Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks as federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Harjit Sajjan, and B.C. Minister of Housing, Ravi Kahlon listen during a news conference for a housing announcement in Vancouver on Dec. 15. A big driver of an increase in people saying there was too much immigration, according to a recent poll, was that many fear immigration is driving up housing prices.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
If Justin Trudeau is truly worried about Trump-style politics being imported into Canada, he should fix the massive policy failure that threatens to fuel it.
That’s the failure to control the unplanned boom in temporary residents that is already undermining one of Canada’s great strengths: public support for immigration.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump is now using nakedly fascist language to demonize immigrants – this past weekend, he said immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States.
What should be terrifying is that Mr. Trudeau’s pro-immigration Liberal government has messed up Canadian immigration egregiously while public support has fallen precipitously.
Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals have accused Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives of importing MAGA politics, and the Prime Minister has expressed concern about a vein of ugly political outrage in Canada. But if he is really worried about angry-Trumpian rhetoric, a good thing to do is fix the botched policies that can fuel support for this kind of xenophobia in Canada.
That isn’t really an issue with what Canadians traditionally consider to be immigration – permanent residents who are given status to stay and build lives here. It is about the boom in temporary residents, mostly foreign students and temporary foreign workers.
Canada’s population increased by a record-breaking 430,635 people in three months in the third quarter of 2023. Of those, 73 per cent – or 312,758 – were temporary residents, according to Statistics Canada.
There are now more than 2½ million temporary residents in Canada – 1.1 million more than 18 months earlier. They make up more than 6 per cent of Canada’s population.
Ottawa never planned that. It happened by accident. Negligence, really.
The federal government sets immigration targets for permanent residents, but not temporary residents. The temporary-resident numbers are driven by foreign-student admissions by (provincially regulated) colleges and universities and by industry requests for temporary workers. There is no cap.
The boom in their numbers has led to rapid population growth, especially in the past two years.
And there is a backlash. A poll by Environics and the pro-immigration Century Initiative in September found that the proportion of people who agree with the statement that there is too much immigration went up 17 percentage points in a year, to 44 per cent. A generation-long pro-immigration consensus has eroded in 12 months.
A big driver of that increase, according to the poll, was that many people fear that immigration is driving up housing prices. The awful thing is population growth from the temporary resident boom really is driving up rents and home prices.
It’s important to point out that immigrants are not to blame. Governments – provincial and federal – failed to plan for levels of population and housing that were roughly balanced.
But there are people who will skip over that. There are always people who will blame immigrants and more when there are palpable economic ills. So far, Canadian politicians haven’t made immigration a wedge issue. But public sentiment appears to have shifted. It would be a disgrace not to act to preserve public confidence in immigration.
The policy failure itself is clear. “Immigration is excessive, full stop,” Bank of Nova Scotia vice-president and head of capital markets economics Derek Holt said in a note this week. University of Waterloo economist Mikal Skuterud called it a “runaway train.”
What happened? There is overly-easy access for business to hire in temporary foreign workers, including a stream for low-wage workers. And in recent years, Ottawa tinkered with the permanent-resident point system, making it unpredictable and encouraging people to come as temporary residents in the hope they will be able to stay – more like a lottery, Prof. Skuterud said.
A big part of the growth is foreign students, especially students going to colleges, not universities, Colleges pay recruiters commissions and collect tuitions, and many students hope that is the door to permanent residence. When they graduate, many are guaranteed a three-year work visa – so today’s foreign students become tomorrow’s temporary workers.
Controlling numbers is necessary. Ottawa can cap study permits for non-university students, allocating them to provinces. It can cap the work permits for non-university graduates and shorten their visas to two years. It can eliminate low-wage work permits. It can re-establish the predictability of the points system for permanent-resident status.
Mr. Trudeau’s government can do all those things. It should do them quickly, if it wants to preserve Canadians’ priceless support for immigration – and keep Mr. Trump’s xenophobia south of the border.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
