Minister was warned lifting international student work limit could undermine program

2024/02/14 Leave a comment

More on the warning and former Minister Fraser’s policy failure:

Allowing international students to work more than 20 hours a week could distract from their studies and undermine the objective of temporary foreign worker programs, public servants warned the federal government in 2022.

The caution came in documents prepared for former immigration minister Sean Fraser as Ottawa looked at waiving the restriction on the number of hours international students could work off-campus — a policy the Liberals eventually implemented.

The Canadian Press obtained the internal documents with an access-to-information request.

Waiving the cap could help alleviate labour shortages, a memorandum for the minister conceded, but it could also have other unintended consequences.

“While a temporary increase in the number of hours international students can work off-campus could help address these shortages, this could detract from the primary study goal of international students to a greater emphasis on work, circumvent the temporary foreign worker programs and give rise to further program integrity concerns with the international student program,” the memo said.

Canada’s bloated international student program has been heavily scrutinized in recent months as part of a larger critique of Liberal immigration policies that have fuelled rapid population growth and contributed to the country’s housing crunch.

That scrutiny led the federal government to introduce a cap on study permits over the next two years, as it tries to get a handle on the program.

More than 900,000 foreign students had visas to study in Canada last year, which is more than three times the number 10 years ago.

Critics have questioned the dramatic spike in international student enrolments at shady post-secondary institutions and have flagged concerns about the program being a backdoor to permanent residency.

The memo said removing the limit for off-campus work would be in “stark contrast” to the temporary foreign worker programs, which requires employers to prove that they need a migrant worker and that no Canadian or permanent resident is available to do the job.

Fraser ultimately announced in October 2022 that the federal government would waive the restriction until the end of 2023 to ease labour shortages across the country.

The waiver only applied to students currently in the country or those who had already applied, in order to not incentivize foreign nationals to obtain a study permit only to work in Canada.

In December, Immigration Minister Marc Miller extended the policy until April 30, 2024 and floated the idea of setting the cap at 30 hours a week thereafter.

In an interview with The Canadian Press on Monday, Miller said he extended the waiver because he didn’t want to interfere with students’ work arrangements in the middle of an academic year.

“What I really didn’t want to do is impact students in a current year that have made their financial calculations about how they will sustain themselves and how they will be able to pay for the tuition and rent and food,” Miller said.

Miller said internal work by the department shows more than 80 per cent of international students are currently working more than 20 hours a week.

Waiving the number of hours international students could work was the right call given the labour shortages Canada was facing, but the policy was never meant to be permanent, he said.

Job vacancies soared to more than a million in the second quarter of 2022, but have steadily decreased since then as the economy slows.

Miller said he’s now considering making a permanent change to the cap that would set it somewhere between 20 and 40 hours a week.

“It’s not credible that someone can work 40 hours and do a proper program,” Miller said.

He said the goal is to come up with a cap that gives students the ability to get good work experience and help them pay the bills, all while not undermining their studies.

“So what does a reasonable number of hours look like for someone here studying, knowing that they are paying three to four times, sometimes five times the price of a domestic student?” Miller said.

“I think that’s above 20 hours.”

Source: Minister was warned lifting international student work limit could undermine program

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Organized crime, including Mexican cartels, smuggling migrants to Canada

2024/02/09 Leave a comment

Foreshadowing likely re-imposition of Mexican visa requirement?:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller told the Commons that the government is looking at measures to “tighten the screws” on steeply rising migration to Canada, including examining whether to re-impose visas to visitors from Mexico.

“The flows that are coming into the country – regardless of the country of origin – particularly in terms of asylum seekers and irregular migration are very high,” he said. “I think it is important to take a look at our public policies to see where we can tighten that up – and that includes Mexico.”

Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec said there had been a surge in asylum claims from Mexicans to more than 14,000 a year, since the visa requirement was lifted in 2016. He pressed the minister on why action has not yet been taken to reimpose visas, with 70 per cent of Mexican asylum claims rejected.

