‘Reckless and naive’: Trudeau’s immigration policy works for no one, says former Alberta premier Jason Kenney

Is there any denying that Justin Trudeau’s arms-wide-open approach to inviting immigrants, refugees, foreign students and foreign workers into Canada is a radical departure, a shock change from past practice?To grasp the enormity of the shift, let’s look at the previous three prime ministers — Liberals Jean Chretien and Paul Martin and Conservative Stephen Harper — and compare where they ended up on immigration intake numbers in their final years in power to what Trudeau did in 2023, the last year we have full statistics.

In 2003, Chretien’s final year in power, Canada allowed 469,000 newcomers in total. This was made up of 164,000 study permit holders, 32,000 refugee claimants, 34,000 foreign workers and 239,000 immigrants, according to data from Statistics Canada.

In total, Martin let in 488,000 people in 2005, Harper 678,000 in 2014.

Trudeau in 2023? He let in 1.84 million.

If we dig one layer deeper we see that in their final years in office, Chretien, Martin and Harper allowed a one-year average of 222,000 study permit holders, 22,000 refugee claimants, 57,000 temporary foreign workers, and 245,000 immigrants. That’s an average total of 545,000 per year.

In 2023, Trudeau allowed 1,041,000 study permit holders, a 370 per cent increase over the one-year average of the other PMs this century, 144,000 refugee claimants, a 563 per cent increase, 184,00 temporary foreign workers, a 222 per cent increase, and 472,000 immigrants, a 92.7 per cent increase.

Again, Trudeau’s total added up to 1.84 million, a 238 per cent increase over the average of Chretien, Martin and Harper.

This astronomical increase happened in a country where there’s a crisis around people finding housing, where inflation has shot up for food and other essentials, where many young people are struggling to find employment, and where hospitals and schools strain to meet needs.