OTTAWA, Nov. 20, 2025: The federal Conservatives are pushing for stricter rules against asylum claimants and those who fail their claims, and quicker deportation of non-citizens convicted of serious crimes, says the party’s immigration critic.
At a news conference Thursday, Alberta MP Michelle Rempel Garner announced a number of amendments the opposition party is going to table next week to Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, which is currently before the parliamentary public safety committee.
The proposed changes include removing failed refugee claimants’ access to all federal social benefits beyond emergency health care; banning claims by nationals of by those arriving through a G7 or a European Union country; and requiring educational institutions to share the cost of “bogus” asylum claims made by their international students.
The party also proposed that a claim should be deemed “abandoned” if the claimant returns to their home country while the claim is pending, and that claims by asylum seekers who have lied to an officer be rejected.
The Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers called the proposed amendments a major shift in how Canada treats asylum seekers.
Rempel Garner said these proposed measures are meant to reduce incentives for people to make fraudulent claims, process claims more efficiently and make it easier to remove people. She is calling for changes to the standards by which non-citizens convicted of serious crimes in Canada can be removed, and reforms to make removals more efficient and transparent.
“The pedantic and loophole-ridden process for appealing a bogus asylum claim and removing bogus claimants from Canada also begets system abuse and needs reform, which C-12 as written does not provide,” Rempel Garner said.
In October, the minority Liberal government tabled Bill C-12 to replace an earlier bill as a necessary concession by removing some of the most controversial proposals over privacy and Charter rights. However, it sticks with restricting access to asylum by blocking claims made more than one year after first arrival in Canada, and seeking the powers to cancel immigration documents and suspend applications based on “public interest.”
The Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers criticized the proposals and said some of the suggestions “are already baked into the jurisprudence” that the Immigration and Refugee Board applies.
The former Conservative government under Stephen Harper, for instance, implemented a system that treated claimants differently based on nationality, but it was later found by the courts to be unconstitutional, said Toronto refugee lawyer Adam Sadinsky, a spokesperson for the lawyers’ association.
He said the refugee board is a specialized tribunal for determining refugee claims, including claimants’ credibility, and the majority of cases are considered well-founded and accepted. According to the board’s website, adjudicators accepted 37,323 and rejected 10,521 claims in the first three quarters of 2025.
“I would characterize the proposed amendments as cruel and based on misleading or simply false rhetoric,” Sadinsky said. “On the whole, the system works. Claims that deserve to be accepted are. Claims that do not deserve to accepted are not.”
Rempel Garner said the amendments will also clarify the definition of “serious criminality” under the immigration act and prevent non-citizens ordered removed from blocking deportation via repeat pre-removal risk assessments unless substantive new evidence is presented.
The Immigration Department declined to comment on the Conservatives’ proposed amendments but said the bill, as introduced, strengthens the integrity and efficiency of the immigration and asylum systems.
It said the bill will enhance information sharing within the department and with other partners; improve how asylum claims are received, processed and determined; allow control over immigration documents and applications; and help prevent surges in asylum claims without putting the truly vulnerable at risk.