Mr. Miller said he did not want to “downplay the severity of the issue” and that the acceptance rates from asylum seekers from Mexico were much lower overall than those from other countries. But he said Mexico is one of Canada’s most important trading partners and the issue involved “a process internally as well as with the Government of Mexico.”

Source: Organized crime, including Mexican cartels, smuggling migrants to Canada

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Ottawa must restore balance between its temporary and permanent resident programs

2024/02/06 Leave a comment

Arguably, IRCC could include temporary workers and international students in the annual levels plan in advance of an amendment to IRPA given that no such amendment is likely during the current parliamentary session;

….

A legislative amendment should also require the minister to include such details and future planning in reports to Parliament. And in the short term, aside from readjusting the overall immigration balance, Ottawa could shift proportions within the temporary streams to prioritize helping critical industries such as health care, construction, educational services and agriculture.

There may be pushback from businesses that have grown dependent on this source of cheap labour, but this can be mitigated if their concerns are taken seriously when they tell the government that Canadians are unwilling to do certain jobs. We cannot dismiss the reality that part of the service sector can only survive with low-wage, low-skill foreign workers. This issue is not unique to Canada, though, and it will not disappear tomorrow.

To maintain Canada’s pro-immigration consensus, welcoming newcomers should generally be tied to a pro-economic-growth vision. Allowing many businesses to depend on low-skill temporary workers disincentivizes investments that increase productivity, so Mr. Miller should reduce the proportion of temporary resident visas in relation to permanent ones. The challenge will be in doing this humanely, while recognizing the contribution of low-skill migrants.

Source: Ottawa must restore balance between its temporary and permanent resident programs

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Ottawa to ensure international student cap doesn’t target francophones

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

On the one hand, the feds have correctly made the provinces responsible for study permit allocations by institution, but on the other….

Immigration Minister Marc Miller is preparing measures to ensure that the federal government’s new cap on international student visas does not lead to a sharp drop in the number of francophones studying in Canada.

…Mr. Miller announced the cap earlier this week, saying there would be “no further growth” in the number of international students in the country for the next two years. This would mean cutting the number of new permits issued this year by about 35 per cent, compared to 2023.

…

But the minister’s office said Thursday that he is concerned the cap could lead English-speaking provinces to target francophone institutions, resulting in a disproportionate reduction in the number of French-speaking students in Canada, including those from African countries, such as Côte d’Ivoire.

One option the government is considering is the creation of a separate visa stream for francophone students….

Source: Ottawa to ensure international student cap doesn’t target francophones

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Lisée: L’immigration et la loi de la gravité

2024/01/22 Leave a comment

Sarcasm, well justified:

Le saviez-vous ? Avant qu’Isaac Newton ne découvre la gravité, tout le monde prenait les choses à la légère. La boutade s’applique superbement à la soudaine épiphanie de membres du gouvernement Trudeau face à l’immigration.

« Je crois que personne n’a besoin d’un briefing pour comprendre que, s’il y a plus de gens qui ont besoin de se loger, cela va avoir un impact sur la situation du logement », affirmait cette semaine l’un des architectes de l’immigration massive trudeauiste, car jusqu’à récemment titulaire de ce portefeuille, Sean Fraser, mais qui, depuis l’été, est puni par là où il a péché, car il est désormais ministre du Logement.

Son successeur, Marc Miller, est allé jusqu’à déclarer que le pays avait « perdu le contrôle » du nombre d’étudiants étrangers au pays, mais que cet état de fait était la responsabilité des provinces, dont certaines tolèrent la présence sur leur territoire de ce qu’il a appelé des « puppy mills ». En français, il s’agit d’« usines à chiots ». Il parle de ces écoles privées qui sont des usines à diplômes de qualité incertaine, délivrés dans un temps record à des étudiants pour beaucoup venus de l’Inde et de la Chine, et qui leur donne, selon les généreuses règles en vigueur, un accès rapide à la citoyenneté.

