Immigration holds up the clearest sign yet that the Liberals have all but given up on governing

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There are a few basic expectations of any federal government: secure the border, nurture trade relationships, keep the federal courts running, maintain and uphold national defence, cultivate economic growth and so on. These are the fundamentals – the responsibilities that a federal government is supposed to have in order – so as to earn the trust to take on ambitious secondary projects. Indeed, when alleged sex offenders (and even those found guilty) are set free because of procedural delays stemming from judicial vacancies, the government has no business – or credibility – announcing plans for a national school lunch program.

It’s become almost trite at this point to observe that the government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is more interested in announcing than governing – in making plans than actually following through on them, like a dotty teenager with a closet full of abandoned instruments who now swears that pottery is actually her passion. But typically this government has maintained some pretense of responsibility: some professed, if vacant, commitment to keep going to pottery classes and to do the work until the end of the term.

But last week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller essentially said outright that this government is not meaningfully screening temporary residents. Mr. Miller was speaking to the press about Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, the 20-year-old student from Pakistan arrested in Canada earlier this month for allegedly plotting to attack a Jewish community centre in New York. He disclosed that Mr. Khan had arrived in Canada on a student visa in June, 2023, a month after acquiring it. And then he added: “We take any security breach and any entry into Canada very seriously,” but suggested that Canadians “not be naive: A determined individual can gain access to this country and that is for the security services inside our country to apprehend this person if they commit a crime or if they’re about to commit a crime. And that’s exactly what happened.”

Not only was Mr. Miller’s statement an astonishing abdication of responsibility (indeed, what’s the point of having border regulations at all if we’re simply going to rely on authorities here to nab the bad guys after they’re already in the country?), but it was also an invitation to those with nefarious intentions to come into the country and test out our security services, since gaining access doesn’t appear to be an issue.

Though it was heartening to see the minister express the type of confidence in Canada’s security apparatus that was lacking from the Prime Minister and others during the public inquiry on foreign interference in the spring, it was actually U.S. intelligence services that informed Canadian authorities of Mr. Khan’s alleged intentions (just as France apparently informed Canada about Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, who was granted citizenship in May; he and his son, Mostafa Eldidi, were arrested in July and charged with plotting an ISIS attack.)

Mr. Miller’s statement was particularly unnerving because he’s not wrong about the inevitability of bad actors making their way into Canada under the current circumstances. According to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), 682,060 international study permits were handed out in 2023, the year that Mr. Khan entered Canada. That averages out to more than 1,800 permits issued every single day, which of course wouldn’t include other sorts of temporary visas such as work permits, or those who enter Canada as asylum seekers, as tourists or for family reunification. That means that an astronomical number of people were – and still are, with 278,250 student visas issued in the first three quarters of 2024 – entering Canada every day. It’s a volume that makes proper vetting logistically impossible.

This is Governing 101: make sure you have the capacity to screen who is coming in before you open the border, and if you have time, glance at housing, employment and social-service data to make sure you can accommodate those who are staying temporarily. Failure to do so at its most extreme will result in people such as Mr. Khan making their way into Canada, which leaves Canadians to hope and pray that foreign intelligence services are working to keep us safe. And at its less extreme, it will foster an unfair suspicion of newcomers from Canadians who will not, and cannot, trust that their government exerted the necessary checks of applicants before they were granted permission to come to Canada.

If a government can’t claim to keep its border secure and weed out potentially dangerous applicants before they arrive on Canadian soil, they have no business governing at all.