Debates of Oct. 23rd, 2025

Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Act

[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.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is just sad. The Liberals are adding another day of debate on their bill, Bill C‑12, but they are not rising. They are not giving speeches. They are just sitting there. When it is time to ask questions, theirs have nothing to do with the bill. I would ask the government to get serious so we know we are not doing our job for nothing.

I have a question for my colleague. I put this same question to his colleague earlier. Bill C‑2 contained some measures and parts that we found worthwhile and that could have been discussed in committee, but they were all removed from this version of Bill C‑12. For example, part 16 allowed access to the private information of a person suspected of using proceeds of crime to finance terrorist or criminal activities. We thought it was a worthwhile measure, one worth discussing.

Does my colleague agree that this type of measure could have been included in Bill C‑12 and that we could have examined it productively and constructively, contrary to what the Liberals are doing today?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member raised a very important problem. Canada has a very serious problem with terrorist financing and money laundering, and the government needs to do something about it.

Bill C-2 especially and Bill C-12 are very large bills. I did not get to that in my speech, but the Liberals made a mess of Bill C-2. Bill C-12 does not go all the way to fixing it and does not address the serious problem of terrorist financing and money laundering that my colleague mentioned.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to drill down on my colleague's comments on the Canadian Coast Guard. In Bill C-12, part 4 talks about making the Canadian Coast Guard the responsibility of another minister, but it never defines the minister as being the Minister of National Defence. The member referred to it as an “accounting trick” and talked about how the Canadian Coast Guard does not have any armaments, weapons systems or surveillance equipment to do the job defined under Bill C-12, which is surveillance and security patrols.

In the Oceans Act, which part 4 would amend, there is still a responsibility to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and to the Minister of Transportation. Does the member believe that having divided authorities will undermine the Coast Guard's ability to work as part of our security apparatus?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a fantastic question. I do not know the answer to it. It is a great question that the government will have to answer when this bill gets to committee.

I mentioned in my speech the reporting to the Minister of National Defence, but the member is correct that the bill does not specify that. That was my presumption. Who will be in charge of the Coast Guard when this is all done, if Bill C-12 passes unamended? It is not clear to me from what we can see so far. This will have to be studied at committee.

The member's point is so important: Nothing has changed. The ships are not suddenly armed or equipped with surveillance technology and equipment. They are the same ships, unarmed, and are currently purposed for civilian use. Changing and adding a new minister and moving the expense from one column to another will not make Canadians safer.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House, and today we are talking about Bill C-12.

For those who do not know what Bill C-12 is, it is the Liberal government's attempt at a do-over of Bill C-2, the border security bill. When Bill C-2 first came out, there was an outcry from the Conservative Party and civil liberties organizations across the country because of the numerous infringements of the Canadian Charter Rights and Freedoms. It would have been violated by Bill C-2, so the government was forced to take out some of these offensive violations.

Part 4 would allow Canada Post to open mail without a warrant. Part 11 would ban cash payments and donations over $10,000. Part 14 would allow warrantless access to Canadians' personal information on reasonable suspicion, which is a very low threshold. Part 15 could compel electronic service providers to re-engineer their platforms to help CSIS and the police access personal information, like a digital snoop.

Part 16 would allow the government to supply financial institutions with personal information if the info was useful for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes. Again, if there was a reasonable suspicion, they could get all of someone's financial information. What could possibly go wrong when the Liberal government gets someone's financial information? I think we learned that with the Emergencies Act when the government froze the bank accounts of Canadians. It is no wonder Canadians do not trust the government.

I am happy to see all of these violations of people's civil liberties were taken out in the do-over. That is the good news.

The bad news is that the government continues to go against people's charter rights and freedoms. We see a continual pattern of behaviour with the government. With Bill C-11, it tried to shut down people's freedom of speech. Bill C-18 tried to mess with the freedom of the press. The freedom of religion issue is constantly coming up, with the Liberals trying to remove charitable status from churches and the Canada summer jobs program. We have to get to the details of this bill to make sure no funny business has been snuck in at the last minute. It is clear the government continually wants to take away the freedoms of Canadians.

