‘You are a very bad minister,’ Conservative immigration critic says at tense committee meeting

2025/12/05 2 Comments

Watched this brutal exchange. Her name comes up periodically as someone who may be shuffled and her appearance yesterday may increase speculation. That being said, MP Rempel Garner is somewhat of a bulldog in her questioning.

As to DM Kochhar’s letter asking MPs to be more respectful of public servants in their questioning, and to be mindful of the risks of posting edited clips that target them, I recall former DM Fadden having the same concerns some 15 years ago or so, albeit in a safer social media environment:

Immigration Minister Lena Diab sparred with her Conservative critic at a tense House of Commons committee meeting Thursday as the two disagreed on everything from immigration levels and deporting non-citizen criminals to what kind of salad they prefer.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner put Diab in the hot seat throughout her two-hour committee appearance, grilling Diab about her file and accusing her of being “a very bad minister” when she struggled to give a clear answer on whether she will use powers under the government’s pending C-12 legislation to mass extend temporary visas.

A section in that bill gives the government the ability to stop accepting applications or cancel, suspend or change documents for an entire immigration class — something critics on both sides of the issue say could be abused either to turbocharge the number of newcomers or cancel visas en masse.

Asked if she plans to use that power to keep more people in Canada rather than expelling them when their visas expire, Diab said “that’s not the purpose” of the legislation but wouldn’t say how it would be used.

A frustrated Rempel Garner interrupted Diab.

“When you ask a question I think you should be able to have decency to let someone respond,” Diab said.

“I don’t like your word salad, it’s true. You are a very bad minister,” Rempel Garner said.

“You know what, I prefer fattoush and tabouleh to your salad, at any time,” Diab said.

“That is the oddest thing any immigration minister has said at this committee. It’s very weak and will likely be added to your performance reviews,” Rempel Garner said.

“It’s my culture,” said Diab, who is Lebanese Canadian.

At one point, another Liberal MP, Peter Fragiskatos, stepped in as the two exchanged words.

Rempel Garner said she wasn’t speaking to him about these issues.

“He’s going to have your job,” she said to Diab of Fragiskatos, suggesting the minister was about to be shuffled out of cabinet. “I’ll likely be having this conversation with him in a couple of months.”

Rempel Garner also asked Diab about some recent non-citizen criminals getting more lenient sentences so they can avoid deportation.

Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, a permanent resident or foreign national can be deemed inadmissible if they engage in “serious criminality,” which includes any crime that results in being sentenced to prison for more than six months.

In one recent case an Indian national paid for sex with what he thought was a teenager at a Mississauga, Ont., hotel. That teenage girl was actually an undercover cop.

The man was ultimately sentenced to a conditional discharge for committing an indecent act and was sentenced to 12 months of probation, including three months of house arrest. Rempel Garner said the man should have been dealt with more harshly by the courts and ultimately deported.

Asked if she will send a message to judges that are letting non-citizen criminals off easy to avoid being forced out of Canada, Diab said that’s not her role.

“Sentencing decisions are made independently by the courts,” she said, while assuring the Conservative critic the government will remove foreign criminals when appropriate.

“So, you’re pro-raper,” Rempel Garner asked provocatively.

“The courts have already indicated that serious offences will be dealt with seriously,” Diab said, while adding she wasn’t familiar with the case Rempel Garner raised.

“Can’t you just say it’s wrong and we’ll look into it?” Rempel Garner asked in return. “You just defended a guy who sexually assaulted somebody. It’s rampant in our justice system.”

“A wise person once told me you debate the issues and the policy and you don’t debase the individual,” he said, urging his colleagues to follow that mantra.

Deputy minister cites cases of bullying

The meeting started with the committee chair, Julie Dzerowicz, reading a letter from Diab’s deputy minister — the top bureaucrat in the department — saying some public servants have been subjected to bullying and intimidation after appearing before the committee.

That letter, written by Harpreet Kochhar, relayed that some unnamed politicians have posted videos of the public servants testifying at the committee, and they have been targeted online and in person as a result.