Une des meilleures recettes de la mauvaise foi politique est d’identifier, à l’intérieur d’un problème majeur, un élément réel, mais secondaire, et de faire semblant qu’en s’y attaquant, on prend l’enjeu de front. Car, au fond, les membres du gouvernement Trudeau pensent-ils qu’avoir haussé à un demi-million par an le nombre d’immigrants permanents est excessif ? Non. 

« Les Canadiens sont presque unanimes dans leur appui à l’immigration. C’est un avantage extraordinaire. Nos seuils actuels d’immigration permanente sont ceux dont on a besoin pour notre économie », a déclaré sans rire Justin Trudeau. Tous les sondages récents démontrent au contraire que l’appui des Canadiens aux seuils d’immigration connaît une chute historique. Près des trois quarts jugent — avec sagesse — qu’il faut réduire les seuils au moins le temps que se résorbe la crise du logement. Si la tendance se maintient, il y aura bientôt unanimité.

Le festival du sophisme

Peut-être pense-t-il que les milieux d’affaires torontois, qui ont plaidé pendant des années pour une augmentation de l’immigration et qui alimentent sa caisse électorale, sont toujours avec lui. Pas selon leur Pravda, le Financial Post, qui résume ainsi le consensus ambiant : « La décision du premier ministre Justin Trudeau d’augmenter considérablement l’immigration […] sans fournir un soutien adéquat a créé une longue liste de problèmes économiques, notamment une inflation plus élevée et une faible productivité. » L’économiste en chef de la Banque TD, Beata Caranci, résume la chose ainsi : Trudeau « screwed up ». 

Comment le jugement du premier ministre peut-il être aussi éloigné du réel ? Les solutions, explique-t-il en empirant son cas, sont à portée de main : les 500 000 permanents par an peuvent trouver à se loger, prétend-il, pour peu que les universités dénichent des logements pour leurs étudiants internationaux et les entreprises pour leurs travailleurs temporaires. Il suffisait d’y penser. Car dans l’univers trudeauiste, il y a trois marchés distincts du logement. Incrédule ? Rappelons qu’on parle d’un homme qui, ayant obtenu pour ses vacances en Jamaïque un hébergement d’une valeur de 84 000 $, a déclaré que, « comme énormément de familles canadiennes, on est allés rester chez des amis pour les vacances de Noël ».

On s’ennuie du temps où il débitait des phrases creuses. Car ses nouvelles déclarations sont pires : fausses. Il continue à affirmer qu’il nous faut davantage d’immigration pour résoudre les pénuries de main-d’oeuvre. Mais puisque le Canada a reçu plus de deux millions d’arrivants en deux ans, ne devrions-nous pas avoir réglé le problème et être en surplus de main-d’oeuvre ? 

L’économiste Pierre Fortin a conclu de la revue de la littérature scientifique récente que cette conclusion « n’est rien d’autre qu’un gros sophisme ». Chaque immigrant qui pourvoit un emploi requiert la création d’un autre emploi pour lui fournir tous ses services. Idem pour la prétention que l’immigration nous enrichit (l’impact est non significatif) ou nous rajeunit (même résultat). On continue cependant à entendre politiciens, patrons et commentateurs répéter ces sornettes.

Pour entrer dans le détail, disons qu’il est vrai que, si on déverse un million de Chinois au Québec ayant chacun 1000 $ en poche, le PIB va croître d’un milliard. Si vous êtes un PIB, c’est la joie. Si vous n’êtes pas un PIB, c’est moins drôle. Et s’il s’agissait d’éviter un déclin démographique en maintenant la croissance récente de la population du Québec, le démographe Marc Termotte a conclu qu’il ne faudrait, pour ce faire, toutes catégories comprises, que 58 000 immigrants par année, plutôt que les 580 000 actuels — les 55 000 permanents et les 528 000 non permanents. Donc, le dixième.

