The Ben Mulroney Show - A Serious Discussion about fixing Immigration in Canada

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Guests and Topics: -A Serious Discussion about fixing Immigration in Canada with Guest: Guidy Mamman, Immigration Lawyer for Mammon Sandulek If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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whether or not that signals a lot of what has been broken over the last 10 years. Does it actually get fixed? One of those big issues is immigration, and our immigration system is an absolute mess. Let us bring in Giddy Mammon. He's an immigration lawyer over at Mammon, a son to look. He's joining us now. What would you like to see? What would the signal Giddy for you watching Mark Carney pick his cabinet selections? What would give you the sense that he's serious about fixing some of the big problems?

I think starting with the facts is always important, Alex. Our recent Minister of Immigration estimated that the number of undocumented people in Canada is 600,000. There's no way that you can deal with this problem if you believe that number. The number has to be north of maybe 2 million people here in Canada who have no documentation, people who simply come as visitors, as temporary workers, as students and who never left. So if you don't acknowledge the facts, you can't deal with the problem. What's happened is the West has been playing with an experiment of open borders. Everybody gets to come in, everybody gets to stay, no one is violating our border

laws. And that's created a dynamic that if you don't accept the numbers that are here, you're never going to get to the bottom. Right. But I don't get the sense that there's a real, you know, a real, true, like actual want to get rid of them, right? Because to your point, there are hundreds of thousands of people here who are just here and they don't actually have a knowledge of where they are, but there's no real urgency to get people out, right? There was an article over the weekend in the Globe and Mail about, you know, Mark Carney's immigration policies.

You know, he's talking about capping permanent residents or non-permanent residents in certain parts of immigration in our system, but the reality is it doesn't come anywhere close to what we would have to do to actually bring the problem into check and start to correct it. Well for sure look if you have somebody who is here without documentation let's pretend they haven't committed a crime they're not violent they're not anything like that. It costs a lot of money and it takes a lot of effort to get that person out. Many, many, many thousands of dollars.

And you have to have the will to do that. If you never want to sort of clean out the basement in your home, it's just never going to get done. And that's the situation. We have people who are here. The government is not really, they don't have enough enforcement tools to get rid of all these people. I guess they can't hire anyone, eh?

That would be a real problem, right? It would be very expensive because the CBA is basically a police force. They're all armed and they have the power. They wield tremendous power. You can't just put someone in the field who is not experienced, you know, to go into their homes and arrest them. As I step in, surely in this time, like we know these problems and I've talked about these problems, it's been years in the making where we have systems in place, we have people that are taking advantage of the system, we can't get people out.

So we know it's a problem and it's an expensive problem, right? So it would really not fly, I think, with a lot of people to hear Ottawa say, well, we just don't want to spend the money, it's expensive to do, given like they're looking at buying hotels to house migrants and asylum seekers, right? Look, it used to be that countries believed that they were entitled to control their borders and choose who they want to enter and who is going to help them build their economy and not bring their economy down. But today when you talk about immigration controls and securing the border, the answer that you get is that you're promoting racism, that this is not a question of self-preservation, this is not a question of preserving identity

or protecting the economy. You're going to be accused of racism, and that's a problem. And like what we're seeing now in the UK, you know, the Prime Minister, Kirsten Stammer, has made it very clear that we have to look after the UK and where this experiment is over. But let me just if… Yeah, for people who haven't heard his audio, because for him to say this, right, like he's Labour, he's as far left as they come, but for him to put this kind of messaging out, not only caught a lot of people off guard, but certainly is telling. But this is, if you haven't heard what the UK PM, Keir Starmer said, that the UK is at risk of if they don't get their country in check as far as immigration.

Take a listen. Nations depend on rules, fair rules. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together. So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse, that encourages some businesses to bring in lower paid workers

rather than invest in our young people, or simply one that is sold by politicians to the British people on an entirely false premise. Then you're not championing growth, you're not championing justice or how else people defend the status quo. You're actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart. So yes, I believe in this. I believe we need to reduce immigration significantly. And of course a lot of people caught off guard by that giddy but it's a pretty telling statement and there's a lot of anger in the UK

certainly over what they see as a failed immigration Experiment of open borders and and you know if you're Canada and you're Mark Carney. I hope he's listening You're not listening to Donald Trump there or a right-wing, you know some extreme right-wing politician Like you said, you know Starmer is very much on the left side of the political spectrum So now you have sort of both ends saying that this cannot continue. You simply cannot allow, for example, into France a lot of people who don't speak French because they have an interest in maintaining their culture, their language, and their history.

And so they have the right to moderate who and how many people come in. And it's the same thing for every country. I don't care if it's Germany or Spain or it doesn't really matter. Every country has the right to control its borders. But over the last 10, 15 years, we haven't seen that. We have seen, you know, especially when the EU expanded to Eastern Europe, of course it sounds like a great idea, but in the end I think they regret that decision because it's affected their economies and their identities tremendously. And now the question is can they dial it back? What will happen? What kind of civil unrest will this create?