Some improvements could still be made to this bill, and I want to talk about a few of those. The first one is in part 1. Part 1 would amend the Customs Act to allow the CBSA to use facilities free of charge for enforcement and access to goods for export, as it does for imports. The dilemma for me is that with the size of the fentanyl issue, the crime issues and the lack of security at our borders, there is no limit on how long somebody's warehouse or space could be seized to use for this kind of enforcement. Of course, that would come at the expense of whoever owns a warehouse or storage space.

In border towns like Sarnia, there is not always a lot of space available at the border, so that could be even more far-reaching. The same is true for Windsor and a number of the other border crossings we have. I think some limits should be put on part 1 to make sure we do not unduly burden private businesses.

Second, let us talk about fentanyl. Fentanyl is a huge issue in this country. About 50,000 people have died of overdoses. The RCMP and CSIS have indicated that there are 400 fentanyl superlabs. I do not know whether they are being shut down, but Justin Trudeau said a very small portion of our fentanyl goes to the States. The reality is we really do not know, because shipping containers coming in from China are not being scanned and are going through the port of Vancouver and down to Seattle.

The precursors of fentanyl are not controlled or tracked. We do not know where they are going, so the people synthesizing fentanyl in these 400 superlabs are getting those chemicals from somewhere. One thing I like about the bill is that it adds some controls to traceability so we would know where those chemicals are coming in, where they are going and who is buying them. That would be helpful to the police.

I think we should start doing what other ports in the world do, which is scan all the shipping containers. This is very important not just on the fentanyl issue but on the issue of people stealing cars. We definitely need an upgrade in our scanning capabilities.

One of the difficulties I have with putting laws in place in this country is the lack of enforcement of the rule of law. It is fundamental to our democracy, but the law is not really being enforced. We have people committing crimes in the country who are let out because the Liberals put in place Bill C-5 and Bill C-75. Bill C-75 says that we have to give the least restrictive punishment, which is really bail or a fine, at the earliest opportunity, which is right away. We have people trafficking fentanyl or creating it in these labs, and even if they get arrested, they are back out on bail. Bill C-5 lets them have house arrest. How convenient is that for drug trafficking? They have to stay home, but people can stop by.

We need better enforcement of the law, because we know the Liberals are going to create more laws like Bill C-9, for example, which is supposed to address the rise in hate crimes. There are already laws in this country that could help in that regard. There were 113 Christian churches that burned to the ground. There is a law against arson. It should be enforced. Illegally blocking the streets is against the law, but the police are not enforcing it. Death cries to Canadians and various religions are hate speech. They are against the law. Again, it is about enforcement. As for shooting up schools, stealing cars, home invasions and extortions, we already have laws on the books for these things, but if we are not going to enforce them, we are not going to cure the problem. That is exactly the problem with introducing this border security bill. If there is no enforcement of any of the things in it, then it is absolutely meaningless.

There are immigration measures in the bill, and we need to take action on immigration because it is out of control. Most Canadians would agree with that. We need immigration to build houses and for the nation-building projects we want. We have an aging population. We need more PSWs, nurses and doctors than can graduate from the educational institutions in Canada. We need people to come here and help build the country. I love the idea from our leader of the blue seal program, to take the 50,000 doctors and nurses who already live in Canada and get them accredited so they can help out. It is definitely a great idea.

For the last century, people have come here to work and to help build the country, and we want to continue that. What we do not need is more freeloaders showing up to claim asylum and have the Canadian taxpayer fork out $3,000 to $4,000 a month to put them up in hotels in Niagara Falls. That is more money than we give the seniors who built the country. It is more money than we give to Canadians living with a disability.

Then we see that the majority of these claims, after two or three years of putting these people up, are not eligible after we have spent a huge amount of the taxpayers' money. There are 300,000 of these individuals in the backlog. That is $15 billion a year taken out of the pockets of Canadian taxpayers for people we did not invite here. I think moving the IRCC office to the Toronto Pearson, Montreal and Vancouver airports to hear their claims right on the spot would be good. Then if they are not eligible, the cost of a plane ticket is a lot less than the cost of putting somebody up for three years.