Les sophismes sur les bienfaits de l’immigration ne seraient que du bruit de fond si les conséquences ne devenaient pas si graves, pour le logement, l’éducation — 1500 classes d’accueil supplémentaires au Québec — et, au bout du compte, l’explosion de l’itinérance.

Difficulté cognitive

Des esprits tordus prétendent que la difficulté cognitive des libéraux fédéraux en matière d’immigration tient à cette information, rapportée dans Le Soleil par Hélène Buzzetti : « À leur dernier congrès, le sondeur Dan Arnold a révélé que les électeurs nés à l’extérieur du Canada sont les plus susceptibles de voter libéral. Leur niveau d’appui au Parti libéral a dépassé celui des non-immigrants par 8 points à l’élection de 2015, par 13 points en 2019 et par 19 points en 2021 . » Réduire le flot d’entrées de cette manne électorale est un pensez-y bien, surtout pendant une traversée du désert.

François Legault a de son côté utilisé la formule Miller : identifier une partie du problème et faire comme s’il s’agissait de l’essentiel. Le trop-plein de demandeurs d’asile, écrit-il à Trudeau, ne peut plus durer. Certes. Mais Legault a toujours eu le loisir de limiter le nombre d’étudiants étrangers et de travailleurs temporaires sur son territoire. Il a choisi de ne pas le faire. Sa ministre Christine Fréchette se plaint qu’une bonne part des immigrants temporaires ne sont que du ressort d’Ottawa. Mais c’est parce qu’elle refuse d’invoquer l’entente Canada-Québec sur l’immigration pour exiger d’en avoir le contrôle.

C’est le malheur particulier des Québécois d’être en ce moment gouvernés à Ottawa par des trudeauistes qui prennent leurs lubies de grandeur postnationales pour des vérités et à Québec par un premier ministre qui avouait en campagne électorale ne pas être « un génie en herbe de l’immigration ». Cela paraît.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon a beau jeu de pousser ce cortège de sophistes dans leurs contradictions, et d’éclairer combien la passivité de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) est navrante et combien le projet canadien est contraire, non seulement à nos intérêts, mais à la simple bonne gestion de nos affaires. Il semble être le seul à comprendre la gravité de l’enjeu. Il mérite donc, pour cette semaine, le prix Isaac Newton.

Source: L’immigration et la loi de la gravité

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ICYMI: Tying immigration to homes a ‘good’ idea but not a fix-all: Housing minister – Global News

2024/01/18 Leave a comment

Apart from the irony of the former immigration minister waking up to the fact that his policies contributed to housing availability/affordability problems, it is valid to say it is not a “fix-all.” But it is an essential part of the mix, particularly in the short-to-medium term:

Fraser says temporary immigration programs are putting pressure on the housing system and creating a “serious issue we need to address.”

He pointed to the temporary foreign worker and international student programs. The federal government has said they are considering a cap on international student, but want to take a year to work with provinces first to try to find solutions.

“Enough is enough,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller said in announcing changes to the international student program last year. “If provinces and territories cannot do this, we will do it for them and they will not like the bluntness of the instruments that we use.”

Miller previously described the idea of a cap on international students as akin to “surgery with a hammer” during an interview with Global News

Fraser said the program has grown “by hundreds of thousands of people each year” in the last couple of years.

“There are some institutions in parts of this country, I have the sincerely held belief, have come to exist just to exploit the program for the personal financial gains of the people behind some of these schools, if we can call them that,” he said.

Source: Tying immigration to homes a ‘good’ idea but not a fix-all: Housing minister – Global News

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Gurski: Canada’s open-door immigration policy shouldn’t mean anything goes

2024/01/12 Leave a comment

Valid note of caution. Encouragingly, Minister Miller was frank about this concern and the need for rigorous security checks as well as the difference between Ukraine and Gaza:

More to the point, the ongoing war in Gaza has spurred the Liberal government to announce special measures to help the family members of Canadians get out of the war zone. In theory, this is a bold and welcome move but does have a security nexus. Hamas is the ruling party in the area — and is a listed terrorist entity in Canada. Support for it in the wake of Israeli military action after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in southern Israel is on the rise, in the region, worldwide and possibly in Canada. It is possible and perhaps even probable that Hamas members or supporters will attempt to join the queue. They cannot be allowed to succeed (I am sure CSIS is well aware of the likelihood). Imagine a scenario where a recent arrival carried out an attack in the name of Hamas on Canadian soil: I would prefer not to have to go there.

