- Trudeau gov’t put more effort into COVID jails than tracking illegal immigration
- By Sheila Gunn Reid
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- June 11, 2021
While Justin Trudeau was imprisoning Canadian citizens in COVID jails as part of his airport incarceration quarantine program, over 200,000 people were on the Canada Border Security Agency’s removal inventory.
A Liberal government response to an order paper question asked by Conservative MP for Steveston-Richmond East Kenny Chiu required the CBSA to produce the statistics on the number of people on the list since 2020.
According to the return tabled this week in the House of Commons, 205,127 people remain on CBSA’s “Removal Inventory” including 31,093 in the “Wanted” category.
A special monitoring inventory that includes “but is not limited to cases where litigation is in process, pre-removal risk assessments are pending, temporary suspension of removals are imposed, or foreign nationals serving a term of imprisonment” totalled 15,807 individuals.
Fewer than 13,000 removals were completed in the 2020 calendar year.
Page four of the return indicates CBSA stopped all removals due to COVID between March and November 2020, and the agency is still hampered by the pandemic:
Although the CBSA has returned to a pre-pandemic effort to remove people from Canada. It must be noted that there remains significant challenges to remove people during the pandemic. This includes obtaining travel documents from foreign missions that are closed or under significant restrictions that impact travel document production, a significantly reduced number of flights leaving Canada, the need for COIVD testing pre-departure and quarantines on arrival in the person’s home country, and ongoing provincial restrictions on staff occupancy that varies across the country.
Rebel News is challenging the illegal COVID jail system which detains innocent Canadian citizens in a hotel for up to 72 hours upon their return to Canada. To fund our lawsuit against the Trudeau government and to sign the petition, please visit