Bill C-12

Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Act

An Act respecting certain measures relating to the security of Canada's borders and the integrity of the Canadian immigration system and respecting other related security measures

Part 1 amends the Customs Act to provide the Canada Border Services Agency with facilities free of charge for carrying out any purpose related to the administration or enforcement of that Act and other Acts of Parliament and to provide officers of that Agency with access at certain locations to goods destined for export. It also includes transitional provisions.
Part 2 amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to create a new temporary accelerated scheduling pathway that allows the Minister of Health to add precursor chemicals to Schedule V to that Act. It also makes related amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Police Enforcement) Regulations and the Precursor Control Regulations .
Part 3 amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the Cannabis Act to confirm that the Governor in Council may, on the recommendation of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, make regulations exempting members of law enforcement from the application of any provision of the Criminal Code that creates drug-related inchoate offences when they are undertaking lawful investigations.
Part 4 amends the Oceans Act to provide that coast guard services include activities related to security and to authorize the responsible minister to collect, analyze and disclose information and intelligence.
Part 5 amends the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act to authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to disclose, for certain purposes and subject to any regulations, personal information under the control of the Department within the Department and to certain other federal and provincial government entities.
It also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to authorize the making of regulations relating to the disclosure of information collected for the purposes of that Act to federal departments and agencies.
Part 6 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) eliminate the designated countries of origin regime;
(b) authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to specify the information and documents that are required in support of a claim for refugee protection;
(c) authorize the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board to determine that claims for refugee protection that have not yet been referred to the Refugee Protection Division have been abandoned in certain circumstances;
(d) provide the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration with the power to determine that claims for refugee protection that have not yet been referred to the Refugee Protection Division have been withdrawn in certain circumstances;
(e) require the Refugee Protection Division and the Refugee Appeal Division to suspend certain proceedings respecting a claim for refugee protection if the claimant is not present in Canada;
(f) clarify that decisions of the Immigration and Refugee Board must be rendered, and reasons for those decisions must be given, in the manner specified by its Chairperson; and
(g) authorize regulations to be made setting out the circumstances in which the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration or the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness must designate, in relation to certain proceedings or applications, a representative for persons who are under 18 years of age or who are unable to appreciate the nature of the proceeding or application.
It also includes transitional provisions.
Part 7 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) authorize the Governor in Council to make an order specifying that certain applications made under that Act are not to be accepted for processing, or that the processing of those applications is to be suspended or terminated, when the Governor in Council is of the opinion that it is in the public interest to do so;
(b) authorize the Governor in Council to make an order to cancel, suspend or vary certain documents issued under that Act, or to impose or vary conditions, when the Governor in Council is of the opinion that it is in the public interest to do so;
(c) for the application of an order referred to in paragraph (b), require a person to appear for an examination, answer questions truthfully and produce all relevant documents or evidence that an officer requires; and
(d) authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations prescribing circumstances in which a document issued under that Act can be cancelled, suspended or varied, and in which officers may terminate the processing of certain applications made under that Act.
Part 8 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to add two new grounds of ineligibility for claims for refugee protection as well as powers to make regulations respecting exceptions to those new grounds. It also includes a transitional provision respecting the retroactive application of those new grounds.
Part 9 amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to, among other things,
(a) increase the maximum administrative monetary penalties that may be imposed for certain violations and the maximum punishments that may be imposed for certain criminal offences under that Act;
(b) replace the existing optional compliance agreement regime with a new mandatory compliance agreement regime that, among other things,
(i) requires every person or entity that receives an administrative monetary penalty for a prescribed violation to enter into a compliance agreement with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (the Centre),
(ii) requires the Director of the Centre to make a compliance order if the person or entity refuses to enter into a compliance agreement or fails to comply with such an agreement, and
(iii) designates the contravention of a compliance order as a new violation under that Act;
(c) require persons or entities referred to in section 5 of that Act, other than those already required to register, to enroll with the Centre; and
(d) authorize the Centre to disclose certain information to the Commissioner of Canada Elections, subject to certain conditions.
It also makes consequential and related amendments to the Retail Payment Activities Act and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Administrative Monetary Penalties Regulations and includes transitional provisions.
Part 10 amends the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act to make the Director of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada a member of the committee established under subsection 18(1) of that Act. It also amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to enable the Director to exchange information with the other members of that committee.
Part 11 amends the Sex Offender Information Registration Act to, among other things,
(a) make certain changes to a sex offender’s reporting obligations, including the circumstances in which they are required to report, the information that must be provided and the time within which it is to be provided;
(b) provide that any of a sex offender’s physical characteristics that may assist in their identification may be recorded when they report to a registration centre;
(c) clarify what may constitute a reasonable excuse for a sex offender’s non-compliance with the requirement to give at least 14 days’ notice prior to a departure from their residence for seven or more consecutive days;
(d) authorize the Canada Border Services Agency to disclose certain information relating to a sex offender’s arrival in and departure from Canada to law enforcement agencies for the purposes of the administration and enforcement of that Act;
(e) authorize, in certain circumstances, the disclosure of information collected under that Act if there are reasonable grounds to believe that it will assist in the prevention or investigation of a crime of a sexual nature; and
(f) clarify that a person who discloses information under section 16 of that Act with the belief that they are acting in accordance with that section is not guilty of an offence under section 17 of that Act.
It also makes a related amendment to the Customs Act .

Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Act

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals keep trying to give themselves the power to watch, interfere with and generally babysit Canadians. What are your thoughts on the reasons for that?

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Before I recognize the member for York—Durham, I will remind members to go through the Chair. We do not use “you” or “your”.

The member for York—Durham.

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the Liberal government, as we have seen over the last 10 years of it being in power, simply does not trust Canadians. The Liberals do not have faith in Canadians that they can run their own lives or decide what they want to read or watch online or on the Internet. Instead, for every societal problem the Liberals see, it is more government intervention, more government censorship and more government bureaucrats telling them how they should lead their life.

I am part of this party because we believe in Canadians. We believe Canadians are smart enough, wise enough and capable enough to run their own lives without any instruction from the Liberal government.

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I have one quick question.

For my information, could my esteemed colleague tell us whether Roxham Road is still open?

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our border is not secure. The Liberals have promised 1,000 border agents to protect our borders from illegal immigration, fentanyl and other criminal issues, including gun crimes. However, the Liberals' response is that maybe they will get to it in five years, that maybe in five years, they will hire the 1,000 new border officers.

No, our border is not secure.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when I heard about Bill C-12, I was hopeful. I was hopeful because I believed that the Liberals had listened to what both Canadians and Conservatives have been saying about Bill C-2. On the surface, it looked like there was some reason to hope. Bill C-12 is a repackaged and less offensive version of Bill C-2. It does remove the most egregious of the sweeping new powers that the government sought to grant itself and other government agencies. It no longer proposes to restrict Canadians' use of cash, and it no longer proposes to allow Canada Post to open Canadians' letters.

The Conservatives in the House gave voice to Canadians in speech after speech and forced the government to back down from a bill that would have violated Canadians' individual freedoms and privacy. We are prepared to do our job once again with Bill C-12 as the country's loyal official opposition. The Conservatives will examine every clause and every line of the bill to make sure the Liberals do not erode Canadians' rights.

After listening to the Prime Minister speak on television last night, on television instead of in the House, in front of an audience that even the Toronto Star described as being made up mostly of Liberal staffers, where he does not have to answer our questions and where he does not have to debate, I realized something else about Bill C-12: It might be better, but it would not do what the people of Nanaimo—Ladysmith so desperately need it to do. It would not do what British Columbians need it to do, and it would not do what grandmothers across the country who are raising their grandchildren because of fentanyl need it to do. It would not actually secure our borders. It would not actually treat those in our communities who are in the thrall of fentanyl. It would not actually bring safety back to our communities.

While the bill would fill a loophole by banning precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, it fails to address the sentencing of those who traffic in it. There are still no mandatory prison sentences for fentanyl dealers. There are still no serious penalties for those who profit from destroying our lives and our communities. Bill C-12 would make some incremental improvements, but they are beyond insufficient. Criminals who traffic in fentanyl and firearms will continue to use our porous border to victimize Canadians, and they will continue to walk free soon after being arrested.

I will give the government credit where it is due. Bill C-12 is way better than Bill C-2, but let us be honest. These measures fall far short of what Canadians deserve.

