LILLEY: Liberals promised fewer temporary foreign workers, instead we got more

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Do you remember when the Liberals in Ottawa promised to curb immigration, which had gotten out of control?

Seems they don’t remember, either, because the latest figures show that they are going well above what they promised to drop them down to.

What’s worse is that even with high unemployment and a housing crisis, a significant percentage of people coming into Canada are temporary residents on a work permit.

“While Canada faces the lowest youth employment since 1998, the Liberals are on track to issue the most temporary foreign worker visas in a single year,” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner said in a statement Monday.

Late last year, the federal Liberal government said it would cap the number of people entering Canada through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program at 82,000 for 2025, but so far this year they’ve allowed in 105,000. Meanwhile, the International Mobility Program was supposed to be capped at 285,000 and in the first six months, but we’ve added 302,000 through this program.

“Mark Carney promised to fix it, but these results show he’s worse. He supports the same out-of-control Liberal immigration policies that delivered a triple-header crisis in housing, health care and youth unemployment,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said.

“These breaking numbers blow through the government’s own targets midway through the year with some on course to be the highest on record.”

No wonder the Carney government was hiding immigration data.

Earlier this month, Rempel Garner had revealed the government’s open-data website had not been updating their immigration figures for the last several months. At the time, the government said it was reviewing how these figures would be presented.

Late Friday, the numbers were quietly released. Like we are seeing on other fronts, those numbers show Prime Minister Mark Carney not living up to what he promised Canadians during the election campaign.

The Liberals have been promising to curb immigration since April 2024, when Justin Trudeau famously said that we were bringing people in faster than we could absorb them. Last November, the Trudeau Liberals – whom Carney advised – promised to reduce numbers, thus the proposed caps that they have blown past.

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And during the election campaign in April, Carney blamed the Trudeau government for creating this mess and promised to fix it.

“Since the pandemic, the previous federal government has let immigration levels grow at a rapid and unsustainable pace, with our housing and social infrastructure failing to absorb all the people arriving,” the Liberal platform said.

“The government has a responsibility to those who come here to ensure that they have access to jobs, social services, and housing. If we cannot meet those responsibilities, we need to adjust the numbers until we get back on track.”

The Conservatives are calling the intake numbers of temporary residents reckless, especially given high unemployment. They also point out that the promise by the Carney Liberals to lower the number of permanent residents will still end up being much higher than Canada’s historical averages.

“Moreover, their so-called caps on permanent residents were already among the highest in our history, yet they’re on track to exceed their own reckless targets, welcoming the equivalent of twice the population of Guelph and four times the population of Abbotsford, (B.C.),” Poilievre said.

Between 2000 and 2020, Canada’s annual immigration intake of permanent residents ranged between 200,000 and 300,000 per year. Over the last several years, the Liberals increased it to 500,000 and now under Carney are proposing to bring in just under 400,000 new people per year.

We are still bringing in people faster than we can absorb them, meaning it’s time to hit the brakes on immigration.