Dzerowicz said Kochhar was concerned about the “well-being” of these government workers who he said have endured “significant harassment and abuse” and “hostile emails.”

The letter, shared with CBC News, relays Kochhar’s fear that MPs posting “short, decontextualized clips of committee appearances” by bureaucrats could lead to violence.

“One of our colleagues was recently confronted in a public space by an angry individual referencing material shared online,” Kochhar wrote.

“I want to implore all committee members from all parties to be very cognizant of how we use the information from this committee, whether it’s online or offline,” Dzerowicz said, adding she doesn’t want appearing before a committee to be a “security risk.”

Rempel Garner said Kochhar was trying to “censor” Conservatives and stop them from questioning the department about what she described as a failed immigration policy.

“I will not be silenced,” she said, saying she will fight to get the government to “do the right thing” on this file.

“Giddy up,” she said.

Diab was ostensibly before the committee to talk about the government’s immigration targets for the coming years — figures that were included in the recent federal budget, an unusual move given they are generally delivered publicly by the minister….

Source: ‘You are a very bad minister,’ Conservative immigration critic says at tense committee meeting

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Conservatives plan to try and amend asylum system rules in border security bill

2025/11/21 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to what role the Bloc plays in committee. May well end up with the committee making amendments and the government and NDP rejecting all as was the case with C-3:

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said Thursday she plans to try and “amend the heck” out of the government’s border security bill, Bill C-12, with a host of measures targeting the asylum system. 

Her proposed changes include disallowing asylum claims from people who transited through Europe or another G7 country on their way to Canada and denying access to social benefits, except emergency medical treatment, for those with a failed asylum claim.

“I think Canadians want some change in this regard. Canada’s system for allowing and accepting asylum claims is pretty generous,” Rempel Garner said at a press conference on Parliament Hill.

“So somebody who’s failed a review, I think it’s fair that the only federal benefits that they receive is emergency health care and I think a lot of Canadians would agree.”

Rempel Garner said she also plans to propose changes to speed up the deportation of non-citizens if they are convicted of a crime or if their pre-removal risk assessment isn’t successful.

This includes clarifying the definition of “serious criminality” in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to be a conviction of an indictable offence, or a hybrid offence where the Crown proceeded with an indictable charge. 

Rempel Garner also said she will propose a ban on repeat pre-removal risk assessments if the initial one fails unless new evidence of changed circumstances is presented. 

She said increased rates of permanent and temporary immigration, in addition to increased asylum claims, have “broken” Canada’s system and contributed to declining support for immigration.

“I think everybody in Canada, (of) every political stripe, should be deeply concerned with public polling data that shows that Canadians are losing faith in the immigration system,” Rempel Garner said. …

Source: Conservatives plan to try and amend asylum system rules in border security bill

Some initial reactions:

…Fen Hampson, president of the World Refugee & Migration Council, said “there are arguments to be made for tightening up the system to prevent abuses but by the same token you don’t want to swing wildly in the opposite direction.”

He said banning people from claiming asylum who had passed through an EU or G7 country would bar Canada from accepting people fleeing war-torn states who, for practical reasons, have to pass through Europe to get to Canada. 

“You are likely going to have to stop somewhere on your way to Canada and it may be a few days or it may be more than that,” he said. “Few asylum seekers can book a ticket to fly directly to Canada.”

The border and immigration bill – known as Bill C-12 – will be considered clause by clause next week by MPs on the public safety committee. 

Ms. Rempel Garner told a press conference on Thursday that her party will table their amendments then. One would end federal benefits for failed claimants of asylum, beyond emergency health care…

Source: Conservative amendments to borders bill would make sweeping changes to asylum system, I’m going to amend the heck out of C-12 to fix Canada’s broken immigration system. (Rempel Garner’s substack post)

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No data exists on citizenship approved or denied due to criminal records

2025/11/10 Leave a comment

Data gap that doesn’t help. But arguably, not the biggest data gap to fill, as open data only has one citizenship dataset out of more than 100 for immigration-related programs:

….No data available on criminal-related rejections

“Due to data limitations, the department is unable to report on the number of applications for which an applicants has criminal record that were received, approved, denied, received but are still awaiting a decision, nor is the department able to provide a breakdown by type of crime which the department determined was severe enough to deny citizenship, and not severe enough to deny citizenship,” read a note on the response from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) tabled Wednesday in the House of Commons.

