OTTAWA – Conservative Members of Parliament are proposing a new bill that the party hopes will make refugees feel more at home in Canada by ensuring their new lives remain as destitute and hopeless as the ones they were forced to flee.
“It’s bad enough these people arrive in our country under such incredible duress,” explained Scarborough East MP Corneliu Chisu, author of Bill C-585, which would allow provinces to restrict refugees’ access to social welfare benefits. “The last thing they need is us shoving all this free health care, child services, and financial assistance down their throats.”
Born and raised in Romania, Chisu immigrated to Canada in 1982, and knows first-hand the horrors of being granted complete, unequivocal access to the country’s comprehensive social welfare system right away.
“It was a nightmare,” he recalled. “All those rights and freedoms? I literally had no choice to but to massively improve my quality of life, the point that I now draw publicly subsidized salary that vastly exceeds that of the average Canadian.”
As a result, Chisu said he now feels a responsibility to prevent others from suffering the same fate.
“These people arrived in our country broke, hungry, and scared,” he began. “As Canadians, we have an obligation to make sure they stay that way for as long as possible.”
“It’s called compassion.”
