John McCallum has been fired.

“Last night I asked for and accepted John McCallum’s resignation as Canada’s Ambassador to China,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement on the heels of McCallum’s about-face on comments made about Canada’s diplomatic stand-off with China.

Although there was not a specific reason given for McCallum’s firing, the former Liberal immigration minister has had a tumultuous few days.

Last week in Markham, Ont., McCallum hosted a press conference that only Chinese-language journalists were allowed to attend.

McCallum was quoted saying Meng Wanzhou, an executive at the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, had a strong case to fight extradition to the United States and listed several arguments he thought could help her with her case.

McCallum appeared to agree with the communist Chinese government’s narrative that Meng was arrested for political reasons.

“I think she has quite good arguments on her side,” McCallum told Chinese media at the closed-door meeting.

Despite the planned press conference and prepared remarks, McCallum later said he misspoke with those statements when confronted by national media outlets.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said the comments merited McCallum’s dismissal, prompting a defense from Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.

“Here we have the spokesperson of the Government of Canada weighing in on an independent judicial case. Our judicial systems, our proceedings, need to have integrity around it,” Scheer said.

“To have this type of comment is completely unacceptable and he needs to be held responsible for his actions.”

It seemed like McCallum was in the clear, and was still the prime minister’s good books.

However, a few days later he told a reporter it would be “great” if the United States dropped its case against Meng.

“From Canada’s point of view, if (the US) drops the extradition request, that would be great for Canada,” he said.

McCallum’s latest remarks in support of the communist Chinese government was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Shortly after, McCallum was fired.

Meng is currently out on bail — living in her luxurious Vancouver home with freedom of movement during the day.

In retaliation, the Chinese government arrested several Canadians shortly after she was taken into custody, depriving them of the right to a lawyer.

One of these Canadians, Robert Schellenberg, was sentenced to death in a hastily organized retrial.

The US Department of Justice is expected to a file a formal request to extradite Meng by the end of the month.

A new report suggests Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will spend more on government programs than any other prime minister in Canadian history.

The Trudeau government will spend about $8,600 per Canadian on programming this year, the highest since the Great Recession.

The report, created by the Fraser Institute, details how much each prime minister spent during their tenure. Unequivocally, it reveals Trudeau is set to be Canada’s costliest prime minister.

The Trudeau government has increased government program spending by an average of 3.1 percent per year, the highest of any government since his father over 35 years ago.

That means this year will be the second most expensive year ever, second only to 2008– a time of financial crisis.

The Fraser Institute alludes to the fact that some prime ministers raised spending in response to extreme hardship or need, but Justin Trudeau is not one of them.

Since the time Justin Trudeau claimed that “the budget will balance itself,” the Trudeau government has been marked by big deficits and big spending.

It should be no surprise to Canadians that the budget did not balance itself. The deficit for the current financial year is expected to be $18.1 billion, and the national debt is pegged to rise by nearly $100 billion over the next five years.

By 2024, the national debt is estimated to be at least $765 billion.

Decreasing the deficit is not a priority for the current government. Instead, issues like gender equality and climate change have taken precedence.

Finance Canada officially predicts the deficits will continue until 2045, more than a generation after Trudeau was elected.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau says the government’s current plan will keep the economy “strong and growing.”

Difficulties in the energy sector and high government borrowing indicate otherwise.

Canada took a bold stance by recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

Canada is now among the many nations calling for the end of socialist president Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship.

“We recognize and express our full support for the interim presidency of Venezuela assumed by the president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido, in compliance with the constitution of Venezuela,”  Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland.

The move came only a week after the tyrant, Nicolas Maduro, was sworn in for a second term as president in an election deemed fraudulent.

Canada’s announcement came on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s declaration that Venezuela’s socialist regime is illegitimate.

“The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law,” Trump said in a statement.

The American support for Guaido has inspired many other nations to follow, including Canada and much of Latin America.

Venezuela’s socialist government has left the economy in turmoil, with GDP dropping dramatically and inflation hitting sky-high levels.

