Trudeau announces massive drop in immigration targets

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OTTAWA — The government will cut Canada’s immigration numbers to pause population growth as housing and affordability remain the top issue — and stumbling block — for the Trudeau Liberals.

And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put the blame firmly on the shoulders of corporations and provincial governments, accusing companies of hiring foreign workers ahead of qualified Canadians post-pandemic, and provinces of allowing post-secondary institutions to overload communities with international students.

One day after a tense caucus meeting where Liberal MPs called for a leadership review, Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced new measures Thursday to cut the number of permanent resident acceptances under a new 2025-27 immigration levels plan.

“Canadians are justifiably proud of our immigration system,” Trudeau said during the announcement.

“Immigration is vital to our future, and as a federal government we have to make sure that that pride, that faith in immigration, is not undermined.”

He said the problem began due to post-pandemic labour shortages, but called out businesses and provincial governments for making the problem worse.

“Far too many corporations have chosen to abuse our temporary measures by exploiting foreign workers while refusing to hire Canadians for a fair wage,” he said.

“All while under the watch of provinces, some colleges and universities are bringing in more international students than communities can accommodate, treating them as an expendable means to line their own pockets.”

The move signals another drastic change to Canada’s immigration policy, as the Trudeau Liberals look to improve affordability, and ostensibly their cratering approval numbers.

Canada’s current target of 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025 will fall to 395,000, and further to 380,000 by 2026.

This will set 2027’s permanent resident target at 365,000.

The new policy, the government maintains, will result in a 0.2% decline in Canada’s population for the next two years, before returning to 0.8% growth in 2027.

These forecasts, said a government briefing note, will be supported by decreased immigration targets across numerous streams, aided by the outflow of temporary residents and natural population loss.

Temporary resident numbers — largely those here on work permits, international students or the temporary foreign worker program — will also be reduced by 5% by the end of 2026.

The government announced the decrease in temporary residents last month, aiming to cap the number of international students by 10%.

Miller said that while their uptick in foreign workers helped stave off recession, the time has come to ramp that back.

“When it comes to permanent immigration targets, this plan is probably the first of its kind so far as it integrates a response to a lot of the criticisms that we’ve received in the past,” he said.

Speaking to reporters over the noon-hour, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said the government’s announcement acknowledges the failure of the Trudeau Liberals’ immigration policy.

“With his own MPs working to throw him out, and less than a year from the carbon tax election, Trudeau has suddenly admitted that radical, uncontrolled immigration, and policies related to it, are partly to blame for joblessness, housing and healthcare crises,” he said, saying the past nine years have resulted in more people out of work, accessing food banks and homeless, as well as a troubling resurgence of scurvy.

“We have the worst economy in the G7. Everything is broken.”

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
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