Here’s what Canada’s immigration data reveals about the drop in international students and temporary foreign workers

2026/02/19 Leave a comment

Good infographic that shows the impact:

Canada saw a 53 per cent drop in admissions of new international students and temporary foreign workers last year, with more than 2.1 million migrants with valid study and work permit holders in the country, according to new data.

That number did not include the estimated 505,000 refugee claimants, protected persons and other out-of-status migrants, who resided in Canada as of December, although there were 34 per cent fewer new asylum seekers reported than a year ago. 

In total, there were about 2,660,000 temporary residents in the country, accounting for 6.4 per cent of the overall population, which was still far above the five per cent target that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has vowed to reach by the end of 2027….

Source: Here’s what Canada’s immigration data reveals about the drop in international students and temporary foreign workers

IRCC Infographic: Understanding student and temporary worker numbers in Canada

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Ottawa seeks to attract grad students from abroad 

2026/02/19 Leave a comment

Makes sense, focus on graduate students at universities to counter the general impression:

The Immigration Department is conducting a social-media campaign to attract more graduate students from abroad, including broadcasting that their family could apply to come with them.

The initiative aims to bring in more top researchers as figures published Monday show a steep drop in the number of international students who have come to Canada over the past year.

Experts say that the federal government’s crackdown on the number of international students, which started under former prime minister Justin Trudeau and coincided with plunging public support for more immigration, has made Canada a less attractive higher-education destination for foreign nationals overall.

The clampdown was not focused on international students attending top universities or graduate programs. Former immigration minister Marc Miller said the goal was to target colleges and private universities that charged high fees for low-value degrees to students who hoped to stay in Canada. But the changes appear to have had a wider deterrent effect….

Source: Ottawa seeks to attract grad students from abroad

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Asylum seekers to face brunt of IRCC cuts through co-payments of dental and prescription coverage: analysis

2026/02/19 Leave a comment

Of course, the large increase in asylum claimants is reflected in these numbers. Prescription co-payments are relatively small ($4) and it was increasingly untenable to provide asylum claimants better health care coverage that Canadians without an employer health coverage plan. And coverage of medical care at hospitals and by physicians is still covered:

“Almost half of the spending reduction in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will come from a single cut to the health coverage of asylum seekers, according to a new analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.”

“In the 2025 budget, the federal government announced that about a quarter of a billion dollars, or $231.9 million, will be cut from the health-care coverage of refugees in the 2027-28 fiscal year with what the government calls a “modest co-payment model” of 30 per cent.

All other cuts from IRCC in 2027-28 are estimated at around $315 million, according to the analysis.

Currently, most refugees are covered under the government’s Interim Federal Health Program, which provides the cost of most medical care until individuals are eligible for provincial or territorial insurance.

However, the federal government will continue to provide full coverage for emergency room visits and visits to a physician.

Dental and prescription co-payments for asylum seekers will begin on May 1 this year.

David Macdonald, author of the analysis and economist at the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, pointed out that costs could rise for the federal government, especially as low-income asylum seekers eschew costly preventative care leading to more emergency room visits.

““Asylum seekers come to Canada with little to nothing, since they’re escaping dangerous conditions. Most won’t be able to pay the extra costs and will simply avoid dental care and filling prescriptions — until an emergency rises,” Macdonald wrote.

Those individuals could “end up in Canada’s emergency rooms, which will also be paid by IRCC, but at 100 per cent of the cost, even though prevention is preferable and less expensive than the emergency room.”” …

Source: “Asylum seekers to face brunt of IRCC cuts through co-payments of dental and prescription coverage: analysis”

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The people who want the temporary migrants to stay permanently

2026/02/19 Leave a comment

The National Post listing organizations opposed to government cuts and supporting regularization for all:

With a record two million temporary migrants set to lose their status in the coming months, a union-championed campaign is emerging to demand that all of them be allowed to stay permanently in Canada.

This week, a new group calling itself the United Immigrant Workers Front announced plans to hold its inaugural rally in Brampton, Ont.

In a Monday video posted to Instagram, group organizers cited the pending expiration of two million visas, and expressed their belief that all should have their permits extended and be given a “path to permanent residency.”

This follows on a wave of demonstrations in Quebec similarly calling for migrants on expiring visas to be kept in the country.

