‘We didn’t turn the taps down fast enough’: Immigration minister wants to save Canada’s consensus on newcomers

2025/01/02 Leave a comment

Yet another intv with immigration minister Miller, charged with correction the missteps of the government and his predecessors:

This year brought one of the most significant policy reversals in the Liberal government’s nine years in power: drastically cutting the number of immigrants entering Canada over the next three years.

The dramatic reduction followed months of warnings from economists, corporate banks and even the government’s own officials that Canada’s population growth was outpacing the availability of services and housing, driving up costs.

It marked a pivotal political moment for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who came to power in 2015 on a pro-immigration message. By this fall, Trudeau admitted they “didn’t get the balance quite right,” particularly coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller sat down with National Post to discuss the government’s recent immigration changes.

National Post: You’re the fifth immigration minister for this government, but you’re the one who came in and had to reduce immigration levels. How does that feel?

Immigration Minister Marc Miller: Off the cuff, I think it was the right thing to do. I think it was an important thing to do for a number of things, just because of the need to make sure that we’re being responsible, to put the flow of people into the country and properly giving Canadians a snapshot of what population growth looks like in the context of a government that has been very bullish on immigration. I think rightly so. And I won’t pretend that we’ve gotten everything right, certainly haven’t in some respects, but we have gotten a lot right. Avoiding recessions has been important.

The prime minister put me in this position less than a year-and-a-half ago knowing that there needed to be some change and so gave me enough of a landing strip to be able to land a big bunch of policy planes and trusted me to do that. And so that is something that didn’t come out the head of one person. We were conscious as a government that there were some adjustments that needed to be made, but in a thoughtful way.

We do have, unfortunately, the tendency of confusing consensus with unanimity, we will not ever have unanimity on immigration. There are people that don’t want immigrants. There are people that want more than we can accommodate, but there is a consensus that’s been built. I think it’s one that is under some threat, if it hasn’t completely crashed in some other countries, but we have a unique moment in Canadian politics to get this right.

National Post: When did you realize you had to reduce permanent residents and what kind of sell was that to cabinet, maybe even the prime minister, caucus colleagues?

Miller: The levels plan are several months in the planning and it isn’t the result of one poll or one in-depth survey.

I truly wanted options this year that I could put in front of cabinet members where we could have a healthy discussion about where we wanted to see this country in the next three years, and what signal that sent to Canadians in the context of an election year. There will be no other levels plan, barring some extraordinary measure before the next election.

It’s very easy when you’re constantly increasing the numbers, to spread a little bit here and spread a little bit there. It’s a radically different intellectual and emotional exercise to say, ‘OK, well, we’ve got to cut 20 per cent, where you do care about immigration, where do you want to see this going?’ And it makes for some really difficult choices.

It is probably in my experience in cabinet, one of the cabinet items that is the most hotly debated with a variety of views that don’t always come to one mind. But I think on this one, there was broad consensus because of what people were hearing at the doors, I think what economists were signalling, what provinces and territories were telling us.

National Post: Did you have any colleagues saying ‘we can’t do 20 per cent?’

Miller: I’m not going to betray the trust that they put in me, but, you know, we have different views in our caucus and Canadians do as well.

Some people have huge hearts and want more refugees and humanitarian folks coming from the countries that are war torn. Certainly there’s an argument for that. Lots of people across Canada that want to bring the family members in, increasingly so with the number of first generation immigrants.

And then, you know, from the chambers of commerce, that want an unlimited supply of economic migrants, some temporary, some permanent.

There are different economic impacts: one, the initial investment into a refugee or an asylum seeker that pays off, perhaps only in the next generation or years later in someone’s career, if you look at it purely from an economic perspective and someone that comes in with a high set of skills and hits the ground running and integrates into society almost immediately.

National Post: Why should Canadians trust the Liberals to handle immigration when you and the prime minister have admitted you didn’t adjust as quickly as you could have?

Miller: It’s a fair question. I think we owe it to Canadians, first and foremost, to be honest with them and not double down when we get something wrong or not get it as right as we should have.

Let’s not underplay the good that’s happened with immigration. It is significant, and I think it has helped us get out of a perfect storm that we faced coming out of COVID.

