LILLEY: Trudeau’s reckless refugee policy bankrupting Canada

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The explosion in refugee claims in Canada over the past few years is costing Canadian taxpayers billions in mostly unseen costs.

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On Friday, CBC broke the news of the federal health program for refugees now costing $411 million per year, but that is just the tip of the iceberg shocking as it is.

The Interim Federal Health Program, meant to provide basic coverage to refugee claimants while their cases are being heard, cost just $60 million in 2016. With the number of people making refugee claims spiking from roughly 11,000 in 2016 to a total that is expected reach nearly 180,000 this year, costs for the health program have grown.

So too have costs for provincial governments and municipalities, all because the Trudeau government has let refugee claims get out of control. Federal officials now process more refugee claims in a month than they used to in an entire year.

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Let’s be honest, many of the claims are not coming from people who are fleeing war or persecution, they are coming from people who are seeking a better life. They should be trying to come to Canada through the regular immigration system but instead are trying to jump the queue.

Right now, Toronto’s emergency shelter system is bursting with more than half of the beds being taken up by refugee claimants. That comes at an incredible cost to the city and municipal taxpayers.

In Ottawa, the city is in the middle of putting up what are called sprung structures, essentially giant tents, to try and house all the refugee claimants they are getting. In the nation’s capital, 60% of shelter beds are taken up by refugee claimants.

The Ontario government is spending more than $1 billion per year out of the provincial budget for asylum seekers. One out of every four people on Ontario Works, the name for the welfare program, is a refugee claimant.

Who can blame people from poorer countries for using whatever means they can find to come here; we give them a better life automatically. In addition to the free health care, documents released by the federal government show taxpayers foot the bill for an average of $140 a day for a hotel room and $84 a day for food for people who cross the border illegally.

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Provinces, especially Ontario and Quebec, have complained for years about the increasing costs that come with Trudeau’s mismanagement of the system. So too have municipalities across the country, but those complaints have fallen on deaf ears.

The Trudeau government allowed Roxham Road to fester for years, reaching a high of more than 39,000 people crossing there illegally in 2022. While that has mostly since been shut down, many now arrive via plane and immediately claim asylum.

We also have the problem of thousands of people who have come to Canada on student visas making refugee claims once they arrive in this country. So far this year, nearly 14,000 people who arrived on a student visa have made this claim. They should be immediately kicked out for coming on false pretenses. Instead, they enter into a system that will take years to hear their case and render a decision.

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Which leads to all those mounting costs on taxpayers.

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All of this could spike even higher unless the Trudeau government acts. Donald Trump was elected stateside on a promise of mass deportation of illegal immigrants, which could see thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, attempt to move north to Canada.

“We can’t afford to have a Roxham 2.0,” Quebec Premier François Legault said earlier this week.

Legault has directed the province’s police service, the Sûreté du Québec, to start patrolling the border. The Ford government in Ontario is looking at what their options are should a mass influx happen again.

City budgets are being stretched, provincial budgets are being stretched, and the federal budget is being stretched due to Trudeau’s mismanagement of this file.

This needs to be fixed before he bankrupts the country.

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