Close Reading

Pierre Poilievre’s Immigration Hypocrisy: A Study in Convenient Principles Disguised as Conviction Pierre Poilievre has never met a border he did not want to fortify, a refugee claim he did not want to scrutinize, or an irregular crossing he did not want to turn into a national morality play. For years, he has warned Canadians that the country is being overrun by “illegal border crossers,” “queue jumping asylum seekers,” and “abusers of the system.” He delivers these warnings with the solemnity of a man announcing a biblical plague, not a handful of exhausted families walking across a ditch in Quebec. In Poilievre’s political universe, Roxham Road is not a rural footpath. It is a symbol of national decline. It is chaos incarnate. It is the place where the rule of law goes to die. It is, in short, the perfect stage upon which he can perform his favorite role: the lone defender of order in a world gone soft. At least, that is the story he tells the public. The private story, as publicly reported, is considerably less heroic. The Public Record That Refuses to Behave: According to reporting from The Breach and the National Observer, someone described as the uncle of Poilievre’s spouse has an immigration history that reads like a greatest hits compilation of everything Poilievre claims to oppose. The reporting outlines that he entered Canada and made a refugee claim. That claim was refused. A deportation order was issued. He later re-entered Canada through Roxham Road. He then filed a humanitarian and compassionate application. Poilievre’s spouse reportedly helped prepare that application. This is not fringe gossip. This is what journalists documented through correspondence, interviews, and immigration records. In other words, the exact pathway Poilievre condemns as “abuse of the system” is the same pathway publicly reported to have been used by someone connected to him. And suddenly, the man who treats Roxham Road like a national security breach becomes quieter than a library at midnight. The slogans stop. The outrage evaporates. The border, once a sacred line, becomes a flexible suggestion. The Rhetoric: A Symphony of Outrage: Poilievre’s immigration rhetoric is a carefully orchestrated performance. He warns that irregular border crossings undermine the rule of law. He insists humanitarian and compassionate applications are loopholes. He claims the system is being gamed. He declares that Canada must “take back control.” He delivers these lines with the moral certainty of a man who believes compassion is a gateway drug. In his speeches, asylum seekers are not people. They are symbols. They are props. They are the raw material from which he fashions his political identity. He is the sheriff. They are the threat. The border is the battleground. And Canada is the damsel in distress. It is a compelling narrative. It is also a narrative that collapses the moment it becomes personally inconvenient. The Reality: A Study in Elastic Principles: When someone connected to Poilievre uses the very same system he condemns, the rules change with breathtaking speed. Irregular border crossings are no longer a crisis. They are a misunderstanding. A technicality. A regrettable but understandable choice. Humanitarian and compassionate applications are no longer loopholes. They are legitimate pathways. Necessary tools. Evidence of a compassionate system. The border is no longer a sacred line. It is a suggestion. A guideline. A flexible concept open to interpretation. It is a remarkable transformation, like watching a man insist that jaywalking is a crime against humanity until his friend does it, at which point it becomes a misunderstood act of civic expression. The Political Convenience of Shifting Standards: Poilievre’s political identity is built on the idea that he alone will restore order. He alone will enforce the rules. He alone will protect Canada from the chaos of irregular migration. But the moment the rules become inconvenient, they are no longer rules. They are preferences. They are vibes. They are whatever he needs them to be in the moment. This is not a minor contradiction. It is a fundamental collapse of the moral architecture he has built his political brand upon. If irregular crossings are a crisis, then they are a crisis for everyone. If humanitarian applications are loopholes, then they are loopholes for everyone. If the system is broken, then it is broken for everyone. But Poilievre’s version of justice is not universal. It is conditional. It is situational. It is deeply, profoundly personal. The Broader Pattern: Institutions Are Sacred Until They Are Not: This is not the first time Poilievre’s principles have proven to be more flexible than advertised. He has attacked the Supreme Court of Canada when its rulings do not align with his political needs. He has accused the justice system of being too lenient when it suits him and too harsh when it does not. He has framed himself as the defender of institutions while undermining them whenever they become inconvenient. It is a pattern. It is a habit. It is a worldview. And it reveals something essential about his politics. For Poilievre, institutions are not pillars of democracy. They are tools. They are props. They are instruments to be used when helpful and discarded when not. The Satirical Truth: A Philosophy in One Sentence: Pierre Poilievre’s immigration philosophy can now be summarized with clinical precision: Canada must crack down on irregular border crossings, except for the ones that are fine. And he will decide which ones are fine. It is a stance that bends so far backward it could qualify for a gymnastics medal. It is a stance that reveals more about political convenience than national security. It is a stance that exposes the gap between what Poilievre says and what Poilievre does. And it is a stance that makes one thing abundantly clear. Polievre's Hypocrisy