The means by which applicants can be denied citizenship are outlined in Sec. 22 of the Citizenship Act, which can include applicants under probation orders, inmates either incarcerated or on parole, those charged with or on trial for indictable offences, or those convicted of an indictable offence in the four years proceeding their citizenship application.

Denials under Sec. 22 aren’t always related to Canadian criminality – withholding documents or being untruthful are also grounds for rejection under the act, as are those involved in unlawful activities outside of Canada.

Those under investigation, charged with or awaiting trial for offences under the Crimes Against Humanities and War Crimes Act can also be denied citizenship – and those convicted under that statute may find themselves permanently barred from ever obtaining Canadian citizenship.

The fact this data isn’t recorded by the federal government is particularly concerning, Rempel Garner told the Toronto Sun. 

“It blows my mind that the government cannot tell us how many criminals they’ve given citizenship to,” said Rempel Garner, who is also the Conservative immigration critic. …

Source: No data exists on citizenship approved or denied due to criminal records

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Trigger for new immigration powers ‘intentionally not defined’ in border bill: Diab

2025/11/01 Leave a comment

Not reassuring as some guidelines or principles would be useful:

Immigration Minister Lena Diab says the definition of a “public interest” event that would allow her department to pause or revoke immigration applications is “intentionally not defined” in new legislation.

Diab told the House of Commons immigration committee today the definition was left open-ended in the government’s new border security bill, C-12, to allow Ottawa to respond to unforeseen events.

“It is intentionally not defined in the legislation, as I said, to allow for maximum flexibility for the government to respond in a range of unforeseen circumstances that threaten the public interest,” Diab told the committee. 

Diab was asked repeatedly during the committee hearing when the government would be permitted to use the new powers to pause immigration applications or cancel existing documents.

The minister said they could be deployed in a national security emergency or health crisis, adding the government could have made good use of the power to pause immigration applications during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tara Lang, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada director general of integrity policy and programs, told the committee the public interest power also could have been used for a mass extension of healthcare worker visas during the pandemic.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner repeatedly asked Diab to explain what safeguards exist in the legislation to prevent the power change or revoke immigration documents en masse from being abused. 

“You want Parliament to give the government the ability to kick mass groups of people out, undefined, who they don’t like. That’s what it sounds like to me,” Rempel Garner said. 

“How could I go to ethnic groups in my community and say I could vote for this? This is actually bananas and so anti-Canadian. So what are those specific safeguards?”

Diab replied that these powers would “only be used in exceptional circumstances. She said the use of the powers would have to be Charter compliant and the decision would have to be made in consultation with other ministries and cabinet. 

More than 300 civil society organizations, including civil and migrant rights groups, have called on the government to withdraw this legislation due in part to the proposed power to mass cancel immigration documents. 

Justice department officials at the committee said that it’s their opinion the legislation being put forward is Charter compliant. 

The rationale for using these powers would be published in the Canada Gazette and through a cabinet order, with specific reasoning on why the powers are being used and who is affected.

Lang said that while the powers could be used to revoke an immigration document, they would not remove someone’s legal status in Canada as that is a different process. 

Lang added that if people feel they are “improperly named” in one of these orders there is an opportunity for them to request to the immigration department that they be removed from the order revoking or modifying a document. 

Source: Trigger for new immigration powers ‘intentionally not defined’ in border bill: Diab

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As concern about immigration grows, Conservative MP calls for an end to birthright citizenship

2025/10/09 Leave a comment

Getting some political attention, suspect its purpose given unlikely that the government will propose a bill to address birth tourism (both former ministers Fraser and Miller quoted but not Diab) and that the Bloc opposes, at least for the moment, any such initiative. Hope to have my annual update on CIHI numbers for non-resident births, which will be timely given Rempel-Garner’s raising the issue:

A Conservative MP’s unsuccessful push this week to end birthright citizenship is among a suite of stricter measures the party is proposing as concern about immigration grows for Canadians.

Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner made the pitch at a parliamentary committee meeting Tuesday night while proposing an amendment to the government’s “lost Canadians” bill, which aims to clarify rules for when Canadian citizens born abroad can pass along citizenship to their children.

Rempel Garner argued that with a rise in the number of non-permanent residents in Canada, including international students, people on work visas or asylum-seekers, citizenship should be granted only to people born in Canada with at least one parent who is a citizen or permanent resident. …

Source: As concern about immigration grows, Conservative MP calls for an end to birthright citizenship

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Rempel-Garner: Canada must now place restrictions on birthright #citizenship. Here’s why.

2025/10/08 1 Comment

Interesting that the Conservatives are raising birth tourism aspects of citizenship as part of their critique of Bill C-3)

…Today, there are millions of people living in Canada on temporary visas, comprising an astonishing 7%+ of the country’s population – a situation never before seen in Canadian history. Another estimated 500,000 undocumented persons are living in Canada too, as well as 300,000 people in the asylum claim queue (many with bogus claims). Many of the millions of temporary residents are set to have their visas expire, or have already expired.

In this context, it’s not much of a stretch to foresee that Canada’s practice of having no restrictions on jus soli citizenship acquisition is likely to be abused by people seeking to stay in the country after their visa expires or after a bogus asylum claim is found to be invalid. This is because while having a child on Canadian soil theoretically grants no immediate stay rights to parents who are temporary residents, in practice, court rulings, a deeply broken asylum system, protracted appeals, and sluggish deportationsfunctionally often allow them to remain.

Recent videos on social media advertising this loophole suggest this may be the case. The number of people born in Canada to temporary or undocumented residents is not publicly tracked, but recent policies by Canadian hospitals charging temporary residents for giving birth suggest it’s a problem. And birth tourism, the practice of non-residents (i.e. those on visitor visas) travelling to Canada to have their child on Canadian soil so that they can obtain citizenship, is also back on the rise. When former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper left office in 2015, birth tourism levels were 590% lower than today. Birth tourism is now at its highest levels ever, both in terms of absolute levels and percentages. These types of population growth are not typically accounted for in immigration levels planning….

Source: Canada must now place restrictions on birthright citizenship. Here’s why.

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Pierre Poilievre’s call to scrap the temporary foreign worker program marks new, tougher stance for Conservatives

2025/09/04 Leave a comment

Safer area for Conservatives to attack and immigration critic Rempel Garner is having fun tweeting examples of TFWs in low-skilled service jobs. The excesses need to be trimmed and Canadian employers should not rely on TFWs to the same extent as cheaper labour or avoiding more investment in technology. Expect the provinces will also push back given the views of their business communities.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Mark Carney’s Liberals to ditch the federal government’s decades-old temporary foreign worker program, taking a harder stance against a program he’s previously said should be reduced, not axed outright.

The reason why, Poilievre said Wednesday, is because of worsening youth unemployment, rather than a Liberal-induced “immigration crisis” he has claimed has weakened both the economy and security of the country.

“The individual temporary foreign workers, the workers themselves, they are not bad people. They are not the problem. They are being taken advantage of by Liberal corporate leaders who want to use them to drive down wages,” Poilievre said at a news conference in Mississauga.

“We continue to support the dream of all immigrants to Canada, the immigrants who come here to be Canadian to get a job, work hard, contribute and live a good life that is part of the Canadian promise, and that is not what we’re addressing here today.”

Experts, however, warn that the Conservative leader’s framing is misleading, and promotes beliefs that foreign workers are a prominent threat to Canadian jobs.

The long-standing temporary foreign worker program allows Canadian companies to hire foreign nationals for temporary positions, as long as employers complete a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) to demonstrate the need for a temporary worker and that no local Canadians or permanent residents can fill the role. Through its various streams, the program has been lauded as a way to address labour shortages, but has also become a magnet for criticisms that it exposes workers to exploitation and abuse.