The Liberals continue to permit drug consumption sites near schools and day cares. Last week, I had a call from a constituent about a proposed wet housing site that would back onto a kindergarten in my riding.

At the health committee, my Conservative colleagues called on the government to shut down fentanyl consumption sites near the places where kids learn and play. The Minister of Health refused to do so. She would not rule out approving more of these sites, even after acknowledging that they are now repositories for rampant fentanyl usage.

Last night, the Prime Minister looked Canadians in the eye and spoke yet again of the need for transformational change. He spoke of a rupture, of sacrifice, of responsible choice and of generational investments. Well, the addictions crisis is still in full bloom in Nanaimo, and the numbers are still staggering across Canada. There were more than 50,000 deaths in the last decade. There are more victims of the addictions crisis than there were Canadian deaths in the Second World War. Some 79% of accidental opioid deaths in 2024 involved fentanyl, up 40% since the Liberal government came into power.

The number of emergency department visits linked to fentanyl has more than doubled since 2018. Superlabs in Canada are now producing massive amounts of fentanyl. These are not small operations pressing pills in basements. These are industrial labs producing drugs on a massive scale.

In a country of 41 million people, it is simply disingenuous to argue that with the multiple drug busts in the 96 million dose range, these drugs are meant for domestic consumption. We have to face the reality that drugs are being produced in Canada for both domestic consumption and export. Bust after bust is described as the largest, most sophisticated illicit drug lab in the country. Police seize kilograms of fentanyl; kilograms of meth; illegal unregistered firearms, many of them loaded; silencers; explosives; and millions of dollars in cash.

This is what we are up against. Productivity in Canada is down, and we have a massive wage gap with the United States, except for criminals. Organized crime has set up an innovation sandbox in Canada that boggles the mind. The criminals know how to use AI, how to improve efficiencies and how to find synergies, and they are eating the government's lunch. Why? It is because the Liberal government, for all the Prime Minister's rhetoric, only seems willing to tinker around the margins with tiny pilot projects and token funding announcements.

Yesterday, we had another one of these, with the Liberals proudly announcing $4.3 million in funding, including $442,000 and change for the city of Nanaimo, to address these issues. I will take their money, but I will vote with my conscience. For those following Nanaimo's news, $442,000 is barely enough to build a fence around city hall. It is nowhere near enough to meet the need in a community that has been devastated by the addictions crisis. In Nanaimo, we need the government to spend less and invest more. We need hundreds of millions of dollars in investment for real solutions, not a few thousand dollars of spending for a press release.

If someone gets diagnosed with cancer, they get a full continuum of care: a diagnosis, a prognosis, surgery, chemo, radiation and follow-up for life. If someone gets diagnosed with addiction, they get Narcan. They might get patched up, if they are lucky, and then they get dropped off on the curb. This is not a system of care; it is abandonment. We need triage beds. We need detox beds. We need treatment spaces, recovery centres, sober-living houses and long-term maintenance programs. We need real treatment and recovery options so people can come home to their families, clean and healthy, and we needed it a decade ago.

The Prime Minister started his tenure in the House with lofty comments about Athens and Rome, but now he seems content to fiddle while Nanaimo burns. The Prime Minister is absolutely right. We need transformative change, but he is unwilling to deliver it.

I challenge the Prime Minister to come down from his ivory tower and engage with us in Nanaimo. I know he comes to my riding. He has family there, but I challenge him to spend less time jogging around beautiful Westwood Lake and more time talking with the people who deal with the addictions crisis on the front lines on our streets. He talks a good game about collaboration, but he does not collaborate. He talks about transformational change, but he is not even having the conversations that would allow him to make it. Bill C-12 is proof of that.

The Conservatives forced the Liberals to back down from the worst parts of Bill C-2, and we will continue to hold them to account on Bill C-12, because Canadians do not want more photo-ops, press releases or the seventh announcement of the 1,000 border officers the CBSA has never heard of and has not been given actual instructions to hire. They want real change. They want safe streets, healthy communities and a government that values their lives more than it fear losing an election.