We did, going into the COVID, particularly in my province (Quebec), have labour shortages (that) magnified coming out of COVID, so we scrambled pretty quickly to fill that and I think we did it successfully. What I would say, probably, is we didn’t turn the taps down fast enough and when it comes to international students, probably should have acted early.

I think we are being honest with Canadians. We’re being responsible in taking the shift, which is an important one, but not being cavalier in overcorrecting, which in these political situations is always a risk to simply please one group or another.

National Post: Was part of the reason you didn’t move fast enough was emotions people in cabinet have towards immigration and the role immigration has played to the Liberal brand?

Miller: I’m not too worried about our brand. It isn’t something I focus on too much when making policy.

I think there are legitimate questions about the impact of slowing down volume, the impact on the economy of having even a marginal population decline. When it comes to temporary residents, in my mind, I believe we probably trusted the provinces and the (post-secondary) institutions that they should be regulating better for too long.

National Post: Do you think that the time it took and some of the mistake made is contributing to the asks that are now coming from the incoming U.S. administration when it comes to immigration?

Miller: Not to downplay the asks, because I think we do have to take any actions or signals that the incoming administration is sending to us, I think we do have to take them seriously.

I think it’s the results of a toxic debate around immigration in the U.S., that is the result of how their southern border, the border with Mexico, is perceived and not with Canada.

There are some measures that I took coming into power … to put a little more discipline into the visa program, including the Mexican visa, actually putting the hammer down in May on Indian visas and visas from Bangladesh, so much so that our November numbers for transporter traffic is at a yearly low. That needs to continue.

National Post: Do you think you waited too long on the (Mexican) visa requirement because it had been an issue throughout 2023 and it wasn’t until February they were reinstated?

Miller: I won’t speculate specifically on that for a number of reasons, because there’s a lot of operational considerations that we take into account when making one of these decisions. They’re not taken lightly, particularly when we’re dealing with one of our larger trading partners in Mexico.

National Post: Are you considering any changes to the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement?

Miller: That is a discussion that is going to be had with the U.S. because it’s a two-way street. if we can always perfect the way the border is managed, I’m totally open to it. But amendments to the Safe Third Country Agreement at times requires a passage through Congress. It’s a long process that is a product of the U.S. machine.

On balance, it’s an agreement that has served us well. What I am considering is changes to the asylum system that could potentially address the way the … agreement gets gamed by people trying to come to Canada.

National Post: Why should there be an ability for someone to make an asylum claim if they didn’t come through an official port of entry?

Miller: People could be trying to save their own lives, and in any story of a refugee, you’ll find people that will commit technical breaches of the law in order to save their own lives.

I think it’s unfair to sort of paint them constantly, as quote unquote “illegals.” But there is a way to get into this country. It needs to be managed properly and it needs to be done in a way that’s fair and humane to folks.

Source: ‘We didn’t turn the taps down fast enough’: Immigration minister wants to save Canada’s consensus on newcomers

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Canada tightens immigration point system to curb fraud tied to job selling

2024/12/19 Leave a comment

Further tightening:

Temporary foreign workers who apply to become permanent residents through Canada’s immigration system will no longer get additional points if they have a job offer that’s supported by a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), Immigration minister Marc Miller said Tuesday.

The move will reduce fraudulent activities in Canada’s Express Entry System, which is an online platform that manages Canada’s skilled immigration programs, the minister said at a press conference.

“We are implementing further measures that will reinforce program integrity and reduce potential LMIA fraud, such as removing additional points that candidates receive under Express Entry for having a job offer,” he said. “This measure is expected to remove the incentive for candidates to purchase an LMIA resulting in increased fairness and integrity in the system.”

The latest move seems to be a continuation of the steps taken by the federal government to reduce the number of newcomers entering the country amidst rising unemployment and a housing crisis. The move was announced on the same day that Statistics Canada reported the country’s slowest quarterly population growth estimate since the first quarter of 2022.

Employers can use Canada’s temporary foreign worker program to hire foreign workers, but they often need to prove that they aren’t able to find a worker for that specific position in Canada. In order to do that, they must receive a federal government document called the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA).

About 71,300 LMIAs were approved by the government in the first quarter of this year, compared to 63,300 during the same period last year. Most applications were for farm workers, cooks, food-counter attendants, truck drivers and construction labourers.