We do not want to become a nation where the anti-immigrant lobby gains influence and status. We see what is happening in Europe (for instance, the political party led by far-right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders recently won the most seats in the Netherlands) and it ain’t pretty. One way to avoid that eventuality is to allow our security agencies to do their job, then take their advice to heart. The consequences of not doing so are dire indeed.

Phil Gurski is President/CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting, and a firmer CSIS employee. http://www.borealisthreatandrisk.com

Source: Gurski: Canada’s open-door immigration policy shouldn’t mean anything goes

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‘Nil’ research done on impact of foreign students working unlimited hours: Report

2024/01/10 Leave a comment

Disheartening….

Access-to-information records showed that federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign students to work unlimited hours without researching the impact on unemployed Canadians.

The minister said foreign students were not “taking jobs away from other people,” but never asked his department for data, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

Both departments were asked under access-to-information requests to disclose “all research, studies, literature reviews or other data regarding the impact on the repeal of the 20-hour work cap on foreign students on labour markets, youth unemployment or hiring of Canadian post-secondary students.”

No data was found and Miller’s office did not comment.

“The information you are seeking does not exist,” said the Labour Department.

“Right now we have nil response on the information you are requesting,” the Department of Immigration said in statement.

On Dec. 7, the minister told reporters: “I don’t think students are taking jobs away from other people, given the labour shortages that are happening in Canada.”

Back then, he estimated 80% of the 807,000 foreign students in Canada — which is about 646,000 students — were working more than 20 hours weekly.

Previously, foreign students had been limited to a 20-hour work week, but then cabinet temporarily suspended the cap on Nov. 15, 2022, and Miller extended it past a Dec. 31 expiry to April 30.

“There’s labour shortages across the country,” said Miller. “It is costly to be a student in Canada. My focus primarily is to make sure that the public policy that we have in place is one that reflects the ability of the student to actually do what they’re supposed to be doing, which is study without bankrupting themselves.”

The Immigration Department estimated 500,000 foreign students were working under the cap in 2022 and that lifting it increased those numbers by 29%.

Source: ‘Nil’ research done on impact of foreign students working unlimited hours: Report

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Canada’s Foreign Student Surge Prompts Changes, and Anxiety

2024/01/08 Leave a comment

Makes The New York Times but broader range of expert views missing:

The education consultant in India didn’t reveal to Maninderjit Kaur, a Canada-bound student, where exactly, relative to Toronto, the college she had enrolled in was.

Ms. Kaur told my colleague, Norimitsu Onishi, that after a never-ending Uber ride — eight hours and 800 Canadian dollars later — she had ended up in Timmins, Ontario, a place she had never heard of.

But, as Nori reported, finishing a degree in this remote city was perhaps less of an isolating experience given that 82 percent of students at Northern College in Timmins are foreign nationals, mostly from India.

Recruiting foreign students who pay higher tuition fees — roughly five times as much as Canadians to obtain an undergraduate degree, according to the census agency — has always been attractive to the country’s institutions. It has also become increasingly important for the federal government, which is vying to hit a lofty goal of attracting 1.45 million immigrants between 2023 and 2025.

By announcing this record-breaking target in November 2022, as part of a strategy to plug national labor shortages, Canada signaled that it was headed in the opposite direction from many Western governments that are curtailing migration, as I reported at the time. (As of this week, most foreign students in Britain will no longer be allowed to bring their families, a move that the country’s Home Office said delivered on its commitment to “a decisive cut in migration.”)

