In the high-stakes political poker game that is federal politics, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre just dished out a resounding “tell.”
Experienced poker players define a “tell” as a gesture, habit, expression or twitch that gives away the relative strength of his or her hand. Poilievre’s tell comes via an unprovoked video posted on social media Monday morning calling for major cuts to health benefits for asylum seekers, immediate steps to cut down on fraudulent refugee claims and increased deportation of “foreign criminals.”
Why is Poilievre’s eruption of concern about refugee health benefits and deportations a tell? Because right-of-centre politicians who are vulnerable and bleeding support — both inside and outside their parties — often try to whip up hysteria about immigration as a way of diverting attention from their own weaknesses.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is still losing MPs from his caucus to the Liberals. His popularity among Canadians continues to tank, while Prime Minister Mark Carney is establishing a potent political brand, writes Dan Lett. (Patrick Doyle / The Canadian Press files)
Weeks after dodging a leadership-review bullet, Poilievre is still losing MPs from his caucus to the Liberals. His popularity among Canadians continues to tank, while Prime Minister Mark Carney is establishing a potent political brand.
Facing problems like that, what’s a leader to do?
Attack immigrants, of course.
Poilievre’s video is a master class in unfounded allegations and misrepresented facts, based largely on numbers published recently by the Parliamentary Budget Office, which estimated Ottawa would be paying out roughly $1.5 billion by 2028-29 to provide health services to asylum seekers through the Interim Federal Health Program.
“Enough is enough. We can’t allow foreign criminals to take advantage of our system, false refugee claims to overwhelm the services that you pay for,” Poilievre said in the video.
It is true the cost of the IFHP has gone up significantly in the last five years, largely due to a surge in approved refugee admissions driven largely by conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. In 2023, Canada accepted more than 144,000 asylum claimants, an all-time high.
However, is it an otherwise unjustified use of taxpayer money? Poilievre clearly thinks so, although he doesn’t explain why in his video. Instead of a salient argument, we get only outrage.
The same intellectual dishonesty can be found with Poilievre’s assertion that Canada is being overwhelmed by false refugee claims and that “foreign criminals” are being allowed to remain in Canada with no consequences.
The first and most important thing to know about Poilievre’s claim is that we are currently at the back end of a period of historically high refugee admission.
Asylum claims have been rising steadily since 2020 fuelled, in large part, by the introduction of the electronic travel authorization program for people arriving from visa-exempt countries. As a result of this surge of admissions, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that 624,000 people would be using the IFHP.
However, despite Poilievre’s assertion that the program is out of control, the federal Liberal government has already taken steps to slow asylum admissions and offset the costs of the IFHP. The latter category of changes includes requiring claimants or their sponsors to cover 30 per cent of the cost of supplemental coverage (vision, dental) and a $4 charge for each drug prescription.
Again, are these changes enough? Is Canada still being too generous?
Poilievre certainly knows that Canadian support for immigration is quite low. Currently, roughly half of Canadians believe we allow too many immigrants into Canada. On the issue of refugee admissions, most polls show roughly 40 per cent think claimants are not “real refugees.”
The problem here is that Poilievre won’t stop at concerns that we accept “too many” at “too great a cost.” He has to manufacture a crisis about too many fraudulent refugee claims and too few deportations of non-citizen criminals.
Neither allegation is supported by fact.
The Immigration and Refugee Board finds that 80 per cent of all asylum claims are valid and justified. Of the remaining 20 per cent that are rejected, it’s important to note that not all are “manifestly unfounded,” the IRB’s language for fraudulent claims. Only a couple of dozen applications a year are found to be complete frauds.
As for deportations of “foreign criminals,” Poilievre conveniently ignores the fact that Canada is deporting more people than ever before.
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In 2024, 17,357 people were deported from Canada, with more than 800 resulting from some sort of criminal activity. Over the first three quarters of 2025, 18,785 people were deported. With a quarter to go, that means we’re headed to another record year for deportations.
However, what is missing from Poilievre’s war on asylum seekers is any proof of widespread fraud or that funding to support asylum seekers is unreasonable.
Canada has a reputation for helping refugees from all over the world. There is obviously a limit to the generosity that any country can offer. But other than xenophobes who want to stop immigration altogether, on what basis are we concluding that we’re being too generous to the world’s most vulnerable people?
To use the parlance of the immigration system, the deeper you dive into the issues of asylum and deportation, the more you start to see that Poilievre’s allegations are “manifestly unfounded.”
dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986. Read more about Dan.
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