Friday, November 07, 2025

The Wisdom of a Liberal Government

"The pace of arrivals began to exceed Canada's capacity to absorb and support newcomers in the way we are used to doing."
"Canada's new government recognizes that this system is no longer sustainable, and we are determined to make it so." 
Canada 2025 Liberal Budget Preamble 
 
To begin to solve the problem of Canada having embarked on a mission to become 'post-national' and speed up its intake of migrants, immigrants, refugees from all over the world, including foreign students and foreign temporary workers, amounting to a million newcomers a year that nudged Canada's population from the 36 million it was a few years ago to the new total of 41 million, in the process making housing unaffordable, schools crowded with students who have no facility with the two official languages, and the nation's universal health care system close to collapse, the new government of PM Mark Carney has decided to address the issue by speeding up a universal amnesty granting permanent residency status to hundreds of thousands of 'asylum seekers'.
 
Canada is now embarked on a mission to undo the damage deliberately invited by the previous Liberal government under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, by bringing the mass immigration imbroglio "under control". It will do this by pursuing a "one-time" program fast-tracking "eligible protected persons", many of whom entered the country illegally, toward permanent residency. To any jaded Canadian this plan looks far more like -- more of the same.
 
Under Canadian law, an asylum seeker who has received approval by authorities to their refugee claim is considered a 'protected person'. At the present time there are more people encompassed by the Canadian refugee system than at any other time in history. A total of 497,443 individual "asylum claimants and protected persons" reside in the country, at taxpayer expense, in every conceivable way. Many of whom take the places meant to temporarily house the Canadian homeless population. Many of them regularly visit food banks.
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 Wait Times From 8 to 22 Hours...The Ottawa Hospital
 
The emergency rooms of Canada's understaffed hospitals regularly hold a significant percentage of migrants requiring medical treatment which has caused the wait for treatment to go beyond 8 hours and more at any given time. But $120.4 million has been allocated in an 'austerity budget' toward bringing that 'one-time' program of fast tracking those 'eligible' into protected status as a reward to many for having illegally entered the country as economic migrants, to register as refugees.
 
Apart from the number that Statistics Canada registered of close to a half-million in the category of 'asylum claimants and protected persons', another 187,786 claimants for asylum wait for their case to be heard by the Immigrant and Refugee Board of Canada. In 2015, when Justin Trudeau became prime minister, asylum claimants in Canada totalled 16,058 people. In ten years exponentially greater numbers entered Canada to claim refugee status, generously invited by Mr. Trudeau. 
 
Any foreigner passing a light security screening can claim asylum under the terms of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. That person is permitted to remain in the country with access to benefits and work permits  until such time as their case is adjudicated, and that can take years, and even longer considering the extensive backlog. While 2015 saw 7,100 asylum claims processed, in 2024 that number ballooned to 58,050, an increase of over 800 percent.
 
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A boundary monument marks the border between Canada and the United States at Roxham Road. The road is a well-travelled unofficial border crossing for asylum seekers crossing into Canada. (Charles Contant/CBC)
 
Migrants within the refugee system include the estimated 114,373 illegal border crossers swarming Canada since 2017, illegally crossing into Canada from the United States, deliberately bypassing the legal, authorized border crossing posts. Tens of thousands of temporary migrants entering Canada as students who claimed asylum once their visas expired are included, to a record of 20,245 claims last year. In the 'protected persons' category the vast number of claimants will see acceptance. 
 
Canada had become the fastest-growing country in the OECD after lifting pandemic lockdowns and opening all permanent and temporary migration in one fell swoop. It soon became obvious that the state of Canada's immigration system had become inefficient and dysfunctional through the impossibility of attempting to handle numbers that the system was never meant to be drowned in. 
 
