Conservatives want deeper immigration cuts in levels plan

OTTAWA – The Conservatives are urging the Liberal government to track when temporary residents leave Canada, work more closely with the provinces and cut permanent residency admissions further in its coming immigration levels plan.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner laid out the demands at a news conference Thursday. She also blamed government policy for a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment over the past few years.

Rempel Garner pointed to a recent New York Times interview in which Prime Minister Mark Carney linked Canada’s slow economic growth to falling immigration and asked when the country might resume “some controlled increase in the population.” She called the prime minister’s approach a “hidden agenda” and said it treats immigrants and Canadian workers as “sterile units of production and consumption.”

Carney said Wednesday the government “will not budge” on making immigration numbers sustainable. He said declines in new temporary resident arrivals mean Ottawa has “taken back control” of the system, and that permanent resident admissions are back at sustainable levels. He added that the government has been talking with the provinces about their needs before the plan is released.

Rempel Garner said the push to attract the “best and brightest” ignores young Canadians who are struggling to find work. She said the Conservatives will also press for more removals of people who overstay their visas and of temporary residents convicted of crimes, and for a stronger focus on helping newcomers integrate.

The immigration department has said it is working with the Canada Border Services Agency on better tracking of temporary residents’ exits. In March, the auditor general found the department has no way of knowing whether students with expired visas actually leave the country.

Last year’s plan set a target of 380,000 new permanent residents a year from 2026 to 2028. It also created two one-time programs, running in 2026 and 2027, that could give permanent status to more than 130,000 temporary residents who are not counted in that target.

The government must table its updated levels plan in the coming weeks. The legislated deadline is the end of October, but because that day falls on a Sunday, Ottawa has some extra time. Last year’s plan was published in the federal budget, and this year’s budget is scheduled for Nov. 5.

We looked earlier at how Carney’s population pivot faces a test in the levels plan. For anyone applying through the points system, our report on the Express Entry pool of 229,456 candidates shows where the queue stands, and our look at Canada’s population revised up by about 300,000 explains the numbers behind the debate.

Source: The Canadian Press.

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