Updated July 2026. In November 2025, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, the party’s Shadow Minister for Immigration, announced a package of proposed amendments to Bill C-12 — the federal government’s border security and immigration legislation. Here’s what was proposed, and how the bill has moved since.
What the Conservative Amendments Proposed
Rempel Garner’s proposed changes focused on several areas:
- Enhancing asylum processing procedures
- Reducing incentives for what she characterized as fraudulent or baseless claims
- Modernizing criminality and deportation rules
- Improving transparency in federal immigration reporting
- Addressing operational issues within the Immigration and Refugee Board
- Strengthening screening and verification procedures
- Aligning eligibility criteria with the system’s actual processing capacity
Specific proposals included disallowing asylum claims from people who had transited through Europe or another G7 country en route to Canada, requiring asylum claimants to disclose their full grounds for protection immediately upon arrival, automatic termination of a claim following an inadmissibility finding, and a ban on repeat pre-removal risk assessments absent new evidence of changed circumstances.
Why the Conservatives Proposed These Changes
Rempel Garner pointed to a rise in asylum claims, growing processing backlogs, increased temporary resident numbers, and housing affordability pressures as factors she said were eroding public confidence in the immigration system — arguing the concerns reflected frustration with system capacity and function rather than sentiment toward immigrants themselves. She also noted that Canada’s per capita asylum numbers had come to exceed the UK’s, despite Canada’s smaller population, drawing a comparison to the UK’s own recent immigration policy debates.
How Bill C-12 Has Progressed Since
The bill — formally the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act — went through committee review at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety, where Conservative MPs pushed for these amendments. It subsequently passed the Senate on March 12, 2026 with two amendments of its own, sending it back to the House of Commons for a final vote, with Royal Assent expected in the following weeks.
Sources: Global News; The Globe and Mail; CBC News.