The Quebec government is phasing out its Programme de l’expérience Québécoise, a program which previously fast-tracked international students and foreign workers into permanent residency. It’s being replaced by a much more selective skills-based nominee program.

With many thousands of temporary workers set to lose their legal status as a result of the change, the Union of Quebec Municipalities, along with several businesses and labour unions, is leading a pressure campaign to allow those migrants to “continue their lives here.”

All the while, many of Canada’s largest unions and labour organizations have been publishing literature demanding that Canada’s millions of temporary migrants be allowed to stay.

In late 2024, only a few weeks after Ottawa first signalled its intention to slash temporary migration rates, the Canadian Labour Congress issued a communique entitled “migrant workers in Canada deserve access to permanent residency and citizenship.”

Canada currently has more temporary migrants in the country than at almost any other point in its history, and the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney has been explicit in its goal to bring that figure down.

At the beginning of 2022, Statistics Canada tracked 1.4 million foreign nationals living in Canada as “non-permanent residents.”

This would surge to an October 2024 high of 3.2 million, with temporary residents representing 7.5 per cent of the total Canadian population.

The spike had been enabled by the federal government dropping quotas and restrictions on everything from foreign student visas to Temporary Foreign Worker admissions.

And as of Statistics Canada’s last count, the number of temporary migrants in the country still stands at 2.8 million; higher than at any other point prior to 2024.

This means that roughly one in every 15 people in Canada is here as a non-permanent resident. Just 10 years ago, the figure was closer to one in every 50.

While the Liberals once officially denied that skyrocketing temporary immigration was having negative impacts on civic society, the federal government and Carney himself have now stated that the surge overwhelmed real estate prices, health-care delivery and other public services. In a November speech in Toronto, Carney said that the surge in temporary migration “far exceeded our ability to welcome people and make sure that they had good housing and services.”

The 2025 federal budget similarly said that “unsustainable” immigration had “put pressures on housing demand” and crowded younger Canadians out of the job market. “Managed immigration growth is now helping to stabilise labour-market conditions and is expected to support better outcomes for youth,” it read. The Carney government’s official plan is to curb temporary migration to the point that non-permanent residents represent only five per cent of the total Canadian population; about two million total.

Some of that will indeed be in the form of temporary migrants being fast-tracked into permanent residency, but Ottawa has acknowledged that other visa-holders will be expected to leave “voluntarily.”

One potential problem with this strategy is that Canada is extremely limited in its ability to remove temporary migrants who refuse to leave voluntarily.

Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada has no official tally on when temporary migrants actually leave the country, and the Canada Border Services Agency only has the capacity to remove a limited number of people who overstay their visas.

Last year, CBSA had one of the most active years in its history. Their total removals came to about 22,000, with another 40,000 “inadmissible” people refused entry.

Source: The people who want the temporary migrants to stay permanently

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Robson: Canada has a youth extremism problem it can’t continue to ignore

2026/02/18 2 Comments

Not sure how practical or implementable it is, and existing prevention programs have a mixed record, but focus on behaviours, rather than beliefs is appropriate:

….A practical National Polarization Metrics model

Canada does not need a new bureaucracy. It needs a light-touch doctrine that makes prevention routine. A “National Polarization Metrics” model would use behavioural indicators that are measurable and non-partisan, focusing on coercive targeting and intimidation rather than beliefs: repeated harassment aimed at identifiable groups; doxxing and coordinated pile-ons; credible threats; and violence-normalizing signalling that changes what peers believe is acceptable.

That doctrine should assign accountable ownership. Every campus and school board needs an escalation lead with a clear mandate to consistently log incidents, coordinate support and safety planning, quickly preserve evidence, and trigger referrals when thresholds are met.

Far from weakening civil liberties, this reduces arbitrary decision-making and makes outcomes less dependent on institutional mood.

It also requires routable handoffs. Educational settings should have a consistent pathway for when matters stay at the level of documentation and support, when they require municipal policing involvement, and when patterns suggest coordination or mobilization indicators that justify a threat-assessment channel. Canada’s National Strategy on Countering Radicalization to Violence frames early intervention as a national priority, but it leaves Canada without a single escalation ladder that is understood—end-to-end—across education systems, municipal police, and federal threat assessment.

Finally, evidence preservation must become doctrine. A standardized 24-72-hour capture-and-preserve practice—time-stamped collection, secure storage, minimal access logging, and a consistent referral format—would strengthen downstream deterrence without criminalizing student life….

