Canada’s opinions about immigration are changing. What now?

[0:03]Canada's open door not so open anymore. We didn't get the balance quite right. The Prime Minister says post-pandemic immigration was too high, so the Feds are cutting back, leaving temporary workers and students in limbo. Everyone has a dream to get PR in Canada. It will be difficult for me, like, maybe I should back to my home country. and employers scrambling. I don't know who government thinks we're going to be hiring, and I got to tell you, it's it's going to it's going to hurt. This is a big change. The federal government plans to reduce permanent immigration into Canada by 20% in the next three years. Here's what that'll look like. Next year, the target for permanent residents will go down from 500,000 to 395,000. 380,000 in 2026 and even more than that, the next year. The rules are also tightening for students and for temporary workers. All of which we are implementing with a single aim. stabilize our population growth to give all levels of government time to catch up. If we need more doctors, if we need investment in new hospitals, cutting the number of immigrants by 100,000, even 200,000, that's not going to change the infrastructure. To understand what it could mean, I reached out to Irene Blumerad. She teaches political science and sociology at the University of British Columbia. I co-direct the center for migration studies there, I hold a chair in global migration studies, and I do migration. I do migration, migration, migration. So this is your area. So given your expertise in the area, when you saw that the Prime Minister made these reductions in the number of permanent residents over the next couple of years, what was your immediate reaction? I mean, my immediate reaction was probably something that anybody, even people without a PhD are going to think, he's not doing well in the polls. She says Canadians are souring on Justin Trudeau at the same time as they are souring on his immigration policy. A recent poll from Environics suggests the majority of Canadians now believe there is too much immigration in Canada. Check out how much that number has changed in the past two years. Environics says that's the most rapid change it's seen on the issue since it started asking the question back in 1977. So what changed? Housing is a big part of it. There aren't enough homes as it is. Add more people, and the perception is the problem will get worse. The government said reducing immigration will reduce the need for new homes by 670,000 housing units. Blumerad doesn't entirely buy it. It is complicated because we need people to build houses, to invest in the property development. We need the architects, we need the engineers. So, just saying, oh, if we get rid of all the immigrants, all our housing problems are going to be solved, is is pretty simplistic. That's why people who hire workers, especially in construction, don't like the reduction in immigration. Yeah, it was shocking. It just seems just crazy, to be honest. It's just not thought out. Jenny McKayhill is a Vancouver immigration consultant. She worries the new changes will make it difficult for her clients to hire foreign workers and that workers who are here may go home. It's going to have a massive, um, reduction in their economic output. There isn't enough Canadians to fill the jobs, despite what the unemployment figures say. If unemployment is more than 6%, why is it that you don't have the people to fill the jobs that people are coming to you about? Because the unemployment figures are just numbers on a page. 6%. What does that mean? It just it's just a number. But if you look at specific sectors, where is the need, where is the drive? Like we do not have enough construction workers in Canada. We don't have enough healthcare workers in Canada. Blumerad says the policy changes could create a new problem. People who are here with temporary status who don't qualify for the reduced number of permanent resident spots may stick around illegally. Now we have this huge number of people who come and they're in limbo. They're told, you get to be here for a little while, you can work for a little while, you can study for a little while. Maybe you can stay. And then, you know, how many are going to stay? Do we have enough spots for all of them? What the liberals are doing is uh Justin Trudeau is doing, is acknowledging that he messed up. The government's change has not silenced its critics. Trudeau's last minute pre-election reversal cannot be believed. He can't fix the immigration system that he broke. And by the time the consequences of the immigration reduction are felt, it's possible, even likely, someone else will be in charge.