Jamie Sarkonak: P.E.I.’s Dennis King was the only premier with the guts to tackle immigration

Parallels with the federal reversals:

…Once a province with a stable population, P.E.I.’s growth has reached a crescendo in recent years. From 2000 to 2010, total residents ranged from 136,000 to roughly 140,000. From 2010 to 2020, that figure rose to 159,000. Since 2020, it reached a whopping 179,000.

In other words, it once took a whole decade for the province to gain 4,000 people. Now, it takes five years to gain 20,000 people.

The consequences? Crowding in virtually every system. Housing is stretched to its limit, with vacancy rates in the province ranging from two to 0.1 per cent, depending on the quarter, in 2023 and 2024 (for comparison, 2012 vacancy rates hovered at about five per cent).

Health care, meanwhile, hasn’t fared much better. One-fifth of Islanders were without a doctor in 2024 and wait times are long. While P.E.I. has attempted to tackle backlogs by all sorts of means — it’s worked with the telehealth platform Maple to increase access to primary care, for example — capacity remains slim. In 2023, the province’s health minister pinned much of the blame on impossible-to-keep-up-with population growth.

While most immigration is within the federal government’s sphere of control, the provinces can alter the number of immigrants coming in through the provincial nominee program (subject to federal limits), and this is where King found an opportunity to make cuts.

He would have known that outrage would follow when he announced the cuts — and indeed, it did. A loud contingent of foreign workers and students, who believed the provincial nominee program was their ticket to permanent Canadian residency, organized a protest that lasted for months.

They marched and chanted. They set up encampments. They held on-and-off hunger strikes. They spoke to the legislature. They found support among pro-immigration non-profits and in the media — CBC’s coverage naturally focused on the plight of the protesters and the loyalty of their allies rather than their critics, creating an illusion of popularity (online forums, like Reddit, generally featured far more contempt for the protesters than sympathy)….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: P.E.I.’s Dennis King was the only premier with the guts to tackle immigration