At the same time, we need to reintroduce the fair and compassionate immigration system we had when the Conservatives were in charge, which did security checks so that we were not letting people into the country who were going to cause the kinds of crime and trouble we are sometimes seeing.

I think the immigration measures in the bill will help out. I do not think they go far enough. My colleague from Calgary Nose Hill has done a great job of defining what ought to be done to fix the immigration system we have. I encourage anyone who does not follow her to listen to what she has to say on that subject.

I want to talk a bit about making the border more secure. The Liberals have announced that they are going to hire 1,000 CBSA agents. The announcement was made months ago and nobody has been hired. We hear now that it might be done within five years. That is not the kind of response we need to get security in the budget.

With that, I will take questions.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are here talking about how to make Canada, our country, safer. We are talking about issues that matter to Canadians. Canadians are watching. There are many people in this room watching today, and people are watching online. It is important for MPs to set a tone in the House to ensure that, at the end of the day, we move forward in the right direction.

The Leader of the Opposition has clearly said that he thinks the RCMP is “despicable”. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition will not even do a security background check to ensure he can have access to certain information.

Do you think the Leader of the Opposition should get the background check and that he should stop calling our top officers despicable?

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I do not think anything. I will let the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong explain what she thinks.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether the member follows me on Facebook or Twitter, but if he does, he might want to review one of the excellent speeches I gave when the green slush fund was before the House and the Liberals were saying that there needed to be separation between the government and the RCMP. I fully agreed, and I gave a number of examples in which there were infringements of the Criminal Code. One of them was when Justin Trudeau contravened section 119(1) of the Criminal Code, which says that a person who holds public office cannot take an action that benefits themselves or their family. In the WE Charity scandal, he gave the charity $900 million, which benefited his wife, his brother and his mother.

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

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed my colleague's speech. We agree on many things.

I would like her to talk about a subject that has not really been broached today, and that is the issue of foreign students trying to exploit loopholes to apply for asylum.

In Quebec, there were 340 such cases in 2020. How many were there in 2024? There were 5,535, an increase of over 1,500%.

When we questioned the Minister of Immigration, she was unable to give us an answer. She read out data from a sheet of paper. That is not reassuring. The government is irresponsible. It is not taking responsibility, and it is incapable of reassuring the universities. It wants them to do the policing, but that is not their role.

I would like my colleague to tell me whether she agrees that the government needs to finally take responsibility for the situation and send a message to reassure the universities about their image, as well as their international credibility.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is no oversight on the part of the government or the Minister of Immigration. I think there are four million students who are supposed to leave by December, but the government has no idea where they are. That is unacceptable.

We need foreign students, because the population is aging and we need a lot of doctors and nurses.

We absolutely need much more oversight.

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

Mr. Speaker, on Bill Blair, we all know what Prime Minister Trudeau has—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I need to interrupt the member. He cannot use the first name or the last name of a member of the House of Commons. I will let the member start again.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are all aware of a former prime minister saying that the RCMP is systematically racist. He also tried to take away tools from the RCMP and said that it required cultural change. Bill Blair also said—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I need to interrupt the member again. That particular member is still a member of the House of Commons, and a member cannot use the first name, last name or full name of a member of the House of Commons. I invite the member to finish, and I will allow the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong to respond.

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

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. According to an article, a former minister said that “Discrimination within Canada's criminal justice system is abhorrent, unacceptable and [distasteful] and related police misconduct is indefensible”. Why does my colleague think the Liberals are so focused on a statement by our leader , which was taken out of context, while they are ignoring everybody else?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is because the Liberals have nothing else to offer. They are looking for a distraction because they have not delivered. They are going to build, build, build at paces we have never seen. Well, I have never seen negative acceleration, but I am seeing it now.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this House on behalf of the good people of Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner.

