‘From prorogation into an election’; MP Caputo discusses wild year in Ottawa

Caputo was assigned the shadow minister role for public safety, looking after the RCMP and CBSA file, learning in committee about the number of foreign nationals in Canada wanted for deportation.

“That there are 30,000 foreign nationals that have warrants for their arrest for deportation, the government doesn’t know where they are,” said Caputo. “So can you imagine a third of the city of Kamloops has a warrant for non-citizens and we don’t know where they are. This is at a time where Canadians are really worried about crime, they tell me about this everyday.”

“We have to address some of these issues, I think for me having a prudent immigration regime is really important. I’m a child of immigrants, I owe everything I have to immigration. So for me it’s really important that we have a robust immigration system that balances what we have available in terms of housing and medicine and things like that, that also addresses when people do break the law that we can deal with them appropriately.”

Caputo also highlighted how the liberal campaign promise to bring in 1000 new RCMP officers and border officers has not been met.

“I haven’t seen a single officer hired,” said Caputo. “In fact the President of CBSA said ‘well we’ve hired 57’, and I said how many of them are part of the 1,000 officers you promised and I didn’t get an answer. So when the head of an organization can’t tell you, we have a problem.”

“One of the really big issues with that promise for CBSA is job satisfaction at the Canada Border Services Agency is quite low, so they lose quite a few people every year. So just to keep up with attrition their training would have to be at essentially full capacity, they maybe could train 100-200 extras every year. So nobody really knows how they are going to get these 1,000 new officers if they don’t have the physical capacity to train them.”

He also spoke to what he feels is government inaction towards the community of Merritt, one of the newest parts of his riding, now more than four years post flood.

“The government showed up for photo op after photo op, ‘we will have your back.’ We’ve heard that so many times, they have committed what $5 million, the province committed over $100 million,” outlined Caputo. “So it’s really easy to show up and say we will have your backs, but when the rubber hits the road are you really going to do it. So as a member of parliament my job is to hold the government to account.”

“What I would ask people to do is to say, ‘is our member of parliament acting on these things’. And because as a member of the opposition my job is to point these things out. And then more concretely, is the government holding up their end of the bargain. They collect taxes from the people of Merritt, from the people of Kamloops, from the people of Clinton, are they going to fulfill their end of the bargain. So I’m quite disappointed that they haven’t with respect to Merritt,” he adds.

2026 will begin with the conservative convention at the end of January, with Tories voting on their support of leader Poilievre, a man Caputo still believes is right to lead his party forward.

“We obviously have to be sure to show leadership, Canadians want leadership, they want an alternate vision. I think we as Conservatives can show that alternate vision. But as Pierre said ultimately it is up to the grass roots of the membership and we will see what they say. I do believe that he will come out of this with a fair majority.”

The results of the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership review are expected by the end of January, 2026.

by Michael Reeve

‘From prorogation into an election’; MP Caputo discusses wild year in Ottawa

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