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An RCMP officer looks on as asylum seekers cross the Canada-U.S. border at Roxham Road on Jan. 5, 2023. (Charles Contant/CBC)
 

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Monday, June 09, 2025

Actions and Choices Have Consequences

"To accede to Mr. Bajwa's request for a [conditional sentence] or a reduction of the jail time on either count for the impact of the collateral immigration consequences to Mr. Bajwa and as a remedy [for breaching his Charter right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure] would bring the administration of justice into disrepute and result in an inappropriate and artificial sentence; in other words, an unfit sentence."
"He received his first British Columbia driving prohibition on March 19 1993. He has also accumulated a substantial number of additional Criminal Code convictions and Motor Vehicle Act infractions."
"I am flabbergasted that Crown counsel has only sought a four-month consecutive jail sentence [for driving while prohibited]."
"Given the circumstances of the offence, it is hard to imagine a more suitable case for the two-year-less-a-day maximum sentence allowed." 
Judge David Patterson, British Columbia Provincial Court 
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The provincial courthouse in Vernon, B.C.
 
Judge Patterson sentenced Vernon, B.C. resident Gurinder Pal Singh Bajwa, a permanent resident of Canada, to 198 days in prison (just over six months) for impaired driving, gave him a fine of $2,000 and banned the man from driving for a three-year-period. In addition, Bajwa was handed another 120 days (about four months) by Judge Patterson for driving while prohibited; the additional time to be served consecutively, for a total of some ten months in jail. 
 
This was no ordinary, run-of-the-mill impaired driving (driving under the influence) event. This resident of Canada racked up a total of 32 driving prohibitions or suspensions, along with 16 twenty-four-hour driving bans. That record weighed the scale against the B.C. judge filing to be convinced of the plaintiff's argument that he should have a lighter sentence than what would be normal disciplinary action reflecting drunk driving, based on the fact that a sentence of over six months in jail could see him being deported to India.
 
Mr. Bajwa escaped deportation in 2019 on a similar impaired driving conviction when he was granted a sentence of five months and 29 days, a reduced sentence on humanitarian grounds. He was arrested for impaired driving again on May 22, 2022 when he rear-ended another vehicle with his Mercedes SUV, in the parking lot of a Wholesale Club. On that occasion his blood alcohol level was over twice the legal limit. 
 
Originally from India's Punjab region, the now-57-year-old man immigrated to Canada over 34 years ago. Had he, during that lengthy period, sought Canadian citizenship to formalize his status in Canada as a citizen, the specter of deportation would never be haunting him. As it is, his less formal status as a permanent resident makes him vulnerable to being returned to the country he left. His personal circumstances should have no bearing on his removal to his place of origin; that he no longer has family or friends there, and the decades that have passed have rendered the India he knew totally different from from the India of today.
 
Noting that a more forgiving sentence would enable his client to remain in Canada, Mr. Bajwa's lawyer argued for a conditional sentence or no greater period of incarceration than what he received in 2019 -- five months and 29 days behind bars. It takes no effort to produce sympathy for Mr. Bajwa's plight; the court heard that the man "has no one in India", and he is in the process of divorcing "as  his alcohol usage ruined his relationship with his estranged wife and his children", who live in Canada.
 
It seems unfortunate, but eight days following a drunk driving conviction in May of 2022, Mr. Bajwa "was very intoxicated at his daughter's wedding and smacked a plate of food out of her hand. He was subsequently convicted of assault ... and handed a 60-day jail sentence followed by an 28-month probation order , which included having no contact with his estranged wife or children." And that was "the last straw for the family, essentially".
 
In February of 2024 Mr. Bajwa received a letter from the Canada Border Services Agency "alleging he may be inadmissible to Canada" for serious criminality. "Removal from Canada would lead to dire consequences for Mr. Bajwa. He would be forced to leave the country he has called home for more than 34 years. He would face the prospect of returning to India, which has changed since he last resided there. A country that now may be as foreign to him as Canada was when Mr. Bajwa immigrated to Canada." Yet, on the other hand, Mr. Bajwa’s “moral blameworthiness is at the highest end of the spectrum”, pointed out Judge Patterson, as he delivered his judgement.

https://infotel.ca/images/webp/2fec76972d7e84967b85658a514d22b276a017223b35e20220638fd053594656.webp
Image Credit: TWITTER / Canada Border Services Agency
 

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