Today, I am going to be discussing Bill C-12. This is the Liberals' second attempt at addressing our broken border and immigration system. It was introduced in the House recently, thanks to my Conservative colleagues' work and my work in forcing the Liberals to back down on their first border bill, Bill C-2, because of its serious violations regarding the freedom and privacy of Canadians.

As the official opposition, it is our job to scrutinize the government and oppose legislation when it is against the best interest of Canadians. The safety and security of Canadians is non-negotiable, and Conservatives have been clear: Canadians should not have to choose between having a secure border and having their civil liberties protected.

Given the scope and complexity of the bill, Conservatives proposed that Bill C-2 be split into two separate pieces of legislation, with one that is narrowly confined to border and immigration measures, to ensure that all aspects of the legislation receive proper scrutiny. I am pleased that, along with our other opposition members, we were able to successfully force the Liberals to table the new bill, which we will continue to examine thoroughly to ensure that the bill does not include any measures that would breach law-abiding Canadians' privacy rights. Bill C-12 may be a starting point, but I believe it requires significant amendments and vigorous study at committee.

There is no doubt that tougher and smarter measures regarding borders and immigration are desperately needed to keep Canadians safe. While I am happy that the Liberals are willing to work with the opposition parties to address Canada's border security and immigration issues, it is important to note that much of the urgency surrounding the legislation is a direct result of 10 years of Liberal mismanagement. The Liberals have failed to take our borders seriously, resulting in increased gun smuggling, driving up violent crime; an immigration system that is completely out of control; a fentanyl crisis; and an increase in human trafficking. These are all destroying the lives of Canadians.

While Bill C-12 contains positive provisions to streamline investigations and improve information sharing, it falls short in addressing some of the pressing public safety concerns facing Canadians. The Liberals' failure to secure our border and crack down on organized crime has fuelled a fentanyl crisis and put countless lives at risk. The Liberals' reckless drug legalization experiment, combined with their soft-on-crime bill, Bill C-5, has fuelled Canada's deadly drug crisis. Bill C-5 scrapped mandatory jail for fentanyl production and trafficking, for example.

Last fall, police dismantled the largest and most sophisticated drug lab in Canadian history, capable of producing multiple kilograms of fentanyl each week, along with caches of loaded firearms, explosives and half a million dollars in cash. Fentanyl is not just a drug problem; it is a public safety and national security risk and a crisis fuelled by organized crime and enabled by weak borders.

Part 2 of Bill C-12, as in Bill C-2, would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to fill a loophole in the act by banning precursor chemicals for fentanyl. This is an important first step, but the Liberals are addressing only a small part of the issue and doing too little, too late. Bill C-2 is silent on the tools police and prosecutors actually need to address this crisis. The Liberals' catch-and-release policies are alive and well for those who traffic in fentanyl and firearms. The principle of restraint in Bill C-75 directs the courts to release violent offenders on bail at the earliest opportunity, under the least onerous restrictions. The Liberals' persistence in allowing house arrest for serious offences, which include offences involving firearms, if members can believe it, continues to endanger lives.

It is not just the fentanyl crisis the Liberals are playing catch-up on. Their failure to get serious on our border has allowed for an increase in illegal gun smuggling, driving organized crime in Canada. Gun crime has risen 130% since the Liberals took office. In July, the Prime Minister himself even said, “The vast majority of firearms, illegal firearms, firearms used in crime, come across our border.”

According to the Toronto Police Service, 88% of guns used in crimes seized by the Toronto Police Service in 2024 were traced back to the United States, including 94% of the firearms that were seized. That does not sound like a very secure border to me and, unfortunately, Bill C-12 does little to address the issue.

Instead of investing in border security, the public safety minister has doubled down on the Liberals' failed gun confiscation program, which he himself admitted is a waste of money that will do nothing to keep Canadians safe. The $742 million the Liberals say they intend to spend on gun confiscation could have gone to hiring 5,000 more police officers or CBSA officers or purchasing 300 port scanners. Instead of including measures in Bill C-12 to ensure border officials have the proper resources needed to secure the border, the Liberals remain committed to targeting law-abiding hunters and firearms owners.

