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By James Bickerton
News Reporter
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government "made some mistakes" on immigration while outlining the country's plans to reduce the number of immigrants arriving under its permanent residency program over the next three years.
In YouTube videos posted on Sunday, Trudeau made the remarks in English and French, saying, "Bad actors, like fake colleges and big chain corporations, have been exploiting our immigration system for their own interests."
Immigration remains a heated issue across the Western world, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump vowing to crack down on illegal border crossings upon his return to office. The Canadian government has announced plans to cut immigration via its permanent residency stream by about 20 percent and to impose extra restrictions on employers seeking temporary worker permits.
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In the video, Trudeau said, "In the last two years, our population has grown really fast, like baby boom fast," adding: "So we're doing something major. We're reducing the numbers of immigrants that will come to Canada for the next three years."
In October, the Canadian government cut its target for the number of new permanent residents allowed into the country from about 500,000 per year to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.
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Trudeau said in the video, "Between the amount of people coming and going, we'll effectively pause population growth for the next two years, then from 2027 onwards, it will balance out and slowly start increasing again at a sustainable pace."
Immigration to Canada has risen sharply in recent years, with the country taking in a record 437,539 permanent residents in 2022, government figures showed. According to Canada's government, "Without a sustained level of immigration, Canada's population growth could be close to zero within 20 years," as the country's birth rate is below replacement level.
However, the level of immigration has become increasingly unpopular. In September, a Focus Canada opinion poll found that 58 percent of Canadians thought immigration was too high, up from 31 percent in 2022.
Trudeau suggested in his video that Canada's post-pandemic immigration levels might have helped prevent a recession.
"Every sector has different wants and needs when it comes to immigration. But after the pandemic, they all came to us with the same message: 'After two years of closed borders, we need more people, more workers, fast.' So we brought in more workers. It was the right choice. It worked. Our economy grew...most importantly, despite lots of economists' predictions, we avoided the worst-case scenario: a recession," Trudeau said.
He added, "When the post-pandemic boom cooled, and businesses no longer needed the additional labor help, as a federal team, we could have acted quicker and turned off the taps faster."
The prime minister said, "Far too many colleges and universities used international students to raise their bottom line because they could charge these students tens of thousands of dollars more for the same degree."
He continued, "There are really bad actors who outright exploit people, who target vulnerable immigrants with promises of jobs, diplomas and easy pathways to citizenship—promises that would never come true."
Speaking to Newsweek, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the government department overseeing migration, said: "Minister Miller has introduced significant measures over the last year to address the pressures facing our immigration system. Work is ongoing."
Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada's Conservative Party, condemned Trudeau's remarks, saying the prime minister was blaming "bad actors" for his decisions. He described Trudeau as "a pyromaniac masquerading as a firefighter."
Professor Jim Bickerton, an expert in Canadian politics who teaches at St. Francis Xavier University, told Newsweek that historically, immigration to Canada has "enjoyed high levels of public support and generally positive attitudes." However, he said, "over the past couple of years, and the past year in particular, this broad support has begun to change."
"One major change in policy over the past few years has been in the annual number of temporary work permits," Bickerton added.
"The Trudeau government relaxed regulations on temporary foreign workers post Covid, and since then, the number of non-permanent residents in Canada has doubled from 1.3 to 2.8 million, about one-half of these being temporary work permits. Meanwhile, the number of international students entering Canada on study permits doubled from 240,000 in 2014 to around 450,000 in 2022...
"Unemployment has been on the rise in Canada, but the greater pressure on the government to act has been a housing and affordability crisis."
Bickerton said some commentators have accused Trudeau of presiding over an "overcorrection" on immigration policy "triggered by the hammering it is getting from the opposition regarding the affordable housing crisis and their persistently poor standing in public opinion polls."
Update 11/19/24, 10:55 a.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from an Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada department spokesperson and Canadian politics expert Jim Bickerton.
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