Why is that all hate against Indians in Canada? Am not Indian origin , but what is wrong for Indian making majority in Brampton. Am black African living in Toronto , who love this country for giving me the chance to build my life and always I bless Canada and Canadians.saying all this , Do we not have a pocket in a city / town dominated by people whose origin traces all the way from Italy/ Portuguese/ Lebanon / Ukraine etc . So for me , yes you can talk about controlled immigration without dehumanizing Indian migrants. Am a proud Christian , and receiving an immigrants is a blessing, even my lord and king Jesus Christ was refugee in Egypt. The west welcoming immigrants coming from Christian heritage, that is why indeed western countries are very blessed. Am not saying, open border policy is acceptable . Still you talk respectfully about controlled immigration without dehumanizing any group of immigrants.

Canada is the new Bharat. We need to maintain an open border with India so that we can flood this new land with the wealth of diversity and corruption. Jagmeet Singh was paid millions to keep Canada unified. Pakistan wants piece 🔫!!! Next time I come to Canada I must bring at least one servant. Pass the butter chicken, you will only be served if you wear a head dress.

The only reason you can use the term Immigrant is because the govt issued visas. But that being said the govt fast tracked the usual immigrant process which takes months to years. So in actuality this is not legitimate immigrants. It's unlawful what the govt has done and therefore these people are immigrants under cover of law. Or color of law. It's defacto. I call them illegal migrants. Most are not doctors or engineers or trades people even. Most are young men from 19 to their 30's. According to Investigative Journalist Joshua Philipp of the Epoch Times, Through visiting Darian gap, he found UN tents helping illegal migrants to get to the US. But they had to pass through cartel territory. They had to pay the cartels a fee or die or be raped or both. Yes it's brutal some things but apparently before Obama left office he signed an international agreement to import people globally from mostly Islamic countries and create open borders. We see Chinese, and many people from different parts of South America and even Africa crossing to the US. A lot of whom end up in Canada. So before they cross into the US they toss their IDs Especially if they are from countries that are flagged by the US as questionable or terrorist possibilities. So this leads to a lot coming to Canada. I'm sure you heard of Roxham Rd crossing? It's officially closed but people still cross into Canada from the US going through there. There's also piles of IDs at that border crossing also. Anyways these open border policies has cut out in depth screening so we really don't know who is in Canada as true asylum seekers or immigrants. To add to this complexity, over 300,000 Canadian travel documents have been stolen from CBSA Canadian Border Services Agency. 280,000 of those were blank Canadian passports. SO we really don't know who's walking on Canadian soil. This was confirmed by Luc Sabourin a former CBSA agent. He got forced out because he was asking the right questions and giving the right evidence. Here's the interview with Joshua and the interview with Luc. Have a watch n listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obgZ-Oh6Es0&t=4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdIjTSAzUXE&t=91s JamCan I'm with you 100% you are right on the money ! Great work.

