Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner said a letter from Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s deputy minister, which said some public servants have faced harassment after appearing before the immigration committee, was an attempt at stopping Tories from questioning the Liberal government’s immigration policies.
“It is troubling that rather than advising you to make better decisions, you have instead directed your [deputy minister] to try to censor parliamentarians and infringe upon our rights. Do better. We will not accept any form of censorship,” Rempel Garner told the immigration committee on Dec. 4.
The letter from Deputy Immigration Minister Harpreet Kochhar stated that he had “growing concern about the safety and well-being” of public servants appearing before the committee, as he said they have faced harassment and threats from the public “ranging from social media attacks to hostile messages sent to their work emails, and even in-person confrontations.”
Kochhar’s letter, which Liberal MP and committee Chair Julie Dzerowicz read aloud, said one source of the harassment was “decontextualized clips of committee appearances by public servants being posted on social media” by MPs—many of which do not “reflect the full content of the testimony delivered.”
Kochhar asked that MPs on the committee consider the impact of posting such video clips, and assess how the safety and well-being of the public servants could be impacted. “Without a change in approach, I am concerned that threats and intimidation from the public will persist, increasing the risk to public servants who appear before committees.”
Committee Vice Chair Rempel Garner read out the Conservatives’ response to the letter, which condemned the harassment public servants had faced and encouraged them to report criminal harassment to the authorities. Rempel Garner said she had also received “criminal harassment for holding your government to account.”
Rempel Garner said the Liberal government had made policy decisions that led to “mass abuse of Canada’s asylum system” and high overall immigration levels that put stress on housing and health care. “If you want the public to support the testimony of officials, then you should make better policy and decisions. The buck stops with you,” she said.
The Conservative MP also said the immigration department had at times provided “unclear” information to the committee. “I have reached my limit with regard to your officials giving unclear testimony at committee and failing to provide parliamentarians information,” she said.
Immigration Levels
In her opening remarks, Diab said the Liberal government’s plan would bring immigration “back to sustainable levels and aligns with Canada’s capacity to grow,” while also welcoming newcomers.Diab said Canada will also be bringing in nearly 50,000 refugees and protected persons in 2026, while ensuring 9 percent of permanent residents are French-speaking, which will rise to 12 percent by 2029, “reaffirming our commitment to Francophone immigration outside Quebec.”
“These measures strengthen our economy, protect our capacity to welcome, and rebuild trust in the system. That’s a plan that will work better for newcomers and better for Canadians,” Diab said.
“That is not the purpose for those amendments,” Diab said, adding that temporary foreign workers could not leave Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that was an occasion where an extension could have been used.
“So you do want to mass extend temporary resident visas?“ Rempel Garner said. ”That’s not what I said,” Diab responded.
After Liberal MP Fragiskatos raised a point of order, suggesting that Rempel Garner was wrongly accusing Diab of favouring mass-extending temporary visas, the Conservative MP said that Fragiskatos “may likely be” the immigration minister in a few months.
The exchanges got increasingly tense at the committee, with Diab saying that Rempel Garner should have the “decency to let someone respond” to her questions, to which the Conservative MP responded, “I don’t like your word salad, it’s true.”