Some groups, however, illegally sell LMIA-approved jobs at extremely high rates to foreigners who are either outside the country or are already in Canada and are looking for ways to boost their immigration score in order to transition from temporary to permanent resident status…

Source: Canada tightens immigration point system to curb fraud tied to job selling

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Minister Marc Miller under fire over controversial immigration levels plan for Canada

2024/11/27 Leave a comment

Good account of the discussion. But don’t agree that the plan is controversial for most Canadians apart from the various immigration interest groups:

Appearing before the House of Commons immigration committee on Monday to pitch the controversial plan, Miller was under fire from the right for the lack of details on how to ensure temporary residents with expiring status will voluntarily leave Canada and from the left for scapegoating migrants for the country’s affordability and housing crisis. 

“You’re not giving me much confidence or Canadians confidence that you have a plan,” said Tom Kmiec, immigration critic for the opposition Conservatives, who repeatedly questioned Miller how his department is going to ensure people do leave when their time is up.

“You haven’t provided any information on the means. How are you going to do it? You say you have partner organizations. You’re working with people. What are you actually doing? What’s the process? How are you going to ensure people abide by the visa conditions?”

In response, Miller said there are many ways that people leave the country and the majority of people do. And if they don’t, he added, border agents will investigate and remove them from Canada.

He admitted an increasing number of study and work permit holders have sought asylum in the country to extend their stay, but people are entitled to due process and be assessed if they have a legitimate need to seek protection.

When pushed by the Bloc Québécois how the federal government was going to respond to an anticipated surge of irregular migration from the U.S. under the incoming Trump administration, Miller said a cabinet working group is developing a contingency plan but he’s not going to roll it out in public.

Last month, Ottawa unveiled a three-year immigration level plan that will reduce the annual intake of permanent residents by 21 per cent to 395,000 next year, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027. It will also slash the temporary population including international students and foreign workers to 445,901 in 2025 and to 445,662 in 2026 but will increase it modestly by 17,439 in 2027.

The reduced targets are meant to achieve a population decline of 0.2 per cent in each of the next two years before returning to a population growth of 0.8 per cent in 2027. However, it’s predicated on the assumption that 1,262,801 temporary residents would leave the country voluntarily next year, and another 1,104,658 in 2026.

Earlier on Monday, a coalition of advocates and migrants demanded the opposition parties reject the Liberal government’s plan to slash immigrationand expel 2.36 million temporary residents with expiring status in the next two years. Some of them also attended the committee meeting with protest signs saying “Don’t deport us! Don’t be racist!”

Sarom Rho of the Migrant Rights Network said fewer permanent resident spots mean further temporariness and exploitation for vulnerable international students and temporary workers.

“They hide the fact that the super-rich are making record-breaking profits while the majority of us go hungry, that corporate landlords are buying up housing stock to manufacture scarcity and that the public institutions we value so deeply, like health care and education, are being … sold by the pound to private profiteers,” she told a news conference.

“By reducing immigration, Prime Minister Trudeau is affirming the racist idea that migrants are responsible for the affordability of housing crises.”

Jenny Kwan, the NDP’s immigration critic, said successive Conservative and Liberal governments have brought in more and more temporary residents to reduce migrants’ rights and make them more vulnerable.

What the federal government needs to do, she said, is to rein in corporate interests that are profiteering off people’s basic needs and also invest in housing, health care and infrastructure for all Canadians. 

“You blame (migrants) as though somehow they created the housing crisis when in fact successive governments abdicated their responsibility and entirely just relied on the private sector to provide the housing,” said Kwan. “When are you actually going to take up responsibility and do what is right?” 

Miller said temporary residents are meant to be here temporarily and there’s no “automatic guarantee” for permanent residence.

“A lot of institutions have entertained explicitly or implicitly a sense of false hope that people will become immediately a Canadian citizen,” he said. “My heart does go out to those who have had that false hope entertained. But the reality is that not everyone can stay here.”

Source: Minister Marc Miller under fire over controversial immigration levels plan for Canada

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Allowing Ukrainians who fled war to settle in Canada not off the table, Immigration Minister says

2024/11/26 Leave a comment

Not unexpected:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller says he is not ruling out allowing Ukrainians who fled the war in their homeland to settle here eventually and has no plans to send them back to a war zone.

In an interview, Mr. Miller said granting permanent residence to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians is not “off the table,” although he said it is not a priority for the government.