During this year’s spring campaign, Poilievre pledged in his platform to “restore order to immigration” in part by “dramatically reducing the number of temporary workers.”

On Wednesday, his party called on Ottawa to permanently end the program, cease issuing visas for new workers, create a separate program for “legitimately difficult-to-fill agricultural labour,” and to wind down the program more slowly in “ultra-low-unemployment regions.”

Tim Powers, chair of public affairs firm Summa Strategies, said Poilievre’s tougher position and shift in tone suggests he is seizing on Canadians’ economic fears while also avoiding turning away more immigrant communities who could join his coalition of Conservatives.

“It isn’t so much about what the program actually does. It’s what he thinks it represents to Canadians, this narrative that their jobs are being taken from them, and young people don’t get the opportunity to do work because temporary foreign workers are replacing them,” Powers said.

“I think if you talk to a lot of employers who use the program, they would tell you that trying to find local workers, particularly in service-based jobs … is hard to do because not everyone views the opportunities to work in a fish plant or a Tim Hortons as a job they want.”

At a cabinet retreat in Toronto, Prime Minister Mark Carney said he believed the program still had a place in his policy book and said he would assess how well the program was working.

“When I talk to businesses around the country … their number 1 issue is tariffs, and their number 2 issue is access to temporary foreign workers,” Carney told reporters.

But the Conservative leader, citing a youth unemployment rate that has climbed to 14.6 per cent, rolled out a series of claims about the program to justify his ask.

“The Liberals promised they would cap the temporary foreign worker program at 82,000, but in the first six months, they’ve already handed out 105,000 permits,” Poilievre said.

….According to federal data, Canada set a target to admit 82,000 new arrivals through the program this year.

But Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said Poilievre’s 105,000 figure does not “represent new arrivals to the country” and includes permit extensions for people already in Canada.

“Between January and June 2025, 33,722 new workers entered Canada through this program, which is roughly 40 per cent of the total volume expected this year,” a spokesperson for the department said in an email.

Despite Poilievre’s focus on the economic impacts of the program, some economists and immigration experts expressed concern about that the Conservative leader’s comments could still feed into the belief that migrant workers steal jobs. 

“It is wrong to suggest that migrant labour is a major source of the problems Canadian workers are experiencing today — which are the result, first and foremost, of (U.S. President) Donald Trump’s tariff attacks, lingering high interest rates, the decline of high-wage industrial jobs, and government austerity in some provinces,” said Jim Stanford, economist and director of the think tank Centre for Future Work.

Stanford also emphasized that the program Poilievre is targeting only makes up a small share of the workforce and should not be confused with foreign workers under the substantially larger International Mobility Program, which includes international students.

Stanford said Poilievre’s claim that temporary foreign workers now make up two per cent of Canada’s workforce is inaccurate.

According to government data on the program, there were approximately 191,000 work permit holders in total in 2024, “less than one per cent of the workforce,” Stanford said. …

Source: Pierre Poilievre’s call to scrap the temporary foreign worker program marks new, tougher stance for Conservatives

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Rempel Garner: Conservatives to end leniency for non-citizen criminals

2025/08/14 Leave a comment

Likely a winner in terms of public opinion, likely among established immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Less divisive than 2015 “barbaric cultural practices” tipline or citizenship revocation:

…This is why once the House of Commons resumes in the fall, Conservatives will introduce legislation to amend the Criminal Code to rectify this issue. Our bill will add a section after Section 718.202 of the Criminal Code which will expressly outline that any potential impact of a sentence on the immigration status of a convicted non-citizen offender, or that of their family members, should not be taken into consideration by a judge when issuing a sentence.

The rationale for this change is straightforward. Anyone seeking residence or citizenship in Canada has responsibilities as well as rights. The citizenship guide clearly states that citizens must obey Canada’s laws and respect the rights and freedoms of others, and IRPA outlines the potential consequences for non-citizens who fail to do so. Without legislative clarity on considering immigration status in sentencing, judges can apply aspects of the Pham ruling to undermine that principle for non-citizens, effectively end-running the deportation consequences already enacted by Parliament through IRPA. 