Prevention must become doctrine, not late reaction

A pluralist society can withstand disagreement. What it cannot withstand is normalized intimidation combined with institutional paralysis—especially when digital ecosystems accelerate conflict faster than administrators, police, or courts can react. If Canada wants to confront its fault lines before they deepen, it must stop treating youth extremism as cultural weather and start treating it as a measurable pathway.

That means building the missing bridge: shared indicators, accountable ownership, rapid evidence preservation, and standardized handoffs. Not to stigmatize communities, and not to criminalize student life—but to ensure coercion and violence-normalizing signalling do not become the price of campus politics, or the prelude to community harm.

Daniel Robson is a Canadian independent journalist specializing in digital extremism, national security, and counterterrorism. 

Source: Canada has a youth extremism problem it can’t continue to ignore

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Immigration Minister defends proposed changes to asylum rules through border bill

2026/02/18 Leave a comment

Of note. Hard for refugee advocates to admit need for limits or the extent of misrepresentation:

…Canada has seen an increase in asylum claims from international students, who have been the target of immigration restrictions, in the last few years. Over the past year, 17 per cent of asylum claims came from students, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. 

Ms. Metlege Diab answered questions about the asylum implications of Bill C-12 along with Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree on Feb. 9 at the Senate’s national-security committee.

On Thursday, she was questioned by senators on the social affairs committee, which is also studying the bill. 

Senators also heard unease expressed from a range of witnesses, including the UN Refugee Agency.

One of the concerns is that the proposed one-year cutoff for asylum hearings would be measured from the first time someone entered Canada. The bill specifies that the one-year period “begins on the day after the day of their first entry.”

Refugee advocacy groups warned senators this could mean that someone who came here on holiday as a child with their parents would be barred from a refugee hearing decades later.

They also hit back at suggestions that foreign nationals claiming asylum, including international students who had been here for more than a year, were more likely to lodge fraudulent claims. 

Gauri Sreenivasan, co-executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, a non-profit advocacy organization for refugee and immigrant rights, was among those who addressed the Senate committee. 

“Suggestions before committees that certain claimants are likely to be fraudulent because they are students or because they have been here more than a year are as unfounded as they are offensive,” Ms. Sreenivasan told senators.

“These blunt measures disproportionately harm the most vulnerable: women fleeing violence, LGBTQIA+ individuals, minors, those with mental health challenges or people from unstable regions.”…

Source: Immigration Minister defends proposed changes to asylum rules through border bill

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Youssif: Canada has a hidden asylum-policy problem

2026/02/18 Leave a comment

Another example of a broken system?

…As I document in a new study for the C.D. Howe Institute, this policy is problematic. Not all asylum claims are truthful, and documents may be forged. But this is impossible to detect without asking questions. The asylum hearing also serves as a screen for national security and program integrity risk, and must be halted if red flags emerge during questioning to allow the relevant minister to be notified. That mechanism cannot be engaged if claimants are never questioned.

More broadly, the IRB’s recognition rate for asylum claims has climbed to 80 per cent of claims decided on their merits, excluding files summarily closed where the claim was withdrawn or abandoned. In comparison, in 2024 Ireland accepted 30 per cent of claims on the merits, Sweden 40 per cent, and Germany 59 per cent. Research suggests that acceptance rates are a significant factor in asylum seekers’ choice of a destination country.

It is difficult to isolate the effect of any single policy change on the level of new claims, given multiple factors such as rising global migration pressures and changes to temporary immigration policies. That said, it is worth noting that the number of new asylum claims in Canada has increased since the IRB began rapidly accepting claims. A backlog of 17,000 claims in 2016 has grown to nearly 300,000 in 2025. Policies such as File Review, intended to reduce the backlog, have not only failed to do so, but may have reinforced perceptions of speed, success, and reduced scrutiny, signalling to the world that Canada’s asylum system is easy.

How was it possible for an adjudicative tribunal to implement a policy that dispenses with the act of adjudication?

Perhaps part of the answer is that the institution cannot be seen clearly. Its unique status and structure have rendered it opaque to the rest of government, which otherwise might have corrected an overreach. It may be time to rethink this model and consider options that provide ministers and cabinet with direct visibility and policy oversight, while preserving fair and independent adjudication.

James Yousif is a lawyer, former director of policy at IRCC and former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB).