What kind of difficulty and trauma will it cause to the country that has that now wishes to dial back? Their their you know, their their idea of immigration reform Yeah well Bottom line is we seem to have a lot of loopholes and a lot of people willing to stand up and say well like Let's just not deal with it. But it is causing not just problems for cost of living, but shelters, stresses and all these other things. But it's the question, where does it go and where does it end?

So that's what we've got to decide. Well, look, Alex, what's happening here in Canada? I've been practicing for 38 years. Most of those 38 years, let's call it 30 years, we've been accepting about a quarter million people a year. And we had pretty strict controls. And then suddenly, we got a government that decided to allow as many people who wanted to enter Canada to make refugee claims and basically allowed a hole in our border to be used every day for people to come in. They increased immigration targets to 500,000.

Over the last seven, eight years, nine years, we see that even this particular government understands that it has to dial back those numbers. Those numbers are not sustainable. There's no housing, there's no jobs, there's no infrastructure. And the kind of people that we're getting are not people who are coming here to say, you know, how can I help you? How can I contribute to the building of this country? But are looking, you know, as soon as they arrive and make refugee claims, they're getting welfare, they're getting legal aid, they're getting all kinds of benefits and those benefits are affecting their attitude and their approach

to their role here in Canada. We're going to run out of time. I'm going to hit the wall, Giddy, so I'm going to have to let you appreciate it though, because yeah, we're going to have to do something because we don't want to hit that wall. Giddy Mammon is my guest, immigration lawyer, he's been talking about this for to do something because we don't want to hit that wall. Giddy Mammon is my guest, immigration lawyer, he's been talking about this for quite a long time. I'm gonna open the phone lines to you because I want to know, are you fed up with this? Are you angry that it was not a bigger ballot box issue and do you actually have faith it'll

be solved? This is the Ben Mulroney Show, we tackle that in just a second here. Great to have you here Alex Christian in core, Mr. Ben Mulrooney and the conversation we're having is about immigration. One of the biggest issues facing us is the fact that the true government literally broke immigration and let way too many people in and I hardly got to mention during the campaign but if you don't solve it you know immigration I don't know how we solve our cost of living or things like you you know, finding doctors and social systems being, you know, too pressured and or, you know, things like, you know, getting

jobs, there's massive summer job fairs going on. And there are literally thousands of people lining up for these part time summer jobs, right? And we're all competing for that. And if you're trying to get into a shelter system, right, you're competing against all these extra people who have nowhere to go. So are you pissed off, frankly, that nothing was actually mentioned in the campaign or nothing's being done? You feel like it's being taken seriously enough? Because in Canada, we have so many loopholes. That is a very

big problem. A, we're very nice, but we have a ton of loopholes in the system that allow people to stay. If you're a non-status card, if you're not a permanent resident, if your paperwork is expired, you've got 120 days to get out, but people don't just leave. And we don't have anyone in charge who actually goes out of the way to say, hey, there's the door, you've got to go. So we've got hundreds of thousands of people sticking around. And again, it wasn't a ballot box issue. 416870, 6400, 888-225-TALK. You know, you've got UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying very bluntly that the UK has

become an island of strangers. And so we risk that too. These are comments that would get once upon a time anybody cast as a racist, but now people are actively saying, look, this has got to change. But how do you do it? So let's talk about this. Let's go to Paul. Hey, Paul. Yeah, I was just telling your, uh, for this one. I mean, it's very depressing when listening to this all the time. I mean, I'm glad you do talk about it, but what are end up doing in this country? We elect a guy that nobody knows, who comes from the same government, it's the same policy, the same people's cabinet.

And nobody seems to care what's going on in this country. And if all we had to do was follow the UK's lead, I mean, they would've been talking about this for 20 years that if we followed down UK's lead, which we were, and had, we're gonna be in the same trouble they are. I mean, here we go again. Oops, I think you're getting out of the phone, getting out of the car, you forgot.

Hello, Paul? I think we lost Paul. Oh, hi. Oh, there you are, sorry. Did you get your coffee or whatever you were leaning out to get? Look, I get it. So you're saying, bottom line is,

we've elected the same people to try to fix all the things that they broke. Not gonna work. And Carney knows the problems that they broke. Not going to work. And Carney knows the problems that are facing the UK. He lived there, right? But if we don't want that and we are always compared, well, look, what's going on in the UK, if you don't want that in Canada, well, it's here. Let's go to a George.

Hi, George. Hi, good morning. Well, listen, I mean, why would the liberals expose their laundry, all their faults prior to an election? Conservatives or liberals? Which politician would do that? They fooled the people. We had a 10-year liberal government.

We knew their mistakes. Even people who continued to vote liberals, you voted in same problems. Why are we complaining now? We had elections in Canada how many years? Well, from the beginning of Canada, every election cycle they're gonna fix everything. When are they gonna fix everything? Do we really need a government anymore? Every time they get in, they're gonna fix the hospitals, education, the jobs, immigration, every four years. I'm done. Get rid of them and put in a dictatorship. What does that tell you?