Grandmothers want to stop raising their grandchildren. Addicts want hope, and communities want to stop living in fear. That is what the Conservatives are fighting for, and that is what a Conservative government would deliver.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, just months ago, there was a national election, and the Liberal Party, in particular the Prime Minister, received more votes than have ever been cast for the Liberal Party in the history of our party. A very solid mandate was delivered.

To the member's comments on “tiny” projects, there is $60 billion for five of them, one being a multi-billion dollar project in the province of B.C. They carry out through the Prairies, going all the way to the east.

This is a Prime Minister who not only has a vision, but is implementing that vision, and today is a good example. The election platform said to deal with border security. That is what Bill C-12 is all about. It said to deal with immigration stabilization. That is what Bill C-12 is all about. It is the Prime Minister who is making commitments while the leader of the Conservative Party is badmouthing the leadership of the RCMP.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite talks about the Liberal Party's receiving more votes in the last election than it has ever received before. Well, the Conservatives also received more votes in the election than we have ever received before.

When it comes to transformational change, the Prime Minister will make that change for his buddies, but there is no minister of mental health and addictions in the government, and people in my riding are dying because of it.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend. I know that grandmothers are raising children. I have been to funerals for folks who have died where I worked before as a police officer. There are mothers who carry naloxone in their purse to make sure they have enough to revive their child if they end up overdosing. That is not a Canada I want to live in.

Last week, the Secretary of State for Combatting Crime was on television, talking about hiring 1,000 CBSA officers, and she had no clue as to how many officers are retiring or leaving the job and how many are needed to replace them, aside from the 1,000 the Liberals are promising.

With whom does the buck stop? Conservatives and the Canadian public have had enough.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a good reminder that I have naloxone in my truck, in my car and in my house. We have it in our community offices. It is ubiquitous in our lives.

When it comes to the CBSA officers whom the government has promised more times than I can count, not only has it not hired those officers but there is also no money in the main estimates or the supplementary estimates (A) for those CBSA officers, and the departmental plans for the next three years show cutting both dollars and positions.

I have no idea where the buck stops, but something needs to change.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech.

This bill discusses security at the border, as well as security in our communities. Recent media reports indicate that young people are increasingly turning to guns to protect themselves against criminal groups. That is concerning.

As usual, we come back to the issue of prevention and education. When criminal groups cross our borders and try to recruit vulnerable young people, young people who are susceptible to joining these groups, I think that we need to have a discussion that rises above partisanship.

What does the Conservative Party think about this phenomenon that is increasingly taking root in our communities?

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have two teenagers, so when it comes to young people and their future, it is on my mind as a parent, as it is on the minds of parents in our communities.

The current generation of youth is working so hard and facing so many obstacles. If we want to keep them out of gangs and out of trouble, we have to provide them with opportunity. That is one of the things that drives me.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in the House, as always.

Today we are talking about Bill C-12. It is a fairly large omnibus bill that would amend many different acts, and it goes into many different areas of national policy. It is a second attempt by the government to put forward a bill that would address a number of problems that are well known and well identified, problems that Conservatives have identified for years. The government has finally acknowledged the existence of some of these problems and is trying to fix them.

The Liberals came out with Bill C-2, literally the second bill tabled in the current Parliament. It was a disaster; it fell very flat. Nobody wanted the bill. It contained some terrible measures, including a bizarre outright ban on certain cash transactions, as well as warrantless mail opening. Who was asking for this?

I suppose the government does deserve credit for listening to Conservatives, who had encouraged it through opposition to these measures to try again, so here we are with a new bill. It is a curious mix of ideas plagiarized from the Conservative Party in its previous platform, symbolic announcements that were not fulfilled with follow-through, and some steps for improvement on things that need to be done. I will talk about only a few of them, as it is a huge omnibus bill.

With respect to the border, yes, Conservatives support export tracking in our ports. This is something Conservatives have for years called for. We talked years ago about the crisis of auto theft in our country and the need to have the ability to scan container ships for the thousands of cars stolen from Canadian streets. Members may remember that the then minister of justice had his own ministerial car stolen at least twice, maybe even three times; I do not remember for sure. This is the level of problem we have that the Liberals are trying to solve. We would support that. In addition, with respect to drugs, we certainly support changing the classification of precursor chemicals to controlled substances.