Source: Canada has a hidden asylum-policy problem

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André Pratte: Quebec’s slow disappearance from federal politics

2026/02/18 Leave a comment

ICYMI:

…Demographics is not the only reason Quebec’s influence in Canada is and will be diminishing, unless the province’s politics undergo a substantive change. Quebecers have not voted to separate from Canada in a referendum, but they have separated in some of their attitudes. In the Trump era, belonging to Canada may matter as a shield against the American president’s nonsensical threats. But otherwise, “les Québécois” appear less interested in our nation’s evolution than ever in my lifetime.

Quebec political leaders invest little time in engaging with their counterparts in Ottawa and in provincial capitals, except when specific files require it. The result is that very few politicians across the country have a deep understanding of Quebec’s part in Canada’s diversity. Additionally, recruiting highly qualified French-speaking Quebecers to work in the federal government is a challenge often lamented in Ottawa.

Justin Trudeau appointed a Governor General who does not speak French, a choice that, in earlier decades, would have been criticized not only in Quebec. There is pressure, for instance from the Alberta Premier, to appoint Supreme Court justices who cannot speak one of our country’s two official languages (guess which language it is?). Because of this lack of leadership at the national level, and as a result of French Canada’s relative decline, fewer Canadians value official bilingualism as a plus for our nation. A 2024 Léger poll showed that bilingualism was seen as positive by 70 per cent of Quebecers but only 35 per cent of Canadians outside Quebec. The Prime Minister’s rosy reimagining of Canadian history has no effect on today’s worrisome reality.

The demographic trends at play in Quebec will not only diminish its political weight. Population stagnation and aging threaten the province’s economic growth and fiscal situation. According to the economists at Desjardins, “the sustainability of Quebec’s welfare state model could be challenged.” Quebec’s leaders and population will face serious challenges in the coming years; their contribution to the federation will be the least of their concerns.

Quebecers’ votes played a crucial part in Mark Carney’s election win last year. But such scenarios, where Quebec has a significant impact on the shape of Canada’s federal government, will become fewer and far between. Because of high immigration levels outside Quebec, Canada is changing fast; in 2050, it will comprise close to 49 million people, many of them recent immigrants with no knowledge of French and understandably little attachment to the country’s bilingual status.

Source: André Pratte: Quebec’s slow disappearance from federal politics

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Black and Griffith: Visible minority women are still sidelined in competitive ridings

2026/02/18 2 Comments

Our latest. Conclusion:

…In other words, party candidate selection incorporates affinity effects that give preference to visible minority candidates for all major parties in these ridings. Given this, it is less surprising that studies of election outcomes indicate that affinity effects are less important than “candidate competitiveness, Canada’s first past the post electoral system, and local context,” Elections Canada says, because those effects are effectively baked in at the candidate nomination stage.

This indicates positive discrimination for visible minority candidates in these ridings and the possible converse in ridings with lower numbers of visible minorities, largely rural ridings.

While one can make the crude case that nominating more visible minority women candidates would allow federal political parties to tick off two diversity boxes at once, the evidence indicates that this is not the case: women visible minority candidates do indeed have a higher percentage chance of being sacrificial lambs. This suggests they do experience biases in the political process across two fronts, as both women and visible minorities.

To encourage improved representation, the political parties should adopt a transparency approach similar to Senate Bill S-283 would require each party to provide annual information on the policies and programs they have enacted to increase the representation of designated groups (women, visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities).

This could be accomplished by the chief electoral officer administering a voluntary self-identification questionnaire to nominated candidates, thus allowing for post-election reporting on candidate and MP diversity.

Canada’s federal political parties may resist this transparency-based approach, but its use in federally regulated industries and the public service for close to 30 years has proven effective.

Source: Visible minority women are still sidelined in competitive ridings

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French: Whatever This Is, It Isn’t Anti-Zionism

2026/02/17 2 Comments

Good commentary:

…I unequivocally support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, but I have also written repeatedly and critically about Israel’s tactics in its war on Gaza, which I believe have prolonged the conflict and created extraordinary and unnecessary human suffering.

Jewish lives aren’t more precious than Palestinian lives, and any form of advocacy for Israel that treats Palestinians as any less deserving of safety and security than Israelis isn’t just un-Christian; it’s anti-Christian. It directly contradicts the teachings of Scripture, which place Jews and Gentiles in a position of equality.

