Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party has finally verbalized a plan for immigration, slamming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for only recently conceding targets are wildly out of control. If elected, the Conservatives would tie immigration to available houses and jobs, which would curb mass immigration, Tory immigration critic Tom Kmiec told True North.The Calgary MP for Calgary Shepard also said, unlike the Trudeau Liberals, these calculations would be based on all immigrants, not just permanent immigration.Yet, Kmiec said Poilievre’s government wouldn’t set a concrete number. “Whatever it comes out to, that will be the number. If it’s lower, it’s lower. If it’s higher, it’s higher,” Kmiec said on The Andrew Lawton Show. “If you want more immigration, build more housing.” “The problem isn’t the permanent residency ones, those PR numbers are often quoted by individuals. In Canada, about 45% to 55% of those, depending on the year, are people who are actually physically in Canada already,” said Kmiec.“They are just changing their status from studying, from working here on a temporary work permit and they’re becoming permanent residents of Canada, hopefully, on the pathway to becoming citizens and joining the Canadian family.”The criteria for people that want to immigrate to Canada was also discussed in the interview. The MP noted the current brokenness within the system and lamented things such as economic factors would be foremost in consideration. As for making sure people’s values assimilate into Canadian culture, he said he was hesitant to introduce things that “are not fixed.”“I don’t want my government determining which values it supports and which it doesn’t and the reason I don’t like it is that for the last nine years, that’s been the Liberal government of Canada,” said Kmiec. “I believe things like healthcare, housing jobs, all Canadians can get behind that and be like, ‘yeah, those are real, reasonable objective metrics.’ There’s no subjectivity to them, you either have those services or you don’t.”.Kmiec highlighted Canada’s existing policies and pointed out the roadblocks for skilled workers, such as doctors and nurses, to practice in Canada due to licensing regulations. “We have over 20,000 internationally trained doctors who cannot practice their profession,” he said. “Same thing for nurses. The country of origin lost a nurse and we didn’t gain a nurse.”He said it was “ridiculous” that it took Trudeau so long to admit he had made a mistake on opening the floodgates of immigration while the problems got more out of hand. “I guess he doesn’t read any of the briefing notes or documents that come up his way,” Kmiec said.Kmiec recounted Trudeau’s so-called strategy when he appointed various immigration ministers to the portfolio. “When he reshuffled his own cabinet, you had this bizarre situation where the previous immigration minister could not let go of his department. He was saying that ‘things are a mess,’ that’s a direct quote and the new minister said ‘things are out of control.’ They’ve been fighting it out in public between the senior immigration minister and the junior immigration minister,” said Kmiec.“Now the prime minister has weighed in and accused his government of basically failing on the job and that they’re not competent obviously, except he’s the one who appointed everybody. He’s been in charge for almost nine years now and they broke the immigration system. It’s nice of him to recognize that he broke it.”
