Speer: Justin Trudeau critiques Justin Trudeau’s immigration policies

More on the PM’s non-mea culpa:

The strangest story this week was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s acknowledgement that his government has overseen an uncontrolled increase of temporary immigration into the country “far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.” 

It’s an extraordinary admission for various reasons including the seeming detachment from his government’s ultimate responsibility for the massive spike in non-permanent residents. His comments sounded like those of an incoming prime minister condemning the policy failures of his or her predecessor. 

Yet these developments are neither inadvertent nor the fault of a past government. A combination of the Trudeau government’s untightening of its predecessor’s 2014 reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker program and its own expansion of the international student visas are what’s ultimately behind the 93 percent increase in non-permanent residents since 2021 alone. 

Another way to put it is: Canada’s population grew faster in 2023 than any year since 1957 and of that year-over-year growth, 63 percent came from non-permanent residents. It was the second consecutive year in which temporary immigration has driven the country’s population growth. These are unprecedented numbers.  

Their demand-side implications for housing and shelter and other basic infrastructure had up until recently gone essentially unrecognized by the Trudeau government. It has now only recently started to shift its messaging and policies in light of growing public concerns and plummeting poll numbers. 

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has described the spike in temporary resident permits as a “byproduct of a lack of integrity in the system.” He recently announced plans to cut them in order to restore a more “sustainable level.” Prime Minister Trudeau’s uncharacteristically pointed comments this week must be understood in this evolving political context in which his government is effectively running against itself.  

There’s a strong case however that the prime minister shouldn’t have been surprised by the rise of temporary immigration or its negative effects. He actually forewarned about them as the then-third-party leader in a prescient Toronto Star op-ed ten years ago next month.

Trudeau called the (relatively moderate) growth of temporary residents under the Harper government a case of “mismanagement” that represented “serious damage” to the public’s ongoing support for high levels of permanent immigration. 

In particular, he warned that temporary immigration depresses wages and displaces Canadian workers. He effectively argued for eliminating the Temporary Foreign Workers program altogether (“I believe it is wrong for Canada to follow the path of countries who exploit large number of guest workers”) and instead putting a priority on permanent immigrants who have a path to citizenship. He argued that this approach was rooted in the principle of fairness for Canadians who need work and temporary immigrants themselves. 

It seems somewhat unfair to hold his near-decade-old arguments against him today. Opposition politicians understandably tend to get a bit of leeway for such policy adjustments. A lot has also happened in the intervening time. 

But the difference here is that the prime minister knew what would happen if we continued to steadily increase temporary immigrants. We know because he persuasively wrote about it. Trudeau anticipated the political economy risks and yet upon getting elected he opted to do nothing about it—or more precisely rather than “dramatically scale back” the country’s temporary resident population, he inexplicably chose to dramatically scale it up. 

If the Trudeau government loses the next federal election, which at the moment seems quite likely, it may be in large part because when it came to temporary immigration, the prime minister failed to heed his own well-considered advice. 

Source: Justin Trudeau critiques Justin Trudeau’s immigration policies