Having a secure border also means having a strong, robust immigration system that serves the needs of Canadians and aligns with our national interests. Parts of Bill C-12 attempt to address some of the challenges our immigration system faces after 10 years of Liberal mismanagement. Unfortunately, I am not confident that these measures by themselves will fix our broken system, which is clearly collapsing under the weight of Liberal mismanagement.

This week, the CBC reported that processing times for Canadian immigration applications have reached unprecedented lengths. Wait times, for example, for permanent resident applications are up to nine years for the caregiver pathway, up to 19 years for the agri-food stream and up to 35 years for entrepreneurs under the start-up visa stream. Even worse than that, if anyone can imagine, the Liberals have lost track of hundreds and hundreds of foreigners in this country who have criminal records and are due to be deported. Guess what, they have gone missing.

This backlog of applications, lack of accountability and inconsistent enforcement all stem from a government that has failed to plan, failed to listen and failed to act. Now, with Bill C-12, the Liberals are scrambling to fix the very system they dismantled, but instead of thoughtful reform, they are reaching out for sweeping powers and vague regulations that permit activities rather than legislating requirements for change.

Conservatives believe in responsible immigration in appropriate numbers to keep up with our health care, housing and job markets. We support measures that streamline processing, reduce backlogs and help newcomers integrate successfully, but we oppose policies that put power in the hands of ministers without proper oversight. Canada's immigration system needs complete, wholesale changes to ensure a secure border and prosperous nation, but those changes are nowhere to be found in C-12.

Like many Canadians, Conservatives want safe communities, secure borders and an immigration system that works for our country, not one that is collapsing under the weight of the Liberal government. The safety and security of Canadians is non-negotiable and, as the official opposition, Conservatives remain committed to implementing the tougher, smarter measures that are needed to keep Canadians safe. We are ready to support provisions in the bill that protect our national security and secure our borders while proposing amendments that would improve the bill and opposing measures that go against the best interest of Canadians.

Bill C-12 introduces significant changes that require in-depth study to ensure the problems are addressed appropriately. At committee, Conservatives will scrutinize, debate and propose amendments to Bill C-12 and work together to ensure it achieves its stated goal of improving Canada's public safety and national security. Conservatives remain committed to securing our borders, strengthening our immigration system and cracking down on crime and chaos in our streets.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have deep respect for the member opposite in being a former law enforcement officer.

We have already had a great deal of discussion about the RCMP today. This is a statement that was made by the member's colleague from Peace River—Westlock. He said, “The actions of the leadership of the RCMP, I think, are indefensible in many instances.” Another one of his colleagues from Bow River referred to “management weaknesses”. The leader of the Conservative Party said, as reported in the Winnipeg Free Press, that “the leadership of the RCMP is ‘despicable’”.

What are the member's feelings about the RCMP? Could some of his colleagues have gone too far in assessing the management of—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have to give the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner a chance to respond.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have many good friends and former colleagues who were or are members of the RCMP. Even now, I ask people from the force whom I meet in different communities about how things are going. They tell me very clearly that there is a disconnect between upper management and them. There are operational issues that are not being addressed by the RCMP leadership. That disappoints me.

The RCMP no longer has the stellar reputation it once had. That concerns me as well. It is our national police service and has great responsibilities on national security, defence and those types of investigations. It is important that it be given the opportunity—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Shefford.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I need some clarification. I am trying to understand what is going on.

On the one hand, the Liberals introduced a bill, Bill C-12, to address concerns that citizens, including those in my riding of Shefford, had about Bill C-2. On the other hand, the Liberals are not speaking today. To add insult to injury, as my distinguished colleague from Drummond so aptly pointed out, they are asking questions that do not really help us understand the changes that were made from Bill C-2 to Bill C-12.

We know that mail searches have been abolished because they are an invasion of privacy, and that restrictions on donations of $10,000 have been dropped, as has the collection of private data, but can my colleague help me understand and clarify this?