However, I will point out that while the Liberals are taking credit for strengthening our border protection, something Conservatives had for years called for, the departmental plans for the CBSA and the RCMP do not support the announcement material that has come along with the bill, which we see if we take a cursory look at both the main estimates and the supplementary estimates. The supplementary estimates are there to make adjustments when changes in law, announcements or things like that come about, so the government can plan ahead.

The government's current plan for personnel with CBSA would be a net reduction of 600-odd personnel through to 2028. Once again, the Liberals have an A for announcement, but right now it looks like an F on follow-through, which has been the MO of the government for so long.

With respect to fentanyl, we heard some heart-rending testimony from members of the House on the scourge of opioid addiction, with people dying in our streets. There is also the trafficking of fentanyl. Yes, we agree with the changes the Liberals have made in the bill; they are important and supportable.

However, the government is not enforcing the laws we have already. People who traffic in drugs are not getting the full weight of Canadian law as it is. We have a bail not jail regime that the government deliberately brought in as a consequence of its bills, Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 from former Parliaments, and that would not be fixed by the bill before us.

With respect to changes that would be made to the Citizenship Act and to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, again, this is a problem long in the making. There are right now 290,000 asylum claims in the queue. By comparison, at the end of the years of the former Conservative government, there were about 10,000 claims. We have jumped from 10,000 people to 290,000 people in the queue for adjudication of asylum claims.

It is no surprise how we got there. We got there from the tweet heard around the world, the #WelcomeToCanada tweet that explicitly encouraged economic migrants to cross into Canada in order to then apply for asylum. The conflation of economic migrants with migrants seeking asylum in Canada as refugees has been completely intermeshed under the government. It is just a disaster for everyone. It is not fair for all the people in the queue to have this queue.

For the people in the queue, there is an industry now in which we have seen that human trafficking is a factor. People have made a business out of helping economic migrants, desperate people indeed, come to Canada from a safe third country, mostly the United States. We called upon the government repeatedly to make exactly the point that is contained in the bill, to apply the safe third country agreement to the entire land border. It is very late coming to this.

There is so much in the bill that it is hard to really do justice to any of it, but I want to spend most of the rest of my time on a very curious change that the bill would make. There would be an amendment to the Oceans Act that would place the Coast Guard under the ministry of defence, for budget purposes. It would still report, as an institution, to the Minister of Fisheries, the Minister of Transport and now also to the Minister of National Defence.

This change is an accounting trick the Liberals have done to try to fulfill the important obligation Canada has to NATO to increase its spending to at least the old agreed-to target and now to 5%. However, that would not change the capability of the Coast Guard; it would change reporting mechanisms and just move the budget from one column to another. Moving an expense budget from one column to another would not make Canada more safe and secure.

The ships would continue to be unarmed. They would continue to not meet NATO's own definition of a defence force. The closest things to armaments on these ships are shotguns used to scare off polar bears in Arctic patrol conditions, like firing a banger that is designed to make noise to scare away a predator. I am not even certain that I understand in what circumstance this would happen; perhaps it would be when going ashore, I guess, in the high Arctic.

That would not make Canada safer. It would not meet our actual NATO duty to defend our territory or to be deployable and help other countries. In this omnibus bill, the Liberals have snuck in an accounting trick just to help government members pat themselves on the back for increasing defence spending, when they would be doing nothing of the sort. All they would be doing is moving a number from one column to another.

The bill is a great example of the type of legislation we have become used to, where the government has a nice title and a nice announcement but no actual efficacy or improvement for national policy.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Scarborough—Woburn, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this morning when I turned on the television, there were a bunch of Conservatives coming into the building, and everyone was moving so quickly. I thought, “Is a race going on, a marathon?” No, the Conservatives were trying to avoid the media, because their leader has doubled down on the statement that he does not have confidence in the RCMP's leadership. To me, that sends a very negative message. He called them “despicable”. That sends a very bad message to Canadians when it comes to border control.

Does the member opposite believe that the RCMP's leadership is despicable? Does he believe the RCMP plays a massive role in our protection when it comes to the border, yes or no?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is typical that the Liberals do not want to debate my speech.

This is pretty rich coming from a government that had plenty of time to call the RCMP racist as an institution and is now switching from the debate at hand.

I will take the next comment or question and leave it at that.