Second, internal Christian debates about whether the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy — as interesting as they can be — should be irrelevant to American foreign policy, which should be based both on American interests and American commitments to international justice and human rights.

But historic Christian antisemitism is rooted in a historic Christian argument, and it requires a specifically Christian argument in response.

Put in its most simple form, Christian antisemitism is rooted in two propositions — that Jews bear the guilt for Christ’s death (“Jews killed Jesus”), and that when the majority of Jews rejected Jesus (who was a Jew, as were all his early apostles), that God replaced his covenant with the children of Abraham with a new covenant with Christians. This idea of a new covenant that excludes the Jewish people is called “supersessionism” or “replacement theology.”

Put the two concepts together — “Jews killed Jesus” and “Christians are the chosen people now” — and you’ve got the recipe for more than 2,000 years of brutal, religiously motivated oppression.

Boller is a recent convert to Catholicism, and she — like Candace Owens — wields her newfound faith like a sword. But perhaps they both need to spend a little more time learning and a lot less time talking.

First, let’s put to rest the indefensible idea that “the Jews” killed Christ. As the Second Vatican Council taught, “The Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”

This isn’t a statement of high theological principle as much as basic common sense. Convicting an entire people, for all time, of the crimes of a few religious leaders is a moral monstrosity that runs counter to every tenet of Christian justice.

Second, Boller’s own church teaches that there is a deep bond between Christians and Jews. Last year, Robert P. George, a noted Catholic political philosopher at Princeton, wrote a powerful essayin Sapir, a Jewish journal of ideas, in which he described the relationship between the Jewish people and the Catholic Church as an “unbreakable covenant.”

As George writes, Pope Benedict XVI explicitly rejected the idea that the Jewish people “ceased to be the bearer of the promises of God.” Pope John Paul II said that the Catholic Church has “a relationship” with Judaism “which we do not have with any other religion.” He also said that Judaism is “intrinsic” and not “extrinsic” to Christianity, and that Jews were Christians’ “elder brothers” in the faith.

Indeed, paragraph 121 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.”

I don’t believe for a moment that the Catholic view is the only expression of Christian orthodoxy. I know quite a few Protestant and Catholic supersessionists who are not antisemitic, but I highlight the words of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI because they starkly demonstrate the incompatibility of antisemitism with Christian orthodoxy.

But one doesn’t have to agree with Catholic teaching (or its Protestant analogues) to be fairly called a Zionist — a Christian Zionist, even — because one believes in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

The reason is rooted in Scripture’s commitment to equal dignity for all people, regardless of ethnicity, class or sex. As an extension of that commitment, no group of people should be subjected to abuse or persecution — much less genocide.

In this formulation, a so-called Christian Zionist would also likely be a Christian Kurdist (not a phrase you hear every day) or have a Christian commitment to Palestinian statehood. Kurds and Palestinians have also been historically oppressed, denied a home and deprived of the right to defend themselves.

In those circumstances, statehood isn’t a matter of fulfilling prophecies; it’s about safety and security. It’s about self-determination and the preservation of basic human rights. And if you think that can be done without supporting statehood, then I’d challenge you to consider the long and terrible historical record.

A consistent Christian Zionist would oppose both the heinous massacre of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023, and the aggressive, violent expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He would stand resolutely against Iranian efforts to exterminate the Jewish state and against any Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Embracing the idea that the modern state of Israel is a direct fulfillment of biblical prophecies and therefore must be supported by the United States for theological reasons can lead us to dangerous places — to a belief, in essence, in permanent Israeli righteousness, no matter the nation’s conduct and no matter the character of its government.

But the opposite idea — that Christians have replaced the Jews in the eyes of God, and there is no longer any special purpose for Jews in God’s plan — has its own profound dangers. It creates a sense of righteousness in religious persecution, and it has caused untold suffering throughout human history.

The better Christian view rejects both dangerous extremes, recognizes the incalculable dignity and worth of every human being, and is Zionist in the sense that it believes that one of history’s most persecuted groups deserves a national home.

And since Christians have persecuted Jews so viciously in the past (and some still do today), we have a special responsibility to make amends, to repair the damage that the church has done. That begins by turning to the new Christian antisemites and shouting “No!” Ancient hatreds born from ancient heresies have no place in the church today.

Source: Whatever This Is, It Isn’t Anti-Zionism

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