Following the April federal election, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives intensified their demands for a major overhaul of Canada’s immigration system. Their priorities are clear: strengthening security checks, ending the temporary foreign worker program, and ensuring new immigrants share Canada’s liberal and democratic values.
In a year-end interview with True North, Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner reflected on the “substantive” work Conservatives pushed for in 2025 on the immigration file and committed to fighting for further reforms in the new year.
Rempel Garner said the Conservatives introduced the most comprehensive set of immigration proposals in decades this year. She vowed to continue pressing the government to fix broken policies that have led many Canadians to no longer view immigration as a positive for the country.
“It was a very, very busy fall legislative session, and I feel like we moved the needle on the national conversation around immigration. But we also didn’t just oppose the Liberal government. We showed that we were a government in waiting by proposing significant measures to reform the immigration system,” she said. “I’m really proud of that work.”
Conservatives began the fall session by pushing to abolish the temporary foreign worker program and continued to oppose it throughout the year. Conservatives argued that the program has been misused by businesses seeking cheap labour, despite often operating in regions with record-high unemployment. They claimed this potentially displaces Canadians from jobs given to foreign workers.
Rempel Garner also noted that Conservatives brought attention to the since-passed “chain migration bill,” Bill C-3. The bill grants Canadian citizenship to the foreign-born children of immigrants who became citizens in Canada. A range of amendments to the bill, originally passed with the Bloc Québécois’s support, would have required stronger ties to Canada for new citizens, language tests, and security checks. However, Liberals and the NDP voted the amendments down in the House of Commons.
“I think it was the amendments that we made to that bill that showed a path forward on how to protect the value of Canadian citizenship,” she said. She noted one amendment would have required the parent of the new citizen to be at least a permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth. “We’ve seen a significant increase in births to parents who are both non-citizens of Canada or non-permanent residents…We started a national conversation on that issue.”
Rempel Garner also pointed to her party’s work to add sweeping immigration reforms to the Liberals’ proposed omnibus border legislation, Bill C-12. She said the primary goal was to “severely reduce the abuse in Canada’s asylum system.” Liberal and Bloc Québécois members defeated most amendments; however, some Conservative amendments passed. These included automatic termination of an asylum claim if the applicant voluntarily returns to their home country, mandatory warrants for individuals deemed national security risks, and ending claims for those considered inadmissible to Canada.
Rempel Garner also tabled a private member’s bill that would prevent Canadian judges from handing out lighter sentences to non-citizens to help them avoid deportation. She said Canadians have been hearing weekly about courts handing down lenient sentences to foreign nationals, even after they have been convicted of serious crimes.
Conservatives also pressured the Liberals to be more transparent about immigration data and revealed that healthcare sector stakeholders were not consulted on the impact of the federal government’s immigration policies on the overwhelmed Canadian healthcare system.
“All of the proposals that we put forward this fall, if they had been passed, would have had the net effect of disincentivizing people to abuse Canada’s immigration system and cracking down on immigration fraud and on the abuse of the asylum system,” Rempel Garner said. “It would have ensured that the value of Canadian citizenship and the value of being in Canada would be more respected. These are all normative positions that I think Canadians across the political spectrum agree with.”
Rempel Garner also noted that Conservatives have been holding meetings with immigration stakeholders, experts, and whistleblowers in the federal immigration department, which have helped inform much of their reforms and advocacy. She said she’s glad to see Canadians blaming the Liberal government for mismanaging the system rather than people who are just coming to Canada for a better life.
She said Conservatives laid down the track for future work in the coming year and is committed to fighting to reverse much of the damage caused by a decade of Liberal post-nationalist ideology and policies.
She vowed that Conservatives will pressure the Liberals on reforming Canada’s exploitable immigration and asylum system, noting that earlier in the month, an alleged extortion gang all applied for refugee status. She noted they will now likely stay in Canada for potentially years due to the backlogged deportation list.
“We’re at a juncture in Canadian history where we have to talk about what Canada’s national identity is, what it means to be Canadian,” Rempel Garner said. “if we don’t have those concepts nailed down, on basics like respect for the rule of law, for gender equality, and understanding that somebody coming to Canada can’t must abandon violent or extreme prejudices or hateful prejudices, how do we ensure that those principles which are in Canada’s citizenship guide are actually enforced through law and through our immigration processes?”