Federal NDP MP Jenny Kwan said the loan shows there is a need for new investment guidelines for the infrastructure bank. “Minister Freeland needs to take action to focus on closing loopholes rather than engaging in performative criticism,” she said in a statement.
However, the Strong Borders Act has faced immediate backlash. Critics, including MP Jenny Kwan, the Migrant Rights Network, and refugee advocates, say the bill mimics Trump-era US tactics and risks violating Canada’s international obligations to protect refugees.
“It’s an alarming shift,” Kwan said, describing the bill as a “massive rollback of rights” that can erode Canada’s long-standing humanitarian commitments.
The US factor looms large. President Trump has repeatedly accused Canada of failing to stop the movement of illicit fentanyl and irregular migration across the northern frontier. In February, Trump threatened and implemented short-lived tariffs on certain Canadian exports, rattling Ottawa and adding impetus for Carney’s government to show it can police its own borders more strictly.
“There are items in the bill that have been irritants for the US, so we’re addressing some of those issues,” Anandasangaree acknowledged, even as he insisted the bill is about Canadian security first.
The Strong Borders Act has already sparked protests and is mounting legal challenges in Ottawa and in major cities like Montreal and Toronto. Critics argue that Canada, long seen as a beacon of openness, is at risk of abandoning that tradition in the name of security. For Carney’s government, the challenge remains how to reassure a skeptical public that the system is both secure and fair without sacrificing the country’s humanitarian identity.
NDP MP and public safety and national security critic Jenny Kwan has also voiced opposition to the bill, calling it a “sweeping attack on Canadian civil liberties.”
“It would allow the RCMP and CSIS to make information demands from internet providers, banks, doctors, landlords and even therapists, without judicial oversight,” Kwan said in the House of Commons earlier this month. “This is not about border security. It is about government overreach and Big Brother tactics, plain and simple.”
Bill C-2 is formally titled “An Act respecting certain measures relating to the security of the border between Canada and the United States and respecting other related security measures.”
It was at second reading in the House of Commons before MPs broke for the summer break last week. Any other progress on the bill will have to wait until the House resumes in mid-September.
NDP Media Release 25.6.2025
In reaction to Mark Carney's new NATO defence spending pledge to hit 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, NDP critic for Defence Heather McPherson issued the following statement:
“Increasing defence spending to 5 per cent was never part of Mark Carney’s election campaign – which ended less than two months ago. This was not part of the mandate he received from Canadians.
Carney's new pledge would cost Canadians more than $100 billion per year. That’s twice the amount the federal government transfers to the provinces and territories for healthcare. At a time when Canadians urgently need investments in healthcare, affordable housing, and climate change mitigation, they should be worried about what services they may lose to make up this extraordinary and unexpected cost.
Right now, workers are losing their jobs because of Trump’s reckless trade war, and this Liberal government is telling them it can’t provide proper support. That's not what Carney promised on the campaign trail.
New Democrats recognize that Canadian Armed Forces personnel and infrastructure were underfunded by successive Liberal and Conservative governments, and there is a need to increase investment in these services. And the growing threats to Canadian sovereignty and security are real. But these threats are not only military, and defence spending is not the only solution – that’s why the Liberals should be reversing their cuts to conflict prevention, peacebuilding and international development.
While this Liberal government emphasizes Arctic security and sovereignty, there is an excessive focus on security. Northerners continue to face barriers to fully participating in Arctic sovereignty, which in turn limits their engagement in Arctic security. That’s why greater investment in Arctic sovereignty is essential—including funding for housing, schools, airports, and marine ports. These investments will empower Northerners to contribute meaningfully to the region’s security and future.
Canadians deserve a government that puts their needs first. When the Liberal government says it has billions for weapons but not enough for affordable housing or healthcare, it means more people will fall through the cracks.
New Democrats will fight every day so that you and your family aren’t left behind.”
The government gave Indigenous rights holders just seven days to review and respond to Bill C-5, said MP for Vancouver East Jenny Kwan in an interview with The Tyee. “That is absolutely disgusting,” she said. “It is not in any stretch of the imagination meaningful consultation.”
