OP-ED: Can Poilievre Be the Farage We Need?
Juno News co-founder Keean Bexte on the immigration mess of the last decade, and whether Pierre Poilievre has what it takes to push actual solutions
This week, a video of Calgary Transit went viral: hordes of commuters crammed into and around a bus in a scene of packed chaos. People spilling out of doorways, swarming the stop, the platform heaving — more like rush hour in Calcutta than anything you’d expect in Calgary.
It’s the latest proof of what Canadians already see and feel. Crime is up. Traffic is up. ER wait times are up. Rent and housing prices are in the stratosphere. And instead of acknowledging the problem, the Canadian political class, legacy media, and the immigration industrial complex have doubled down — smearing anyone who spoke up two years ago as a racist, a bigot, or a white nationalist.
This is not about skin colour. If one million unvetted Irish or French-speaking Belgians flooded our country through scam colleges, they’d need to go back too.
But that’s not who came. The federal government opened the floodgates to the developing world with zero regard for cultural fit, sustainability, or national interest — and now we’re all paying the price.
Even recent immigrants see the mess created over the last decade. In fact, polling shows non-white Canadians are more critical of mass migration than white Canadians. That alone should silence the pearl-clutchers.
Many of these “newcomers” — to use the new globalist buzzword that replaced “immigrant” after the latter became too toxic — were sold a lie. They were told Canada was a dreamland. Most are now waking up to a destroyed promise. But that won’t be enough. Because the ones who came to take advantage — the ones packed twelve to a house in Brampton — will stay. Why wouldn’t they? Even a collapsing Canada still offers ‘free’ healthcare (for now).
That needs to change.
This means mandatory language testing, with enforcement.
This means if you're not gainfully employed, you go back.
This means if you're a drag on the system, you're cut loose.
Canada is not a refugee camp. It is a nation with values, responsibilities, and a social contract — one that's being shredded by globalist ideologues and cowardly politicians too afraid to speak plain truth.
On Thursday, I personally asked Pierre Poilievre how he plans to fix it.
Poilievre’s answer hit some of the right notes: deportation for those deemed inadmissible, removal of criminals after detention, tracking down the 600 criminal fugitives the Liberals have lost, cutting international student and Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) numbers that corporations use to drive down wages, and — crucially — net negative migration “for the next several years.”
But broad strokes aren’t enough. We’ve had years of political hedging. Even now, senior Conservatives are still undermining this issue from within, calling for scrapping English language tests or hiding behind “family reunification” — buzzwords that mask the same unsustainable intake. Without clear, measurable targets and timelines for removals, border security, and intake cuts, the promises won’t outlast the next press conference.
The UK is showing us what political courage looks like. Nigel Farage spent years saying what his opponents wouldn’t — and now they’re forced to echo him. Britain’s ruling party is scrambling to pledge lower migration because Farage made it politically impossible not to. Reform UK is now the most trusted party on immigration, and Farage himself is the most trusted leader on the issue — beating even the Prime Minister. Two-thirds of Britons now say migration is too high, and even Keir Starmer, Britain’s liberal PM, is parroting Farage’s warnings, pledging to slash migration and warning the UK could become an “island of strangers.”
That’s what political courage does. It shifts the Overton Window. It forces the cowards to follow. Canada’s Conservatives should take note: speaking the truth about immigration isn’t just right — it’s smart politics.
Poilievre has moved the Conservatives further than Bergen, O’Toole, Ambrose, or Scheer ever did. The question now is whether he’s willing to go the full distance — before Canadians decide someone else will.
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