In effect, the Criminal Code amendment that Conservatives plan to propose this fall will prevent judges from using aspects of the Pham ruling to prioritize the process of entering and staying in Canada over the responsibility to respect Canadian law required of those seeking to do so. It will also help quell anger from Canadians who have read about high-profile rulings where the perception has arisen that non-citizens are receiving leniency for a crime committed on Canadian soil simply by virtue of their non-citizen status.

The vast majority of people in Canada who have immigrated here or are on temporary visas  abide by the law. Removal from Canada for non-citizens after being convicted of a serious crime is a no-brainer to both protect Canadians, the value of Canadian citizenship, and every person who resides in Canada and plays by the rules. 

After a decade of Liberal post-nationalism and excessively high immigration levels, accepting this change would allow the Liberals to demonstrate some respect for Canadian citizenship by affirming that, at minimum, the privilege of residing here for non-citizens depends on adherence to the rule of law.

Source: Conservatives to end leniency for non-citizen criminals

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LILLEY: Carney’s Liberals hiding immigration data as questions mount

2025/08/13 Leave a comment

Rather than defaulting to a conspiracy theory, perhaps this delay in releasing the data reflects reorganizational stress given resource constraints. Still no excuse for these delays as generally IRCC is one of the better departments in terms of data availability:

The Carney Liberals have been hiding immigration data from Canadians for months. Now, after being called out on it, the government says it’s all in the name of openness and transparency.

Normally, government numbers on the number of new arrivals, the number of asylum seekers and more are released on the government’s open data portal. As of now, the government hasn’t released any data since May and that information only covers until the end of March.

The news was made public in a statement last week by Conservative Immigration Critic Michelle Rempel-Garner.

“How many illegal border crossings have we had? How many more asylum claims have piled on to an already backlogged waitlist? How many more permits have the Liberals handed out that continue to overwhelm our housing, health-care system and job market?” Rempel Garner asked.

“Whatever they are, Canada has a right to know.”

She’s right: We do have a right to know, especially since the Liberals have made such a disaster of the immigration system….

Source: LILLEY: Carney’s Liberals hiding immigration data as questions mount

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Rempel Garner: Without national identity, integration is impossible and collapse is inevitable.

2025/08/02 Leave a comment

Always worth reading the Conservative take on immigration policy even when overly partisan and exaggerated in places. Some of her critiques have some merit but are weakened by being overstated. And to ignore broader trends on belonging and pinning everything on the Trudeau government is shallow at best:

…For example, on immigration, the Trudeau Liberals narrowed the age range for mandatory language and knowledge requirements in citizenship applications from 14-64 to 18-54, thus diminishing shared language’s role in Canadian identity for newcomers. They eliminated the in-person citizenship oath requirement. They sought to erase references to practices like female genital mutilation as abhorrent in the citizenship study guide, and in so doing, arguably normalized their importation into Canada. They turned a blind eye to judicial rulings allowing immigration status to factor into sentencing violent criminals, valuing the process of entry into the country over the responsibility associated with citizenship. They allowed Canada’s compassionate asylum system to be abused into a mockery.

The Trudeau Liberals also normalized the practice of the importation of conflicts from newcomer’s countries of origin, rather than primarily encouraging the shedding of these quarrels in favour of a pluralistic, unified Canadian identity rooted in Western democratic values. This phenomenon is best exemplified via the Trudeau government’s tolerance of diasporic lobby groups’ influence in elections and Canadian institutions, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to groups who sought to plant international conflicts and even terrorist principles in Canadian soil. And despite clear evidence of rising foreign interference in elections, the Liberals have yet to implement a foreign agent registry.

The Trudeau Liberals also prioritized cultural and ethnic differences over a shared ethos of equality in hiring and storytelling. For example, they embedded divisive, quasi-racist hiring policies into federal funding for educational institutions. They allowed Canada’s publicly funded national broadcaster to consider abandoning objectivity for racialized narratives, and now allocate news funding based on whether or not outlets sufficiently highlight ethnic, religious, and other group differences.

