Photo credit: CBC
Migrants, refugees and their supporters marched through Toronto’s west end Sunday – the eve of Parliament resuming – calling on the Canadian government to provide permanent residency status for all, stop deportations and end exploitation.
CBC reports that Migrant Workers’ Alliance for Change coordinator Sarom Rho says migrants are being blamed for a crisis they didn’t create.
“Everywhere around in Canada, working people are struggling. Rents are high, there’s an affordability crisis, tariffs are rising, and yet migrants are the ones being blamed,” she told CBC Toronto Sunday. “This is simply not true.”
Instead, Rho says migrants are caring for Canadian society.
The Toronto rally, which started at Christie Pits Park at 2pm and made its way to Dufferin Grove Park, was one of 11 such marches taking place across Canada this weekend.
Approximately 600 people attended the event, Toronto police told CBC Toronto.
The march comes nearly a year after the Liberals introduced Bill C-12, which partially seeks to tighten the immigration and refugee system, and more than two years after the federal government implemented an international student cap.
Ontario alone was set to lose more than a third of its international student population this year, according to preliminary estimates from Statistics Canada.
CBC News reached out to the federal government for comment.
In 2024, the government released an immigration plan to reduce permanent resident targets, “resulting in a pause in population growth in the short term to achieve well-managed, sustainable growth and economic prosperity for the long term.”
“We are getting immigration under control,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told students at the University of Ottawa last October. “To match immigration levels with our needs and capacity, the budget will include Canada’s new immigration plan to do better- for newcomers, for everyone.”
Canada Research Chair in Canada Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism Ethel Tungohan, who is also an associate professor of politics at York University, says tightened immigration measures have increased xenophobia and racism across the country.
“What’s happening right now is absolutely galling,” she told CBC Toronto Sunday. “Despite Canada’s image as being an inclusive, liberal, welcoming country for immigrants, the fact is that Canadian history is replete with examples of the exclusion of racialized groups of immigrants.”
