Ottawa, ON – The Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner, Conservative Shadow Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, and Brad Redekopp, Conservative Associate Shadow Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, sent the following letter to the Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, calling for action on Canada’s broken asylum system:
Dear Minister Diab,
For a decade, successive Liberal ministers destroyed Canada’s immigration system with terrible policy decisions, including the #welcometoCanada open-border call, lifting the visa requirement on Mexico, and refusing to place restrictions on bogus asylum claimants.
Now, you are resorting to rubber-stamping applications through the file review system, despite strong advice from experts not to do so.
Conservatives have made constructive efforts to fix your immigration mess, including to adopt the practice of One Law for All, to focus scarce public resources on Canadians and to allow asylum claims only when a claimant is physically in Canada. In poll after poll, Canadians agree with our common-sense positions.
The unsettling revelations that the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) admitted tens of thousands of non-citizens into Canada from countries with security issues, without in-person hearings demands action.
But when asked if you would instruct the IRB to end this practice, you said:
“The IRB is an independent adjudicative body.”
Your statement belies a lack of recognition of the responsibility of your role. You have the ability and duty to give direction to immigration authorities within your jurisdiction, including the IRB.
So today, in order to ensure the safety of Canadians and to restore the integrity of the asylum system, Conservatives are calling upon you to direct the IRB to end the file review system.
In-person interviews are essential to proper screening and vetting of potential Canadian citizens. With recent reports of IRGC officials here in Canada, it’s significant that a big portion of these “paper review” approvals came from countries, like Iran, with known security issues.
We also call upon you to bar the Board from prioritizing the privacy of alleged members of a listed terrorist organization. Granting them anonymity in asylum hearings should not be permitted, unless the CBSA has established beyond all doubt that they were coerced, were not a senior member of the organization, and had committed no war crimes.
Canada’s asylum acceptance rate of 79.8 percent in 2024 was among the highest in the world. This suggests an overly permissive system that does not prioritize the world’s most vulnerable people, and in turn, incentivizes abuse. By comparison, in 2024, Germany only accepted 59 per cent of claims, Sweden 40 per cent, and Ireland just 30 per cent.
The original intent of the 1951 Refugee Convention was not for asylum to become a backdoor means for migrants to skip the line in other immigration streams. Every day you permit file review and prioritize those who may pose a risk to Canadians is another day in which our once-respected asylum system is weakened
You must take action today.