And rather than enlisting newcomers to help strengthen a cohesive Canadian national identity, such as by constructively addressing the nation’s historic injustices while simultaneously celebrating its positive achievements, the Trudeau Liberals actively erased symbols of shared historic Canadian identity from public view. They redesigned the Canadian passport to replace images of Canadian national heroes like Terry Fox with inert objects like a wheelbarrow. They supported activities that established the Canadian flag as a symbol of shame as opposed to a representation of patriotism. They worked to erase Canada’s founders from places of prominence.

Thus, Canada’s political left has profoundly succeeded in transforming Canada into a post-national no-nation, free from the trappings of a cohesive national identity.

For those who might argue that this is a good thing, they are very wrong. 

What Justin Trudeau overlooked in his Liberal government’s zealous pursuit of post-nationalism is that his father’s multicultural vision could only thrive under robust Western democratic institutions. Without a government prioritizing above all else, especially over partisan ideology, the safeguarding of principles like freedom of speech, secularism, and equality of opportunity, multiculturalism will inevitably destroy a peaceful, democratic pluralism.

The proof is in the pudding. Today in Canada, after decades of post-national, national identity-destroying policies, less than half of Canadian youth say they would fight for the country. This marks a startling shift from generations ago, when Canadians fought for what seemed to be immutable freedoms in the Great Wars. Diasporic conflicts now erupt on Canadian streets, hate crimes against ethnic and religious groups have surged, and the once-strong Canadian consensus on immigration is solidly broken.

If Canadians want to reverse the pluralism-destroying course post-nationalism has set us on, everyone, regardless of political stripe, must acknowledge that post-nationalism has eroded Canada’s national identity to point of non-existence. That state of affairs is likely the biggest threat to Canada’s sovereignty today.

History proves this conclusion correct. For a civilization to survive the test of history it needs some sort of cohesive shared identity. Without it, collapse occurs. There’s even examples to be found within Canada’s own evolution in the 20th century. In the early 1900s a Canadian national identity had taken root in spite of high levels of immigration. Forged in the crucibles of battlefields like Vimy Ridge, peoples of many backgrounds fought together as Canadians, united by shared values of democracy, rule of law, bilingualism, and loyalty to the Crown. To be Canadian then was to embrace English or French as a primary language, respect parliamentary institutions, and demonstrate civic duty through collective efforts in war and nation-building. 

Fast forward to today. Our domestic efforts fail to build critical national infrastructure and have allowed our military to atrophy to the point of near non-functionality. Our foreign policy rewards the tactics of terrorist organizations and abandons Western allies in times of crisis. Logic dictates that if the Liberal government continues eroding the Western democratic values that once, but arguably no longer, underpin Canada’s rapidly disappearing pluralistic national identity (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and equality in the rule of law’s application), then collapse is what should be expected of Canada’s once-vaunted pluralism.

Those looking for remedy from new Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney will likely be sorely disappointed. Long an adherent to the World Economic Forum’s globalist brand of post-nationalism, the best definition of Canada’s national identity he has mustered is that we’re not the United States. His new “Minister of National Identity” Stephen Guilbeault managed an arguably worse response, offering pithiness like “I won’t stand here and pretend that I can tell you what Canadian identity is or should be,” while arguing there is “no one way to be Canadian.” That neither could define Canadian identity as rooted in shared respect for things like the rule of Western-based law, freedom of speech, freedom to worship, and equality of opportunity is telling.

The reality for Mr. Carney is that his government must reverse the many changes Mr. Trudeau made under his aggressive post-national doctrine to order to rebuild Canada’s national identity, prevent pluralism’s collapse, and retain our sovereignty.

If he fails, the effect will be the same as if he were to tip over Cardiff’s speakers in the National Gallery: a shameful and purposeful squandering of an intricate, delicate masterpiece.

Source: Without national identity, integration is impossible and collapse is inevitable.

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