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For more than a month, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen has been accusing critics who say our asylum system for border crossers is in crisis of engaging in “misleading, divisive, and dangerous” political rhetoric.

Well, as it turns out, he conceded there’s a crisis in an Aug. 14 letter to the Canadian Bar Association.

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In the correspondence to Barbara Jo Caruso, chair of the immigration law section of the CBA, obtained by the National Post, Hussen acknowledged the number of asylum seekers is rising “far beyond” what the system can handle.

He called the situation “not sustainable” and that “without changes to improve efficiency and productivity of the asylum process, wait times and backlogs will only continue to grow.”

That flies in the face of a July 17 column Hussen penned for the Toronto Star headlined “Canada’s border control system is working, Ahmed Hussen writes.”

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In it, Hussen accused federal and Ontario “Conservative politicians” of “peddling false information to stoke fear when it comes to those seeking asylum in Canada.”