apparently, in the courts, the truth is still an absolute defence. 

And so it proved in the lawsuit brought by Penn State prof Michael Mann as decided by B.C. Courts this week.  

Dr. Ball is called a cynic or a denier deemed so by the worshipers of the religion of climate change. All he has done is merely point out the holes in their arguments and apparently they get all snitty about that. 

If you don’t believe as they do you’re the devil. 

A denier. 

A word correlated to those who deny the Holocaust as though if you don’t accept the religion of climate change you’re the same as the racists who deny the Holocaust. 

Dr. Mann was exposed for manipulating the data he used to create the so-called hockey stick graph. And no amount of protesting he may do will change that. 

Why he is still employed at Penn State is a mystery. There’s a significant credibility issue surrounding his work as upheld by the courts. Dr. Ball, tongue in cheek, said he should be in the state pen as opposed to Penn State. 

The problem is that things like the hockey stick graph, no matter that it has been debunked, is at the heart of our political policy and legislation like the carbon tax. 

And the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, won’t brook any dissension. Neither will the recently rescued from career oblivion after his resignation in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, Gerald Butts, who calls anyone who disagrees a nazi.

I am not a scientist. I am but an old ex-cop and investigator who looks for evidence before coming to a conclusion in matters. And that evidence does not support the position of McKenna or the government. Nor does it support any reason to impose a carbon tax on the economy which is punitive at a time our economy should be flourishing along with that of our largest trading partner. 

But the Prime Minister and the rest of the Liberal government are true believers despite the evidence to the contrary. 

I’m sure that the fact that Butts is a former executive leading the eco-loons at the World Wildlife Foundation plays a role. He believes what he believes and no amount of evidence will sway his opinions. Unfortunately, his opinions, however wrong, have dire consequences on the country as a whole. 

Good on Dr. Ball for standing up to the eco-loons. Pity the media would rather spout the government nonsense rather than cover the result of an actual court case.