It is estimated that inflation in Venezuela went up 1.4 million per cent in 2018, and could reach 10 million per cent by 2020.

Because of a ruined economy and the imposition of dictatorship, as many as four million Venezuelans have fled — close to 10 per cent of the entire population.

Among those who have stayed, about 75% report losing as much as 19 pounds due to food shortages.

Police violence is now a regular occurrence in Venezuela, with dozens killed while protesting the government.

The future is not certain for Venezuela — while Juan Guaido is attempting to form a government, Maduro remains defiant.

Maduro called the United States “imperialists” for trying to influence Venezuelan affairs.

“Don’t trust the gringos,” he told his supporters at a recent rally.

The United States is reportedly considering sanctions on Venezuelan oil.

The United States, Canada, and nine Latin American countries said in a joint statement they want to see the “democratic transition in Venezuela within the framework of its Constitution, in order to hold new elections, in the shortest time, with the participation of all political actors and with the international guarantees and standards necessary for a democratic process.”

Justin Trudeau once again employed his favorite trope by calling out “fear mongering” about Canada’s border security and immigration system.

It took a special kind of ignorance, considering only one day earlier Canada’s border protection agency exposed a network of cross-border migrant smugglers.

Hours before Trudeau’s remarks, two males in Kingston were arrested over what the RCMP call “national security” concerns. At least one of them is a Syrian refugee.

Though Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, chief Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts, and Trudeau himself have all accused critics of “fear mongering” in recent months, this instance is perhaps the most tone deaf.

At a town hall in Miramachi, New Brunswick Thursday night, a young Syrian refugee rose to thank Trudeau for bringing her family to Canada.

After a bit of chest thumping about his government’s resettlement of Syrian refugees, Trudeau made an unprompted pivot to the broader immigration discussion in Canada.

“There are people trying to create fears around the country around immigration…. The kind of fear-mongering, the kind of intolerance, the kind of misinformation that unfortunately is going on across the country and around the world is something that all of us have a responsibility to engage with in a positive and thoughtful way,” he said.

The “fear” about which is speaks is actually concern from large swaths of Canadians that there are people abusing the country’s immigration system, lawlessly traipsing across the border, and making false asylum claims. All of this is happening.

Trudeau should be more concerned with the problem itself than he is with those speaking up about it.

But his government wants to pretend there is no problem, that the border “crisis” is a right wing concoction.

Even so, on Wednesday the Canada Border Services Agency charged Olayinka Celestina Opaleye with allegedly smuggling 10 or more asylum claimants into Canada in exchange for compensation.

CBSA alleges Opaleye was operating as part of a “network of smugglers” utilizing Roxham Rd. in Quebec. If convicted, Opaleye could face a $1 million fine or life in prison.

The law understands the seriousness of illegal immigration more than Trudeau does.

This charge doesn’t reflect an isolated incident, either.

A Cornwall man was sentenced in 2017 for smuggling foreign nationals facing deportation from the United States into Canada for money. A Regina couple was sentenced last year for bringing nine illegal immigrants into Canada.

While illegal border crossing between Canada and the United States has always been an issue, American authorities say the smugglers are now more sophisticated and better organized than ever before.

In the United States, that means taking it more seriously. In Canada, it somehow means the opposite.

The charges against Opaleye prove what critics of the pipeline of illegal immigrants into Canada have been warning—that not all of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who’ve come to Canada in the last two years have done so with pure intentions.

Located south of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Roxham Rd. is supposed to be a dead end street, but is now a de facto freeway for illegal immigrants.

As many as 96 per cent of illegal immigrants into Canada last year came in that way. Instead of stopping it, the CBSA has set up a processing centre on site to stream line asylum applications. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been known to help illegal immigrants with their luggage.

It makes the human smuggling business particularly easy when Canadian authorities are doing the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively). All the smugglers have to do is get people to the border and Trudeau’s government does the rest of the work.

What a great industry to be in. Cross-border human smuggling may well be the only growth area of Canada’s economy under Justin Trudeau.

