OTTAWA — The Official Opposition Conservatives say the Trudeau government’s immigration policy is a policy of “failures” that left 90 percent of Syrian refugees unemployed.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel savaged the Liberal immigration legacy Wednesday at a news conference where she unveiled the Conservative Party’s alternative strategy. She says Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has opened Canada’s borders on an ad hoc basis that craves “positive coverage in the press.”

“As but one proof point of this, from the most recent data his Immigration Minister has provided to me, 90 percent of government-sponsored Syrian refugees who entered under this government’s program are unemployed. This means that they now require social welfare support that the Prime Minister never took into account when arbitrarily setting his target for their entry,” she said.

Rempel vowed that the Conservatives will move to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the border, declaring asylum and ignoring the official and legal process.

“Dissembling the permanency of Trudeau’s new immigration program at Roxham Road, by closing the loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement, and going further by entering Canada into discussions with G7 countries onto a global safe third-country system. This is already happening, to a certain extent, in Europe with the Dublin Agreement renegotiation,” she said.

The Calgary Member of Parliament said Trudeau’s words are as bad and his policies:

“The most damaging thing Justin Trudeau has done to Canada’s immigration system is his refusal to answer reasonable questions about his vision for it, and for his failure to manage it. Whenever someone questions him on these issues he does one of three things, none of which is to answer the question. He spouts cliché statements, disparages the questioner, or issues false counter-accusations. This is evidenced in his own rhetoric in the House of Commons, and in his Immigration Minister accusing a provincial counterpart of being ‘un-Canadian.'”

Rempel also promised the Conservatives would focus on refugees seeking political — not economic — asylum. A Conservative government would also seek to reform the temporary foreign worker program so that Canadians are offered the first opportunity to apply for jobs but that industries like agriculture, where foreign workers are urgently needed, are not hamstrung by needless government regulations.

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