In Canada, the surge of overseas students has fanned concerns about the readiness of university and college communities to adequately host them, and about efforts to ensure that their labor and their finances are not exploited. The immigration minister, Marc Miller, recently announced a handful of measures taking effect this month for foreign students.

For the first time since the early 2000s, the government has increased the savings threshold that foreign students must have to qualify for a study permit to about 20,600 Canadian dollars, up from 10,000 dollars. And it will continue, until at least April, to allow international students to work more than 20 hours per week, a policy it had previously walked back.

Without providing details, Mr. Miller’s ministry said it was also looking into ways that it could ensure colleges and universities, which are provincially regulated, accept only as many students as they can assist in finding housing.

“Ahead of September 2024, we are prepared to take necessary measures, including significantly limiting visas, to ensure that designated learning institutions provide adequate and sufficient student supports,” Mr. Miller said last month at a news conference in which he announced the changes. He accused some institutions of operating the “diploma equivalent of puppy mills,” depriving those foreign students of a positive academic experience in the face of outsize hardships and a lack of intervention by provincial governments.Continue reading the main story

“Enough is enough,” Mr. Miller added. “If provinces and territories cannot do this, we will do it for them, and they will not like the bluntness of the instruments that we use.”

The number of international students in Canada has skyrocketed over the last three years, with a 60 percent increase in the number of study permits processed by the immigration ministry. It completed more than one million new study permit applications and extensions in 2023, a record, up from 838,000 in 2022 and 560,000 in 2021.

Study permits aren’t strictly capped, but permanent residencies do adhere to annual quotas. In 2022, Canada welcomed about 432,000 permanent residents, and of those, 95,000 were previously international students, according to a September 2023 report by four Canadian senators urging the government to address “program integrity issues.” Those include an increasing perception that aiming for a Canadian degree is a sure pathway to citizenship.

“It’s not a pathway — it’s a minefield,” said Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a migrant-led organization, similar to a union, based in Toronto.

He characterized the changes as minor “tweaks” to a system that was probably due for an overhaul.

“We’re constantly hearing issues around high tuition fees, difficulty being able to get permanent resident status, exploitation of work and exploitation by landlords,” Mr. Hussan said.Continue reading the main story

Placing firm caps on student permits is not the answer, said Anna Triandafyllidou, a migration researcher and professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, but she added that the government should do a better job of regulating migrant flow to avoid stoking “cutthroat” competition to stay in Canada.

“Otherwise you create this huge bottleneck where you admit 600,000 international students, but these have to compete with everyone else for 450,000 permanent residence permits,” she said.

It is becoming more common for migrants to spend some time living in the country before becoming permanent residents, a process known as two-step immigration, which is seen almost as a taboo in Canada, Professor Triandafyllidou told me.

Canada should recognize it has “a two-step system and just make sure that it works properly,” she said.

Source: Canada’s Foreign Student Surge Prompts Changes, and Anxiety

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Douglas Todd: Canadian taboo against debating migration policy is basically over

2023/12/16 Leave a comment

Yes, having been another of the earlier questioners:

Seven years ago, Simon Fraser University political scientist Sanjay Jeram perceptively said that Canada was one of the last countries in the world where it is not permitted to discuss migration policy.

“The hidden consensus in Canada is that we don’t talk critically about immigration. The taboo against discussing it is very real,” said Jeram, who has a PhD from the University of Toronto, the city in which he was born and raised.

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on openness to immigration without limits,” Jeram said at the time. “I have never heard him talk about the potential consequences that immigration has for overcrowding, housing, opportunities for domestic-born workers, or the welfare state.”

The Canadian housing squeeze was on the top of Jeram’s must-be-discussed list in 2017, since many in Metro Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria and other cities were enduring an escalating affordability crisis. They still are.

The difference is that in the past six months the unspoken taboo against openly talking about migration issues has been mostly broken in Canada.

That is judging by what’s coming from prominent housing analysts, mainstream media coverage, and new polls by Leger, Environics and Abacus. We’re starting to become like most other nations.