I hear the frustration, but you don't want a dictatorship. What you want is a responsible government that when we set up a system, and again, up until the Trudeau government, we had the best immigration system. We're the envy of all the world. We brought in very skilled labor. We brought in people who gave and added to our economy. And we had a balance. Now it was come one, come all,

and we're not bringing in skilled laborers. We're not bringing in skilled people. And so they put pressure on all the systems. And what we will do is just create a whole lot of resentment, including from immigrants who have spent an awful lot of time and money to come to this country and then say well What the heck is going on?

Well, I should have just shown up Right get a get a hotel. You just you are it's going to get to how it is in in London And I don't I don't think Canadians have a stomach for it. I know they don't Let's go to Peter Peter. You say what? Hey Peter, oh hi there good day hi there. Good day to you. Good day to you. You got some experience around immigration? I've got lots of experience on immigration.

You think we're going to get, we're going to have to fix this mess? Yes, it's possible that we're going to have to hire more CBSA officers to, you know, to ferret out people that hear here legally, first of all. And that's going to take some work as the lawyer there mentioned. What's less work do you think, Peter, buying hotels to house refugees or actually solving the issue? I think it would be smarter to solve the issue than buying up hotels and throwing money at it. I mean, you could give that money to CBSA to hire people.

Oh absolutely. You may be interested to know that I used to be a member of the Green Party of Canada and I accountants Elizabeth May and Mike Shriner about the problems that the immigration was unsustainable as far as infrastructure, physical and social infrastructure, as well as ecological infrastructure to handle those levels of people coming in. But, you know, they didn't want to appear to be racist, just as the lawyer mentioned earlier. And so they did, you know, they did nothing about it. Of course not.

They just doubled down on it. Right. And now where and now look what's happening. Oh, yeah, like I'm amazed that we had to get it this Right. And now where and now look what's happening. Oh, yeah, I'm amazed that we had to get it this far. But I'm sort of delighted you people are talking about it. But I also am a member of the Treasure for Canadians for Sustainable Societies. And, you know, we've been tearing our hair out literally about this issue for years. And so finally now we're talking about it. So it's great.

So we commissioned a poll in 2009, 21, that clearly showed that over 70% of Canadians were concerned about it. But even over 60% of immigrants are concerned about it because they got to live in a mess that the liberal governments have created. They have. And I got a ton of calls I'm gonna get to,

but yes, which is why we can talk about it I've been talking about immigration for a long time And to talk about immigration is a landmine because to raise any issues would get you You know maligned but now yes, we are talking about it because immigrants themselves are fed up Well, let's go to Stanley. Hi Stanley you say Yes fed up. Let's go to Stanley. Hi Stanley, you say? Yes, well being from Greek background, I mean I was born here, you look at the immigration that came here in the 60s and 70s even up to the 90s. I mean the last great skilled labor we had in

construction, me being in construction myself, were unfortunately you know Serbia, Croatia, Albania, they had a war then these people were forced to come here but they came here as great skilled tradesmen, electricians, drywallers. Now, today's skilled trade from countries that used to come here in the sixties and seventies, they don't want to come here anymore. I knew Greeks that came here during the financial crisis. They came here for two or three years. They said, what are we doing here? I'm living in a basement. I'm paying $6,000 car insurance. Rent is like $3,000. I can't get the job that I want. It's so hard to prove yourself and your qualifications. They get backed up and leave. It doesn't matter

who they are. You're not going to get great skilled labor because unfortunately there's a small group in the government that are getting rich and the rest of us are getting poor. Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that people in the government are not doing their job, which is baffling as to why you would hire them back. You know, Sean Fraser, why should he get any cabinet gig, you know, on a day like today when he broke immigration, literally, warned, and economists are all warning Mark Carney, you can't do what you're going to do without fixing immigration. Jeff, you say what? Hey, Jeff. Oh, hello. Sorry. That's okay. Yeah, I think what the problem has been, I don't think it can be fixed.

We brought in people from collectivist cultures and expecting them to integrate into the cultures that were basically based on individualism. So what you end up getting is things like calistanis wearing around with swords, cutting up Indian flags and shouting to the death of Modi or the protests we see. And we got different groups that have opposing ideologies, philosophies, religions. And my fear is that the only way that you can control

all this now is by the use of force. And that fear is that the only way that you can control all this now is by the use of force. And that's frightening to me. It is. But again, if we're going to claim diversity is our strength, then you have to assimilate. Otherwise, you know, you get people will come in with their grievances and their hate and anger. And that's not what we want. Otherwise, diversity can't be a strength because you'd be fighting all the time. But then again politicians hand her the votes. That is the reality. To celebrate the Days of Our Lives 60th anniversary W Network and Stack TV invite you to enter for a chance to win the ultimate fan experience by watching

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