The government may wish to whitewash the problem by calling it “irregular” immigration, but it’s illegal. That’s why a woman was charged with facilitating and organizing it.

Our border is seen as irrelevant and our immigration system is abused. Yet Trudeau says “fear mongering” is the real problem.

Andrew Lawton is a fellow at True North. You can support his and his colleagues’ work with a small monthly contribution by joining the Heritage Club.

It’s getting a little tedious listening to the politicians go back and forth on the illegal border flare-up at Roxham Road.

The Conservatives say it’s unsustainable. The Liberals call them mean names. Then the Conservatives say we need to suspend or revise or revisit the Safe Third Country Agreement.

Sure, let’s certainly talk about revising that agreement as one possible solution – not that the conversation has gotten us very far to date. I’ve heard rumours that the Liberal cabinet has in fact done just that but isn’t getting much traction on the matter because it’s not a big priority for the United States government.

So let’s instead start talking about the things that are entirely in our control. Like the physical structures at the border – changing them for symbols that encourage illegal crossings to those that do not.

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to lay the blame at the feet of the refugees themselves. Because while the government claims they want to eventually bring an end to this unsustainable situation at Roxham Road, their actions say the exact opposite.

They’ve entrenched the border crossing as a quasi-permanent fixture. And I don’t mean through agreements or deals or legislation. Through the whole physical presentation.

Candice Malcolm offered up a good summary in a recent column:

“First, they built a land bridge so migrants wouldn’t have to walk through a ditch. Second, they permanently stationed RCMP officers at this unofficial crossing point (which is less than 5kms from the official crossing at Champlain, NY) to register incoming migrants. Third, they set up makeshift refugee camps so that asylum seekers could start their paperwork and quickly become eligible for government handouts. 
Finally, they began shuttling migrants to Montreal or Toronto — their choice — and setting them up in government-funded housing.” 

There really shouldn’t be any surprise that we have a steady stream of Roxham Road crossers with a welcome wagon like that set up. In fact, what is surprising is that the numbers haven’t drastically gone up even further because of it.

(And it is a steady stream, make no mistake about it. As I recently reported, the year-end numbers from 2018 are near identical to the year-end numbers from 2017, both around 18,500 people crossing into Quebec illegally each year.)

So here’s a novel idea: Wind down the welcome wagon. It’s one solution that not enough people are discussing.

The current Google Maps picture of Roxham Road is from the fall of 2011. The image shows two dead-end rural roads with fairly luscious grass right at the border and no structures whatsoever. The idea should be to get it back to looking like that as much as possible.

Here’s the second thing that should be done: Put up a fence. What few people realize is that the Roxham Road border is smack dab in the middle between two legal border crossings, one at Lacolle and one in Hemmingford. The two crossings are 10 km apart.

We know that human traffickers and activist groups have led migrants to this exact location on purpose. Let’s disrupt that migration pattern. Put up a temporary fence, 10 km long, between those two crossings. (It would hopefully only need to stay up for, say, 12 – 18 months.)

“But won’t they just go someplace else?” That’s the response I’ve received when I’ve previously floated this idea.

Yes, they very well may do that. We don’t know until we try though. It’s surely got to reduce the flow by a certain amount. And it would be informative to see just how much it does decrease the volume.

After all, I genuinely believe that some of these people aren’t even entirely clear that they’re not supposed to be crossing, given the mixed messaging coming from the government and Prime Minister Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada greeting. Whereas when a person sees a long fence without a gate, it’s a pretty clear visual cue that you’re not supposed to cross over it.

As for those who do decide to cross anyway and travel along the border to find a different spot, because this is an organized migration, there would be communication through the migrants channels to spread the message about the new crossing location. The feds would be able to watch in real time as the migration patterns change, learn about how it all occurred and how the various groups on the ground relay the message.

It’s rather sad that Canada, a country previously known for being welcome to immigrants and refugees, is now seeing heated debate over immigration simply because we can’t get this one border situation under control.