“It isn’t on the front burner for a variety of reasons, not that I don’t take it seriously. Because as time goes on, people have kids and families, integrate to Canada, and so there’s obviously a want and a need to stay and in many circumstances, we shouldn’t say no,” he said.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, the Canadian government enacted the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel, allowing an unlimited number of Ukrainians fleeing the war to work, study and stay in Canada for up to three years. In August, the government allowed Ukrainians who came here on the program to apply for new three-year permits to stay in Canada.

Of the 1.2 million Ukrainians who applied to come to Canada, 298,000 arrived here, a few thousand of whom are believed to have since returned.

More than 90 per cent of the Ukrainians with special temporary visas want to settle here, according to Pathfinders for Ukraine, an advocacy group for Ukrainians displaced by the war….

Source: Allowing Ukrainians who fled war to settle in Canada not off the table, Immigration Minister says

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Canada’s immigration minister weighs crackdown on fake job offers in permanent residence applications

2024/11/23 Leave a comment

Overdue:

Migrants trying to boost their chances for permanent residence by securing an employer’s sponsorship could soon lose the advantage as Ottawa is looking to crack down on fraudulent job offers for immigration purposes.

In a meeting with the Star’s editorial board, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said he is weighing removing the extra points permanent residence applicants could earn through a positive labour market impact assessment (LMIA) submitted by an employer.

Under the current system that awards points based as applicants’ attributes such as educational achievements and work experience, a job offer sanctioned by Employment and Social Development through the labour market assessment is worth 50 bonus points in an increasingly competitive candidate pool.

With Ottawa’s recent plan to reduce immigration levels, more and more employers and recruiters are preying on desperate international students and foreign workers with expiring status by selling fake job offers.

“There’s a value to LMIA but it can’t be $70,000 on the black market or the grey market,” Miller said Wednesday. “Not prejudicing people that have bona fide LMIAs, but it’s a balancing act. I think it’s safe to say I’m seriously considering it.”…

Source: Canada’s immigration minister weighs crackdown on fake job offers in permanent residence applications

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Canada shouldn’t have to shoulder U.S. border problems – or vice versa – Immigration Minister says

2024/11/22 Leave a comment

Sensible but will see how it works in practice:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller says Canada should not have to shoulder the United States’ problems with border issues – and vice versa – adding that the U.S. needs to talk with Ottawa and work together if it wants issues affecting both countries addressed properly.

Last week, Tom Homan, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s choice as border czar, said the security of the northern border with Canada will be a priority for the incoming administration, along with deporting millions of undocumented migrants. He called on the Canadian government to enforce its own immigration laws to stop people, including alleged terrorists, from slipping across the border illegally into the U.S.

Mr. Miller said in an interview that he is planning to meet Mr. Homan for talks about security on the shared border. Fears about waves of migrants trying to cross illegally into Canada to escape deportation have been raised by Bloc Québécois MPs.

“The basic point is this: The U.S.’s problems shouldn’t be Canada’s to shoulder, and Canada’s problems shouldn’t be the U.S.’s to shoulder. That is an alignment of interests that does coalesce around the border and how it’s properly administered,” he said.

“If the U.S. wants to affect anything in its national interest that affects Canada, if it wants it done in a way that we agree with or properly done, it’s going to need to talk to us and work with us,” he added.

Mr. Miller’s remarks followed the third meeting of a cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations, reconstituted after the re-election of Mr. Trump.

Source: Canada shouldn’t have to shoulder U.S. border problems – or vice versa – Immigration Minister says

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Immigration Minister Marc Miller says he expects tough conversations with the U.S. on border security

2024/11/15 Leave a comment

Understatement?

…Mr. Miller said Canada and the U.S. have had “equal challenges with respect to the flow coming from the U.S. into Canada, and have taken measures to secure it and to close some of the ways people get in here in an irregular fashion.”

“That’s going to continue,” he added, saying he would keep on working in the national interest of Canadians, which he believes “is aligned with the current administration and the one that is coming in to replace it.”

“I expect that conversation to continue fully, and I expect there to be some tough conversations,” he added.

