GUNTER: Trudeau's work policies spawning problems for immigration

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Since coming to office in 2015, the Trudeau government has made foreign study in Canada a parallel immigration system, effectively doubling the number of newcomers it admits every year by giving the process another title.

Hundreds of thousands of students gain easy admission to loosely designated “career colleges,” at which they take nine to 12 months of business training. During their time as students, they are able to work up to 40 hours a week (to be cut back to 24 hours a week by Ottawa as of Sept. 1).

After that, they are allowed to stay in the country on post-graduate work permits for periods of up to 18 months — a period the Liberals have extended for most foreign students at least three times; some of the original beneficiaries have been here working for five years since last attending classes.

When you say “foreign students” to most people, they imagine international students studying engineering, chemistry, medicine, languages and other programs at major universities, colleges and technical schools. However, the truth is most foreign students are simply people who paid $7 for a visa, demonstrated they had $10,000 credit to cover some of their expenses (soon to be nearly $21,000), then hopped on a plane to Canada and a career college.

That is one of the reasons the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that Canada has far and away the highest “stay rate” among international students.

Officially, nearly 40% of foreign students apply to stay in Canada permanently. However, since Immigration Canada has no good system for tracking those who stay unofficially, estimates are that upward of 70% remain long after their studies end.

The government cannot provide a reliable figure for foreign students in Canada, but the current estimate is just under one million. One million who need health care, housing and jobs.

And that number could be hundreds of thousands higher if people who have stayed beyond the end of their work permits could be counted.

Back in January, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a cap on the number of foreign students, but there is no evidence of a cap as of yet. Through the first five months of 2024, the Liberals issued 216,620 study permits compared to 200,205 in the same period of 2023.

I am not anti-immigrant or anti-foreign student. I am, however, very pro-math. And the math of the Liberals’ immigration policies works for neither newcomers nor Canadians.

In its final year in office, the Conservative government of prime minister Stephen Harper set the immigration target at 280,000. At the time, that was the most generous target (on a per-capita basis) in the western world.

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Canada wasn’t the most generous country with refugees. Germany and England beat us there. But overall, our targets were based on the maximum our economy and society could absorb.

Then the Trudeau Liberals came to office with their woke ideas about liberalizing immigration.

A case might be made for increasing the immigration target to 450,000, as the Liberals have done. But when you add in the foreign student program and a refugee determination program that used to admit about two-thirds of applicants, but now approves nearly 90%, you end up with a level of newcomers that is nearly three-fold greater than it was a decade ago.

The fault is not with the newcomers, whether immigrants, refugees or students. The fault lies entirely with the Trudeau Liberals and their insanely “progressive” policies.

If the Liberals are offering you a quick and easy way to move to Canada and you take it, you are not a bad person for availing yourself of the opportunity.

The Liberals are the problem for thinking they could add 3% to 4% to Canada’s population every year without overburdening health care, housing and the job market.