Canada scales back immigration targets to address housing issues

CANADA last Thursday (24) sharply curbed its immigration targets in an effort to “pause” population growth, a shift that comes as public support for immigration declines.

While Canada has long prided itself as a place that welcomes new immigrants, public opinion in the country has recently soured on immigration, which has been blamed for reducing housing affordability. Prime minister Justin Trudeau said Canada went too far in its response to a labour shortage following the pandemic.

“We are acting today because in the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labour needs and maintaining population growth, we didn’t get the balance quite right,” Trudeau told reporters last week.

“We will reduce the number of immigrants we bring in over the next three years, which will result in a pause in the population growth,” he added.

He said Canada needed to stabilise its population to give “all levels of government time to catch up, time to make the necessary investments in health care, in housing, (and) in social services to accommodate more people in the future.”

Canada’s population jumped 3.2 per cent from 2023 to 2024, the biggest annual rise since 1957, and now stands at 41 million – a rise partly fuelled by a wave of new arrivals.

The country had previously planned to let 500,000 new permanent residents settle in the country in 2025 and 2026. But those targets were revised down to 395,000 next year and 380,000 for 2026. It set the 2027 target at 365,000.

According to the last census in 2021, 23 per cent of Canada’s population was foreign-born.

Statistic Canada said that as of 2021, most immigrants were from Asia and the Middle East, but an increasing share were coming from Africa.

Nearly one of five recent immigrants were born in India.

At the same time Canada is reducing the number of temporary residents by hundreds of thousands a year, the immigration department said in a statement. The government hopes that more than one million people whose visas are set to expire in the coming years will leave of their own accord.

Canada’s immigration minister Marc Miller called the plan “probably the first of its kind,” in terms of its broad efforts to control population growth.

A September survey from the Environics Institute found that “for the first time in a quarter century, a clear majority of Canadians say there is too much immigration.” Fifty-eight per cent of Canadians believe the country takes in too many immigrants, up 14 percentage points from 2023, the survey found.

In figures released last month, Abacus Data found that one in two Canadians said immigration is hurting the country. The figures also noted that concern among Canadians about the impact of immigration is linked to unease over affordable housing.

Miller predicted curbing immigration will address the housing supply gap, reducing by 670,000 the number of homes Canada needs to build by 2027. “That is significant,” Miller told reporters.

But the Canadian Chamber of Commerce warned immigration is Canada’s “only source of workforce growth” given its ageing population, low fertility rates, and retirements from the baby-boomer generation. “Significantly decreasing our labour pool will impact thousands of these employers across Canada struggling to find the workforce they need,” the group said in a statement.

Diana Palmerin-Velasco, senior director of the Future of Work with Canada’s Chamber of Commerce, expressed concern with a potential reduction in the labour pool. “I think we were able to officially avoid a recession because of immigration,” she said.

“There’s concern in the business community about the message we are sending. You know, if we want more foreign investment, we need to have the people.”

Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, whose Conservative party is trouncing Trudeau’s Liberals in recent polling, said the prime minister was desperately trying to boost his popularity as he confronts a revolt inside his own party and declining support nationally.

“We can’t expect that Justin Trudeau will keep any of these frantic, panicked, last-minute promises,” Poilievre said.

Canada is due to hold elections next year. Donald Trump, who has made opposing immigration a focus of his US presidential campaign – including through misleading and inflammatory claims – jumped on the policy change.

“Even Justin Trudeau wants to close Canada’s Borders,” he posted on Truth Social.