Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is calling out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for hundreds of thousands of migrants unaccounted for in Canada's asylum system."Why is Canada’s immigration system so broken?" said Poilievre on social media on Tuesday. "Trudeau appointed two incompetent immigration ministers back-to-back. Sean Fraser lost track of a million migrants who entered Canada, and Marc Miller granted citizenship to an alleged ISIS terrorist. Liberals can't fix what they broke."Failures in Ottawa broke Canada's asylum system, said the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) in a recent report, noting new statistics indicate approximately 144,000 migrants claimed asylum in Canada in 2023."This is the highest year on record and is several times higher than any year before the Liberals formed government in 2015," wrote MLI. "Until a decade ago, Canada was receiving on average less than 25,000 asylum claims per year."Almost half of Canada's asylum claims were made in Quebec, prompting Premier François Legault to issue a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requesting financial help and policies to manage the influx of migrants. In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith issued a statement objecting to Trudeau's plan to relocate tens of thousands of asylum seekers to Alberta. “Alberta has always welcomed newcomers who possess our shared values – and we will continue to do so," said Smith in a press release. “However, last year alone, an all-time record of over 200,000 people moved to Alberta. That’s like adding two new Red Deer-sized cities in just one year."According to MLI, the massive uptick in asylum claims in Canada is a result of two policy decisions - relaxing the criteria for visas and allowing visa-free travel for potential asylum seekers. “In other words, our quiet asylum crisis is largely a self-inflicted problem,” wrote MLI.