Since Bill C-2’s introduction, vocal critics of the legislation in the House have included NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party’s critic for public safety, immigration, and citizenship. On June 11, Kwan told the House that the “so-called stronger borders act makes Harper’s Bill C-51 look like child’s play.”
“Bill C-2 is a sweeping attack on Canadian civil liberties. It would allow the RCMP and CSIS to make information demands from internet providers, banks, doctors, landlords and even therapists, without judicial oversight. This is not about border security. It is about government overreach and Big Brother tactics, plain and simple. It is a violation of our privacy, and it will be challenged in court,” she said in the House.
In response to Kwan, Anandasangaree defended the bill, saying the Strong Borders Act would help keep Canadians safe.
The federal NDP says the Liberals need to include provisions to reestablish a port policing program in the government’s new border security bill.
The original Ports Canada Police was disbanded back in 1997. A 2023 report to the City of Delta, B.C., by former Mountie and money-laundering expert Peter German says the move has allowed organized crime to take root and proliferate through Canada’s ports.
“With its disbandment, policing of port property became the responsibility of the police force of jurisdiction. For Greater Vancouver, this meant a multitude of different municipal police forces and the RCMP,” German’s report explains.
NDP MP for Vancouver East Jenny Kwan says gang activity and trafficking through the country’s ports has “increased exponentially” since then.
She says harmful goods are entering Canada and also leaving its ports for destinations like Australia, New Zealand, and some African countries.
“We have actually left a giant hole for criminal activities to target us, and that has to be closed,” said Kwan.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree says Ottawa continues to have “difficult conversations” with New Delhi about the 2023 killing of a Canadian Sikh leader, but the Prime Minister’s Office has declined to say if the matter was raised earlier this week in talks between Mark Carney and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi.
Mr. Carney ducked a question Tuesday about whether he and Mr. Modi had discussed the killing of the Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, during a one-on-one meeting that day at the G7 leaders’ summit in Kananaskis, Alta.
The Globe and Mail pressed the PMO on Wednesday about whether Mr. Nijjar’s slaying and Indian foreign interference were part of the discussions. Sikh organizations and human-rights activists have also sought clarification on what was discussed.
Mr. Carney’s press secretary, Audrey Champoux, would not comment on Wednesday. She referred The Globe to a statement the two leaders released Tuesday: “Prime Minister Carney raised priorities on the G7 agenda, including transnational crime and repression, security, and the rules-based order.”
After the meeting, the two leaders announced that they would designate new high commissioners and restore regular diplomatic services to citizens in both countries.
Bilateral relations went into a deep freeze in 2024, after then-prime minister Justin Trudeau and the RCMP said there was evidence linking agents of the Modi government to Mr. Nijjar’s slaying.
Canada expelled the Indian high commissioner and five other diplomats over the killing. India denied any role and responded with similar diplomatic expulsions.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan, an outspoken human-rights activist, said in a June 17 letter to Mr. Carney that re-establishing diplomatic normalcy with India when it has yet to account for its role in the death of Mr. Nijjar “sends a deeply painful message to Sikh Canadians who continue to live under threat.”
Major Sikh organizations and human-rights advocates also wrote a separate letter to Mr. Carney on Tuesday, saying the Nijjar killing was part of a co-ordinated campaign of transnational repression that “continues to violate Canadian sovereignty.”
Like another government before them, the Liberals are trying to satiate law enforcement’s perennial desire for warrantless access to personal information in the digital age by linking it to a perceived emergency.
The Conservatives under Stephen Harper did it in 2013, when Vic Toews, the public safety minister, famously said of a Liberal opposition critic that, “He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
Mr. Toews was talking about the 2012 Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, which would have given police unprecedented powers to monitor Canadians’ internet activities without a warrant.
The bill did not in fact mention children or internet predators anywhere except in its title, and the Conservatives abandoned it in 2013 under a withering public outcry.
The Carney Liberals are now throwing around the words “fentanyl,” “sex offenders” and “money laundering” in Bill C-2, and suggesting Canada’s borders are porous, for the same purpose.