Photo credit: the Hill
Canadians will learn how the federal government is revising its immigration strategy in Tuesday’s budget.
CBC reports that public support for immigration is changing and Ottawa has already lowered its targets last fall.
Prime Minister Mike Carney said, “We are getting immigration under control.
“To match immigration levels with our needs and our capacity, the budget will include Canada’s new immigration plan to do better – for newcomers, for everyone.”
In 2024, the government announced the target for permanent residents this year would be cut from 500,000 to 395,000, with further reductions in subsequent years/ the government also said it was lowering the cap on international student permit by 10 per cent.
Meanwhile, a majority of Canadians have said there were too many immigrants coming to Canada for the first time since Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada started polling since 1996.
Usha George, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s faculty of community services who focuses on newcomer settlement and immigration, said, “Our housing, our transport, our health care could not meet the demands of this very large number of people who havde come in.”
The unemployment rate has been rising this year, sitting at 7.1 per cent as of September. But the picture is worse for new arrivals. For recent immigrants, the unemployment rate was 11.1 per cent last year, about double for those born in Canada.
According to Statistics Canada, immigrants are most likely to be working in a field “unrelated to their education or training than their counterparts who were born in Canada.”
Phil Triadafilopoulos, an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto said, “I think where we really went off the rails, especially after COVID, is using the economic integration system to admit people who previously, and now again, would have no hope of gaining entry.”
Rob Goehring, the founder and CEO of AI startup Wisr and the executive director of AI Networks of BC says a “strong pipeline” of international talent is important for any company in his industry that is “looking to grow and scale.”
Anne Patterson, the chief research and communications officer with the Information and Communications Technology Council says, there needs to be a shift awa from volume-based immigration toward more precision-based immigration.
There have been calls in Canada to capitalise on recent changes to US visa policy to attract specialized talent.
On top of the delays and complexity of the Canadian immigration system, lower salaries and expensive housing are structural challenges that face the Canadian tech sector’s ability to attract talent, Goehring said.