There are now quite a few news stories in Canada of immigrants leaving the country - some back home and others to the USA and other places. Many just get a Canadian passport and then leave. There are public health care and pensions, so it can be an asset and also a convenient travel document to have. A lot of Canadian university graduates have a very hard time finding work in their fields and a lot of them look to the US for a better future. Both immigration and unemployment in Canada are much higher that in the US - so more people are chasing fewer jobs that often pay less and are taxed more than in the USA. Opportunities are generally a lot fewer in Canada than the US, and the business environment is not as favourable, and taxes significantly higher. You would be getting some of the entrepreneurs from Canada moving to the US for more favourable conditions as well to launch a business and also now a lot more rich investor types, so-called high net worth individuals wanting to relocate, because they just raised the capital gains tax in Canada. Capital gains is also triggered on inheritance in Canada with a deemed sale of property and assets, so rich people would prefer the American system and want to be residents there for tax purposes and have their assets grow in value in the US compared to Canada. There are very large numbers of foreign students and other categories of immigrants which may have as their goal going to the US after getting a temporary visa to Canada which is easy to get - maybe something like half a million to a million people in those categories depending on the year, plus around another half million regular immigrants and refugees now. The Trudeau administration has increased immigration to record numbers. It has been steadily going up over the years for several decades since 1990. Because of family re-unification it can have a snowball effect and could significantly exceed 1 million per year. A lot of the sending countries have much larger populations than Canada, so there are a lot more that can be potentially sent to Canada in the future. About 1/4 of the population of Canada has been added in the past few decades. Add to that visitors and temporary visas - that is a lot of people potentially moving to the US. Before the 1990s Canadians visiting the US were not required to have a passport and a drivers' license or birth certificate was adequate. Now a passport is required. It is impossible to effectively control the long Canada-US border, so there could be some unified policies in that area agreed on between Canada and the USA on immigration and refugees. Canada currently has a very open immigration policy with the government actively seeking out more immigration beyond its current processing capacity and trying to take rejected immigrants from other countries. The Canadian government, especially in recent years under Trudeau is immigration hungry. It might be the only country in the world doing that. What some news reports are now saying is that some immigrants are actually leaving, since they find it so difficult in Canada and some are worse off than they were in the countries they came from, which were considered to be less developed than Canada. \nWashington currently has more immigration controls and administrative competencies than Ottawa, so US pressure and influence is a faster way to get reforms into the system than waiting for local politicians to do anything, which is unlikely. Canada is seen by some as a backdoor into the US. Biden's immigration policies could be seen as very conservative in Canada compared to Trudeau's. It used to be in the news about how refugees were trying to get to Canada and walking across the border in Quebec and out west from the US earlier, but now there are more news stories of immigrants leaving Canada trying to go the other way, probably due to high costs and unemployment because the government took in more people than it could absorb into the economy. They have the idea that immigration drives GDP growth so that they can borrow and spend more, expand the civil service, etc. without making any cutbacks or efficiencies, supposedly without the Debt to GDP ratio getting worse, just by bringing in more people as if that would drive the economy. A lot depends on who you bring in as well. Are they going to go on welfare, are they going to increase crime, will they somehow contribute to society, are they a net tax benefit or cost in terms of government services, will they invest money, will they start a business and create jobs for others ? Those issues do not factor into government decision making in Canada for the most part. Ontario Premier Doug Ford did say there were too many foreign students. It is bad planning not to consider those factors since there are other costs that grow with those policies as well, and infrastructure has to be expanded. I think that the real immigration numbers to Canada are not transparent or made public, nor are the costs involved, if anyone even knows what they are. Nor is the impact on crime. You can guess from what the reports are in other countries. The Fraser Institute has made some estimates on the net costs of immigration to the government budget a few years ago, which were very high and which by now have increased - the cost equivalent of several new aircraft carriers each year. They are big numbers which are not publicized, but it amounts to the fact that immigration is subsidized by the taxpayers in Canada and it is not paying for our pensions as an ageing society as has been claimed. There is less money for education, health care and pensions per person, and those social benefits will probably have to be reduced over time. Social programs can only be delivered to the extent that the government has money. The bigger social system a county has, the more such immigration policies are going to cost. Trudeau has been expanding various social programs as well, so higher taxes and debt are likely with that approach. Then more productive people and companies will want to leave Canada and go to the US. Probably the government does not know what the actual numbers and costs are and doesn't actively keep track of that information beyond what is required. Probably nobody knows what the true immigration figures and their associated costs are in Canada, and hardly anyone has even studied those issues. If they can just walk across the US border and get papers so easily making an asylum claim, it is not surprising, since it would take them longer to get a regular visa and work permit if they did it legally. You could call that a loophole in the US immigration system which is being exploited. The US is better governed in general and has a better system in many ways, but I am not sure if it is the same on that. People have arrived on boats and have not been sent back. At least in the US you have more open information about those issues. In Canada it is hard to find out anything about it. Deportations from Canada are very few. \nOn other issues in Canada when voting in federal elections you have to show a government issued photo ID like a drivers' license or passport to vote and bring a card that was mailed out to eligible voters that gets updated addresses when a person files their taxes. I have never heard of mail-in ballots in Canada, but there are remote areas of the country in the far north who may have special system for voting. It is easier to get a Canadian citizenship than US and many more citizenships are handed out in Canada each year in proportion to the population than in the US. Canadian might be one of the easiest citizenships to get in the world. The official line now is that it is a country of immigrants. Based on current trends, will very little opposition to it in the parliament and most MPs supporting it, future immigration to Canada could increase to several million per year because of the rapid growth of population in the world, and the momentum already growing of immigration to Canada, so it may change significantly in the future. Historically around the world you can see many examples that country names, borders, flags and languages change over time with population changes, so it might not be called Canada anymore in 50-100 years. For example, Bulgaria used to be called Thrace which had been a powerful kingdom in antiquity and had a different language which is barely known about anymore. Over the past 2,000 years it has gone through a number of changes and had various regimes governing it, has been independent and also part of several different empires. Canada has only been a country for a short time in comparison and has been been going through significant changes. Trudeau has said that Canada is a post-national country. Canada is also going through a period of critical self-examination and deconstruction-revisionism. A lot of what had been viewed as positive from its history now is seen more critically, with re-naming and removing historical figures now seen as negative.\nDiscussing immigration policy critically is considered by many to be taboo in Canada, unless a person is saying good things about it in general. You can hear people say that the government isn't processing enough people, for example, but not often that there are too many or that it costs a lot of money. The trend of migration from Canada to the US would only increase much more in the future as it is going currently, and its role as a stepping stone to migration to the US could increase. The way this would be seen by many in Canada is that they are losing valuable people to the USA whom they consider assets, since a lot of officials have been trying to bring in more people into the country, but not everyone wants to stay in Canada nowadays because of a lack of jobs and opportunities. Canada is quite laissez-faire about migration, with Toronto being a sanctuary city as well.

