Immigration Minister Marc Miller must decide what to do with Canada’s immigration targets on Wednesday and whether to give way to a growing sentiment that immigration is too high and fueling inflation.
“I don’t see a world in which we lower it, the need is too great,” Miller reportedly told Bloomberg News earlier this year.
“Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at. But certainly I don’t think we’re in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination.”
Since then, the Conference Board of Canada has called on Ottawa to raise immigration levels and bring in more workers to build the housing Canadians need.
“Construction of new homes is critical to addressing housing affordability and availability in Canada but persistent labour shortages is one of the obstacles slowing progress,” said Stefan Fournier, executive director of the Conference Board of Canada.
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“Allocating a small number of immigration places within the existing immigration levels plan to occupations that are core to residential construction could mitigate labour shortages and advance the building of new homes.”
Under its current 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan, Ottawa has set its immigration target for 2023 at 465,000 new permanent residents. The country is also to welcome 485,000 new permanent residents in 2024 and another 500,000 in 2025.
That’s a total of 1.45 million immigrants that Canada’s current immigration levels plan intends to welcome into the country during those three years.
The latest figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), though, show Canada is already on track to welcome far more than its planned number of immigrants this year.
During the first eight months of this year, Canada saw the arrival of 338,905 new permanent residents, putting the country on track to welcome 508,357 new permanent residents by the end of this year provided the level of immigration so far continues through to the end of 2023.
That would be 9.3 per cent more than the current immigration level for this year of 465,000 new permanent residents.
Canada’s 2023 to 2025 Immigration Levels Plan
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | ||
| Overall Planned Permanent Resident Admissions | 465,000 | 485,000 | 500,000 | |
| Economic | Federal High Skilled | 82,880 | 109,020 | 114,000 |
| Federal Economic Public Policies | 25,000 | – | – | |
| Federal Business | 3,500 | 5,000 | 6,000 | |
| Economic Pilots: Caregivers; Agri-Food Pilot; Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot; Economic Mobility Pathways Project | 8,500 | 12,125 | 14,750 | |
| Atlantic Immigration Program | 8,500 | 11,500 | 14,500 | |
| Provincial Nominee Program | 105,500 | 110,000 | 117,500 | |
| Quebec Skilled Workers and BusinessFootnote6 | See the Quebec immigration plan | To be determined | To be determined | |
| Total Economic | 266,210 | 281,135 | 301,250 | |
| Family | Spouses, Partners and Children | 78,000 | 80,000 | 82,000 |
| Parents and Grandparents | 28,500 | 34,000 | 36,000 | |
| Total Family | 106,500 | 114,000 | 118,000 | |
| Refugees and Protected Persons | Protected Persons in Canada and Dependents Abroad | 25,000 | 27,000 | 29,000 |
| Resettled Refugees – Government-AssistedFootnote7 | 23,550 | 21,115 | 15,250 | |
| Resettled Refugees – Privately Sponsored | 27,505 | 27,750 | 28,250 | |
| Resettled Refugees – Blended Visa Office-Referred | 250 | 250 | 250 | |
| Total Refugees and Protected Persons | 76,305 | 76,115 | 72,750 | |
| Humanitarian and Other | Total Humanitarian & Compassionate and Other | 15,985 | 13,750 | 8,000 |
The tide of popular opinion on immigration, though, has changed in the past few months with a slim majority of Canadians now favouring lower immigration targets.
A Nanos poll released in mid-September revealed 53 per cent of Canadians wanted fewer immigrants in 2023 than what is projected.
That was a nearly 20-point increase in support for less immigration to Canada since this past March when only 34 per cent wanted less immigration.
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That growing opposition to high immigration levels, fuelled by a perception that record immigration has driven up housing prices and rents and is in general causing greater levels of inflation, has also begun to include a pushback against high levels of international students at Canadian colleges and universities.
The same Nanos poll also showed 53 per cent of Canadians wanted Canada to accept fewer international students this year than the target of 900,000.
Canada, though, is heavily dependent on immigration for population growth.
Almost All Population Growth In Canada Is Due To Immigration, Reports Statistics Canada
“Close to 98 per cent of the growth in the Canadian population from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023, came from net international migration, with two per cent coming from the difference between births and deaths,” reported Statistics Canada in early July.
Still, the upward pressure on housing prices caused by immigration is more than just a fanciful notion, despite the Conference Board’s insistence that it will take more immigration, not less, to resolve the country’s housing woes.
In the wake of massive inflation in the housing market in the past few years, TD Economics issued a report in late July, Balancing Canada’s Pop In Population, in which economists Beata Caranci, James Orlando, Rishi Sondhi noted that higher immigration has put a strain on the housing supply.
“Continuing with a high-growth immigration strategy could widen the housing shortfall by about a half-million units within just two years,” the economists wrote. “Recent government policies to accelerate construction are unlikely to offer a stop-gap due to the short time period and the natural lags in adjusting supply.”
On the political scene, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre has made hay of Canada’s high immigration levels, using the housing crisis to take shots at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the governing Liberal Party of Canada.
Opposition In Canada Using Immigration As A Wedge Issue Against Governing Liberals
Poilievre has repeatedly blamed too-high levels of immigration for the housing crisis and vowed to both build much more housing and take what he describes as a common-sense approach to immigration. That would mean lower immigration levels under a Conservative government.
But Miller has rejected the notion that immigrants are somehow to blame for the housing crisis.
“We have to get away from this notion that immigrants are the major cause of housing pressures and the increase in home prices,” he reportedly said.
“We tend not to think in longer historical arcs or in generational terms, but if people want dental care, health care and affordable housing that they expect, the best way to do that is to get that skilled labour in this country.”