In 2017, Haitians streamed into Canada from the U.S. after the first Trump administration ended temporary protected status for Haitians who had fled to the U.S. The policy sparked an influx of Haitians claiming asylum at the “irregular” Roxham Road border crossing into Quebec. After talks with the U.S., Roxham Road was closed in 2023. The Safe Third Country Agreement was renegotiated, barring migrants making it to Canada through irregular crossings, including Roxham Road, from claiming asylum.

With an estimated 11 million undocumented residents in the U.S. facing removal, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet has predicted that the “saga of Roxham Road” could begin again.

Mr. Miller said the agreement has allowed Canada to have a managed flow of migrants that is important to Canada’s economic relationship with the U.S.

“Are there changes to be made at any particular point in time when we see behaviours changing, when we see our security agencies advising us to adopt a different posture? I think absolutely,” he said. “Those are conversations that won’t be had in public.”…

Source: Immigration Minister Marc Miller says he expects tough conversations with the U.S. on border security

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Immigration minister says ‘not everyone is welcome’ in response to concerns about Trump deportation plan

2024/11/13 Leave a comment

Needed message from the minister and lawyers identifying a possible loophole:

…On Monday, several immigration lawyers urged Ottawa to change a policy that allows migrants fleeing from the U.S. to claim asylum here if they cross the border illegally and evade the authorities for two weeks.

In 2017, Haitians streamed into Canada from the U.S. after the first Trump administration ended temporary protected status for Haitians who had fled to the U.S. The policy sparked an influx of Haitians claiming asylum at the “irregular” Roxham Road border crossing into Quebec.

After talks with the U.S., the Safe Third Country Agreement was revised and Roxham Road was closed in 2023. The changes tightened the rules, but allowed someone entering Canada illegally from the U.S. and remaining undiscovered for 14 days to file a refugee claim in Canada. Those arriving from the U.S. at airports and regular border crossings are usually turned back.

The lawyers cautioned that unless Ottawa changes the policy quickly, record numbers of people facing deportation by Mr. Trump would try to make it to Canada, where they could qualify for a work permit and health care while waiting for their claim to be processed.

Winnipeg refugee and immigration lawyer David Matas urged the government to speak to the Biden administration now, before Mr. Trump takes office in January, about changing the agreement. He said the 14-day provision is “an incentive to traffickers to get round the system.”…

Source: Immigration minister says ‘not everyone is welcome’ in response to concerns about Trump deportation plan

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Opinion | Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister cracked down on Canada’s international student ‘racket’. Here’s what he wishes he’d done differently

2024/10/19 Leave a comment

Well worth reading. Some excepts of interest:

Terms of debate: “The issue is having the proper intellectual debate and not turning it into value statements about the race, colour, or creed of the people coming in, but also without painting people as racist when they express views you disagree with.”

International students: “The program had become a bit of a racket, and I probably should have acted sooner. My biggest mistake was to trust people for too long — to trust provinces and the institutions they regulate. Auditors general have said time and time again that Ontario and B.C. had to get a grip on things. Those are the two provinces where international-student placements had become a runaway train. And they were all promising something — permanent residency or Canadian citizenship — that was not guaranteed.”

Temporary Foreign Workers: “Largely hospitality. Go into a Tim Hortons, and you will see a lot of temporary foreign workers. When you take a step back, the questions you need to pose are, ‘How are we filling needs? Are we artificially depressing wages? How is an influx of temporary foreign workers contributing to that trend, particularly when you have a labour force already here?’ There will need to be further adjustments to the program, including in the availability of asylum seekers who have work permits. But we also don’t want to harm markets that are important to regional economies, like fish processing or food processing.”

Source: Opinion | Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister cracked down on Canada’s international student ‘racket’. Here’s what he wishes he’d done differently






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How did a Toronto terror suspect enter Canada? Immigration minister offers first details

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Note of realism in terms of border security but will still raise questions about vetting of international students and where extra vetting may be warranted:

…“I think our American partner would be highly disappointed to see elected officials firing their mouths off about and speculating about this case and its outcome,” Miller said. “We owe it to Canadians to keep them safe, to actually let the process unfold.”

Miller also said that borders cannot be made 100 per cent secure.

“No one can pretend and stand honestly in front of you and say that a well determined actor can’t come to this country, and that’s why we have the security apparatuses that we have in this country,” Miller said.

Source: How did a Toronto terror suspect enter Canada? Immigration minister offers first details

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