I stopped visiting Canada 40 years ago because of insane or corrupt border control policies. I traveled to Canada from California to record an album for a popular rock star. My crew number 4 people and we had reserves a month for basic tracking in a studio there. We bought our own reels of 3 inch wide recording tape because the studio wanted twice the rate as normal and since my studio was a distributor for the mastering tapes we brought from my own inventory. Each reel of tape was 3 lbs and brought 30 reels. We got to customs and they said we owed money for importing the tape. Normally a reel would have been $180, and customs wanted $38,000 x 20, and would not let us retrieve it to take it back to the US side of the border. How can a tape worth $180 suddenly have duty of $38,000?\nIt was explained to me as the Potential Value of the tape which meant AFTER a hit song was recording in it. Most recordings are total losses and the tape cant used on a new project even if properly bulk-erased. They expected me to pay on the spot $760,000 in duties. I gave up and left the tape with them. I called the artist and said we could not do the project in Canada and we went back to California. The artist came to us a few months later and the result was a minor hit, and probably barely made its production cost since the label only distributed it in Canada. I talked to an international trade lawyer about what happened and he said customs officials were wrong in Canada but they are given full latitude with no appeal so his advice was never take anything over the border that I did not mind being confiscated. Sometimes they would let it in because it was going back out in a month, but likely they sold it off and pocketed the money. The US is corrupt on a federal level but Canada is corrupt on the local level. I moved out of the US 24 years ago have a much higher quality of life than is even possible in the US, and live very cheaply. Total cost of living with a very active social and cultural life impossible to duplicate in the US which as some of the least options for culture. And my cost of living is $1500 a month, less than utilities alone for one house in California, and that is for 2 people. Last month for example I attended world class opera, ballet and symphonies 9 times, and went out to dinner, in jazz clubs or dance clubs, visited12 top museums, and it was still under $1500 for the month. A pair of tickets to the MET in NYC for lower grade performance, sets, orchestra ad theater, was $1800!! $600 for tickets to drama for 2. Here there 237 drama theaters within walking distance of my city center home, and can walk anywhere at any time of day and be safe due to VERY low crime rates. Free medical is good. I am not citizen but still I had an operation and 10 days in a vip single room for $5300 and despite my insurance I had been paying back in California $824.month, it was going to cost me out o pocket $500,000 and one day in a recovery 12 bed room, and require paid nursing attendant for 30 days. The results were great and was treated like king.\nCanadians have lost control of their government but Americas are screwed regardless, with lower than international standards for everything, with crime, corruption in Washington, extreme cost of living, no access to culture, few if any safe parks. My adopted city is not only far more beautiful than any US city, my GF can walk, alone, anywhere in a city of 7mil at any time of day through any of the 600 beautiful parks open 24/7..at 3am. There are no homeless, and 80% of those over 20yo own their home clear of debt. No college debt despite twice the % of people having degrees. The rest of the world caught up and has surpassed the US and Europe in quality of life. \n\nI have only been back to the US 5 times in 24 years and each time I am shocked by how much the entire society has declined while most of the world outside of Europe, Canada, US, UK or Australia have dramatically improved.\nEvery year since 2008 more Americans leave the US to live elsewhere than legal immigrants arrive.

Nice summary of the main challenges. Reading some of these comments leads me to believe that if one is motivated solely by money, Canada is not a great choice for you as an immigrant. The number of commenters hoping to move to the US from Canada due to greater opportunities to make money while ignoring the real and substantial disadvantages of living south of the borders just emphasizes this. My family are immigrants from the US and we didn’t face the same challenges as immigrants from countries further afield but I do understand the differences between the two countries very well and can state unequivocally that moving to Canada was the best decision our family made. Lower crime, better health care (yes even with the wait times), a fairer system and a “boring” but sane political system more than compensate for the few extra dollars I would make south of the border. In terms of where better prospects going forward for children and grandchildren, with the looming threat of climate change, Canada wins hands down. Extra income means little if you have to spend all of it on personal security and health care deductibles. So if you are only motivated by top line items like gross annual salary, Canada might not be for you and you would be better off looking elsewhere and leaving that immigration spot open to someone who can appreciate the more balanced offering that a new life and future in Canada can offer.