Canada's Immigration Out of Whack With Reality

"Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive spike in temporary immigration, whether it’s temporary foreign workers or whether it’s international students, in particular, that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb."

"Increasingly, more and more businesses are relying on temporary foreign workers in a way that is driving down wages in some sectors."

"We want to get those numbers down."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau  

New Canadians wave the national flag during a citizenship ceremony in Toronto. Steve Russell/Toronto Star/Getty Images

Previous government administrations in Canada spoke of accelerated intake of immigrants totalling around 350,000 yearly. In and of itself an enormous number of newcomers to be welcomed and integrated into Canadian societies. For the most part, Canadians are welcoming people, and themselves mostly of immigrant stock in this relatively young nation, felt compelled to agree that Canada benefited hugely from its reliance on immigration to boost its population numbers along with the economy.

Since the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau from 2015 to the present, immigration numbers, temporary workers, foreign students, refugees and illegal migrants have swelled those yearly numbers beyond a million people annually. The most immediate problems to have surfaced is the strain on social services. Housing is another problem; there simply is not enough. A dearth of houses and priced out of a middle-class market. Canada's ailing universal health care system is stumbling along troubled by surgical wait times, mobbed hospital emergency departments and a lack of family physicians.

And while temporary foreign workers are brought into the country to take jobs that most Canadians themselves won't touch, the unemployment rate among migrants, and those on student visas as well as Canadian youth is much higher than among the general population. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made public admissions of immigration number impacts on the economy, on quality of life, on strained social services, but it has been his policies that have created the situation.

Canada's immigration intake was once a reasonable number, not the impossible influx it has become under Mr. Trudeau. The system of selecting prime immigrants by judging how they would benefit Canada was a point system that took into account education level, age, professional background, for choices that enhanced immigrants' ability to make maximum use of skills and experience and the drive to maximize both to Canada's credit while providing a promising future for successful candidates.

Responsible immigration selection protocols have gone out the window of opportunity by the Liberal government. The points system is now largely ignored. Government speaks of labour shortages and the need to increase immigration intake to fill that gap. Yet bringing in  unskilled workers with no experience and no incentive to upgrade their educational and employment opportunities benefits neither the workers nor the country.

 

Canada's Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced plans to reduce the share of temporary residents living in Canada from 6.2 to five per cent of the population. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Add to that the untamed issue of allowing migrants to flood the social security system, welfare, emergency housing, at a time of growing homelessness in the Canadian population at large, and you have a burgeoning dysfunctional situation difficult to control and to cope with. Those who now enter Canada illegally have as much opportunity to achieve permanent resident status under this government as do temporary foreign workers whose goal is to achieve permanent residency in Canada.

In 2023 according to Statistics Canada a total of 1.3 million new entrants swelled Canadian population numbers.Permanent immigrants represented 500,000; less than half of the total entrants while 800,000 were non-permanent residents comprised of temporary foreign workers and international students. Public opinion polls now reflect the perception that immigration is an issue of high concern for a sizeable number of Canadians, and rising. 

Spurred by falling GDP per capita, declining consumer spending, inadequate housing growth, and dwindling labour markets. Little wonder that a sizeable (44%) proportion of Canadians feel that immigration is responsible now for affecting the country negatively, and a wider percentage now believe immigration volumes should be decreased. 

 

Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a new route for uneducated applicants for permanent residency: "The initiative would support the modernization of the economic immigration system by expanding the selection of permanent residents to candidates with a more diverse range of skills and experience". Unskilled foreign workers will likely be absorbed by the 'initiative', who have overstayed their visas.

At the same time a foreign student 'cap' announced by the Immigration Minister remains so high the maximum number of new students admitted in 2025 will rank 70 percent higher than the entire international student body of 2015. These outcomes are a reflection of nine years of the Trudeau government handling the affairs of the nation.

As part of its plan to shrink the number of temporary residents in Canada by 2027, Ottawa is cutting the number of temporary foreign workers that companies can hire in most sectors from 30 per cent to 20 per cent of their workforces. (Jane Robertson/CBC)