Immigration Minister Marc Miller on Wednesday suggested the federal government may be looking at boosting enforcement resources to crack down on irregular migrants who don’t leave Canada after their temporary visas expire.
Speaking to reporters after addressing the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Miller also addressed the need for mutual enforcement of the Safe Third Country Agreement as well as why “the age of unlimited supply of cheap foreign labour is over.”
He said Ottawa is always looking at “what measures that Canada needs to take to ramp up enforcement” and pointed to what he said were record levels of removals of those who chose to stay illegally.
Asked if that means more resources, including additional Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers, Miller said, “that’s how it works.”
“In the context of enforcement, generally, broadly speaking, we absolutely need to look at the enforcement mechanisms that we employ to make sure people that don’t want to leave after due process actually do leave,” he said.
“I’m not going to share publicly the plans that we have on enforcement, but more enforcement means more resources.”
The government has been pressed by opposition parties and provinces on its plan to add additional resources at the U.S.-Canada border in anticipation of a potential increase in people seeking to enter Canada from the U.S., where president-elect Donald Trump has vowed mass deportations.
The government says the CBSA carried out 11,444 removals from 2019 to 2020, which was the highest number in the previous five years. Global News has asked the agency for its current removal numbers.
However, CBSA figures tabled in Parliament early this year suggest most people who received deportation letters in the last eight years remain in Canada, which the Conservative Party says suggests a lack of enforcement.
Last month, when Miller and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced they were slashing the number of new permanent residents to the country by 21 per cent by next year, they also laid out plans they say would effectively pause population growth for two years by…
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