Canada’s population grew by almost three per cent in the one-year period ending July 1, 2023 — bringing in 1.2 million, causing catapulting population growth that far exceeds earlier projections.

Many of the newcomers are among this year’s batch of almost 500,000 permanent residents, but most are temporary students and guest workers. The number of such non-permanent residents in Canada now totals 2.2 million.

Even Trudeau’s Liberal government, which was always quick to silence migration skeptics with often-unfounded accusations of xenophobia, is showing hints it might reduce its record-high migration rates, at least in regard to study visas.

Polls confirm most Canadians believe new arrivals offer advantages to the country, which shows they are not concerned about immigrants themselves. The issue, instead, is Ottawa politicians’ actions on migration, which are unilaterally decided without debate in the House of Commons, and which lack any sort of coherent plan.

A new Abacus poll is among those showing the number of Canadians who believe immigration rates are too high has jumped to 67 per cent, up seven percentage points from July.

This negative view is shared by 62 per cent of residents born outside Canada.

Overall, women were most worried. And even 61 per cent of Liberal voters said rates were too high. Just two per cent of Canadians believed migration levels were “too low.”

One issue stood out. Abacus found seven in 10 respondents felt the number of immigrants was having a negative effect on “the cost and availability of housing.”

A smaller cohort, 53 per cent, believe the high volume was having a negative affect on “access to health care,” and 51 per cent felt that way in regard to “congestion and traffic.”

In most countries, there is little migration debate, but not for the reasons many Canadians may think. The relative silence is because most countries take virtually no immigrants — including Japan, China, Turkey and Brazil.

Shelter costs are the main concern behind rising migration concerns in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and even France, with all these governments instituting major policy changes recently.

This week, Australia’s ruling Labor Party said the country’s immigration system is “broken” — contributing to a growing housing crisis and soaring rents. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will slash record intake levels to 250,000. Visa rules for international students and low-skilled workers will be tightened, and fees on foreign investors in housing will triple.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has also said his country’s migration totals are “unsustainable.” And British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this month took to social media to announce cutting future intake by 300,000 people a year, saying, “Immigration is too high. Today we’re taking radical action to bring it down. These steps will make sure that immigration always benefits the U.K.” The French government of Emmanuel Macron, in addition, is engaged in a high-profile legislative attempt to better integrate newcomers.

What of Canada? The nation’s new immigration minister, Marc Miller, was talking tough last week against a backdrop of nationally soaring rents.

He promised to require foreigners applying to study in Canada to have double the amount of funds currently required. He also threatened to shut down “unscrupulous” educational institutions. We can only wait to see if anything comes of Miller’s pledge.

Despite all this political action on the migration file, however, some observers say the taboo against criticism might not have completely vanished.

Their example is the way Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre this month launched a 15-minute video titled “Housing Hell,” which has been viewed by more than four million people. It lambastes the Liberals on housing unaffordability, but doesn’t mention the demand pressure caused by population growth.

Why dodge the obvious? Riding high in the polls, it’s possible Poilievre didn’t feel it necessary to directly cite what observers in the past called Canada’s “third rail” of migration. When ahead, why would Poilievre take even the increasingly small risk of handing opponents a wedge issue?

Poilievre’s reluctance, however, has definitely not stopped the country’s most listened-to housing analysts — such as Ben Rabidoux, Steve Saretsky, John Pasalis, Ron Butler, Stephen Punwasi, Mike Moffat and others — from leading the way on scrutinizing the evidence on the impact of migration.

And even though bank economists are among the most cautious in the world, in the past year many have had said affordability will not return without big changes. “Unless Ottawa revises its immigration quotas downward, we don’t expect much relief for the 37 per cent of Canadian households that rent,” said economist Stefane Marion of the National Bank.

Every week, responsible economists, scholars, pundits and even some politicians are now making similar statements. If that doesn’t turn migration policy into a valid issue for respectful discussion in Canada, what will?

Source: Douglas Todd: Canadian taboo against debating migration policy is basically over

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