Listen to the screams coming from the left-wing press gallery and the taxpayer-funded CBC. You would think the Conservative Party of Canada just proposed throwing sick children out into the snow.What did the Conservatives actually do? They introduced a parliamentary motion to review — and ultimately cut — the supplemental gold-plated benefits flowing to failed asylum claimants, also known as illegal immigrants. You know, the ones who have been told "no" by our immigration system but are still here, collecting government cheques.The Conservatives want to strip the extra goodies under the Interim Federal Health Program. We are talking about vision care, like glasses and eye exams. We are talking about mental health counselling. We are talking about urgent dental work, prescription medications, and assisted medical devices. These are benefits for people who have no legal right to be standing on Canadian soil.And the Liberals and their media stenographers are having a collective meltdown.Let us examine this through the lens of basic common sense. A Canadian citizen, a taxpayer who works 50 weeks a year and never misses a filing deadline, often cannot get a family doctor. That same Canadian often pays out of pocket for dental work because their provincial plan does not cover it. They dig into their own pockets for new glasses. They ration their blood pressure medication because the co-pay is too high.Yet the Liberal government, for years, has been quietly handing out these exact same services — and more — to people who snuck across the border or whose refugee claims were rejected. The program cost $211 million in 2020. By the last fiscal year, it hit $896 million. The parliamentary budget officer projects it will balloon to $1.5 billion by 2029..That is your money. Money taken from your paycheque. Money that could go to shortening surgical wait lists for your grandmother. Instead, it buys designer eyeglasses for people under deportation orders.The Conservative motion is a start. It is a necessary gut-check for a country that has lost its mind. But cutting off the dental care and the therapy sessions is not the finish line. It is barely the starting blocks.The policy cannot stop at "stop the cheques." The policy must be "get on the plane."If you have been ordered deported, you should be deported. Period. There are more than 300,000 claims sitting in the backlog right now. Thousands of these people have already been rejected. They have exhausted their appeals. The courts have spoken. The Immigration and Refugee Board has spoken.Why are they still here?Because the Liberal government, under Justin Trudeau and now under his successor, has deliberately dismantled the enforcement apparatus. They made the system porous. They made detention the exception rather than the rule. They made it nearly impossible for border officers to actually do their jobs and put people on flights..The Conservatives say they want to speed up deportations for bogus claims. Good. Say it louder. But let us be honest about what that requires. It requires arresting people with final removal orders. It requires holding them securely so they do not disappear into the underground economy. It requires chartering flights and telling foreign governments to take their citizens back.This is not radical stuff. This is how sovereign nations have operated since the beginning of time.The pushback from the usual suspects is predictable. They will scream "racist." They will scream "inhumane." They will run sob stories about a failed claimant who has been here for six years and just wants to stay. They will ignore the fact that every day we let that person stay is a day we tell the person waiting in line overseas, doing it the right way, that their application means nothing.The Liberal expansion of these benefits in 2016 was a signal. It told the world that even if you do not qualify for asylum, even if you break our laws to get here, we will take care of you. We will give you better health coverage than we give the pensioner in Saskatoon who built this country..That has to end.Cut the benefits. Shut down the gravy train. But do not stop there. Buy the plane tickets. Call the escort officers. Restore the rule of law.If you have no right to be here, you have no right to stay. It is that simple. It is time the Conservative Party grew a spine and said so. No more benefits. No more appeals. No more hiding in the shadows. Go home.
