The Trudeau government increasingly avoids debate on important national issues by demonizing people who disagree with them. This played out in real time this week when the federal Liberal Immigration Minister called the new provincial PC Minister “un-Canadian” for her criticism of the federal government’s record on asylum claimants. Is it “un-Canadian” to suggest that a plan is needed to handle rising levels of claimants that are stretching public services? A new poll confirms that 70% of Canadians believe the Liberals do not have a coherent plan when it comes to the issue of people crossing the border illegally to claim asylum. Are these people “un-Canadian” too? The reality is that the Liberals are simply trying to hide their own mismanagement of this issue behind a cloak of name-calling and posturing.

While the recent back-and-forth between the federal and provincial governments stemmed from housing pressures on the City of Toronto caused by asylum claimants, the mishandling of the border crossing file began 18 months ago. In January 2017, President Trump issued an executive order that restricted entry to the United States for travelers from certain countries. It was an unfair move that played upon xenophobia and not on sound public policy. It was heavily criticized online the day the news broke, but rather than picking up the phone to speak to the U.S. President to express concern, Trudeau took to Twitter. The result was his famous #WelcomeToCanada tweet that sent our immigration and refugee system into turmoil. The tweet was 100% politics and was intended to contrast Trump and Trudeau for perceived political gain at home.

Within days of his tweet, reports confirm that civil servants in Ottawa and our diplomats abroad were scrambling to determine how to respond to the Prime Minister’s action. Within weeks, the number of irregular asylum claimants shot up from a dozen or so per month to hundreds. The inaction of the Trudeau government to the riding crossings also appeared to reinforce the impression that it was acceptable for a U.S. resident to simply walk across the border and claim asylum. Within months, this led to what could be described as a human smuggling operation, where people began facilitate border crossings for payment. By the time a year had passed, numbers had steadily risen to a peak of 2500 crossers in April 2018.

The Trudeau government was warned very early on about the risks of these crossings. Two months after the Trudeau tweet, in March 2017, senior officials within the Liberal government warned of major disruption to Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) processing times and the high costs that would result from these long wait times. A document released under Access to Information revealed that the Trudeau government was warned that IRB processing wait times could rise to as high as 11 years if the large number of asylum claims continued within the current system. It also highlighted that social costs over this period would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars because resettlement costs for each claimant are paid until a final determination of their refugee status is made. Well over a year ago, the Trudeau government knew that rising numbers and backlogs in the IRB system would lead to serious cost pressures on all levels of government.

To show the incompetence of the Liberal government, you need only look to what the government was saying and doing over the same period. Despite the warnings from their senior officials, the Liberals did not allocate more money to the issue in the 2017 budget. In fact, department spending estimates were lowered for the 2017/18 year. The Liberals also tried to publicly downplay the response to the Prime Minister’s tweet and the challenges associated with rising asylum claims. Months after the Minister of Immigration was warned about long IRB wait times and rising social costs, the Minister told the House of Commons that his department was “ready and nimble enough to manage the situation responsibly”. He even suggested the system was working “fantastically well” when it came to handling asylum claims under the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States. His own department was sounding the alarm for more money and action, yet the Minister was telling Canadians not to worry because they were being “nimble”.

Rather than calling people un-Canadian for asking questions about their handling of the issue, the Liberals should own up to their mistakes and lack of action. The greatest risk from their mismanagement of this issue is not the longer wait times or additional costs, but the risk to public confidence in our immigration and refugee system. Canadians have good reason to be proud of our rules-based system and its history of both growing our country and providing safe haven to those at risk. We must not lose sight of this amid the current pressures. Canada needs less name-calling and posturing from the Liberal government and more prudent planning and accountability.