Saunders: Canada wants to be ambitious. That means getting immigration going again

Interesting emerging consensus and differences between Saunders, RBC and C.D. Howe Institute regarding permanent and temporary residents: with Saunders admitting to the excesses of past years but not going as far as aiming for about a one percent growth rate of permanent residents but implying a shift in balance to permanent residents compared to temporary and implicitly more TR2PR pathways. Would be helpful if his arguments were more specific with respect to numbers and it was the overall increase in numbers, particularly temporary, and their impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure that undermined support for immigration:

…That can be achieved with a few small changes. As experts have recommended, the Express Entry system needs a category for people in secondary-school-only skilled trades, to account for 10 to 20 per cent of permanent immigrants. The points system needs to weigh more heavily toward foreign trade experience and non-degree credentials. Provinces should have authority over these less-skilled PR categories, to meet their specific economic needs. And permanent residence should be granted soon after arrival, not after years of ambiguous residence.

Removing the incentive to rely on temporary immigrants means raising the processing speed to a few months at most. This isn’t helped by the current reduction of 1,440 jobs in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Shifting the temporary-permanent balance will require more staff, although AI and other technologies can help.

It was long-term temporary status, not immigration itself, that put the system in crisis – a majority of our newcomers for two decades weren’t becoming Canadians. To avoid a repeat, we must adjust the system to make permanent family immigration the norm.

Source: Saunders: Canada wants to be ambitious. That means getting immigration going again