For too long, Canadians have been misled about the benefits of largely unchecked immigration growth.
Between 2016 and 2023, an
of 612,000 people were admitted annually to Canada on a permanent and temporary basis. There were assurances made that it was all beneficial, while the consequences for housing, wages, or jobs were downplayed.
While in the past a well managed immigration system has been good for Canada, the most recent data reveal the supposed benefits of the Liberals’ mass immigration plans were all a sham.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)
recently that advertised rents had fallen across major Canadian cities. The July 8 report projects that, compared to last year, the cost of renting a two-bedroom apartment declined in the first quarter of 2025 by 4.9 per cent in Vancouver, 3.7 per cent in Toronto, and 4.2 per cent in Halifax.
What is causing this relief?
According to the CMHC report, much of this decline occurred alongside the reduction in international students and non-permanent residents allowed into Canada.
This contradicts the received wisdom, past statements by lobby groups like the
and others who downplayed the impact of recklessly growing the population. As late as 2023, Macleans was
articles declaring that “limiting immigration isn’t the solution” to the housing crisis. If slashing the annual intake is not a silver bullet for fixing affordability, it certainly has not worsened it.
For years, immigrationists asserted that this immigration-driven demographic expansion
, despite the risks of a
, a
, and a
.
The housing crisis worsened as immigration hit modern record highs that
the population by three per cent in 2023.
According to the CMHC in 2023,
will require 3.5 million new housing units to be built by 2030, on top of the 18.2 million units already expected to be built. Even with the reductions in rent this year, the affordability crisis is only slightly less unbearable.
Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, has promised to bring the number of new permanent residents down to
per year. To call this a modest improvement would be an overstatement, as even this drop far exceeds the steadier numbers of the Harper government, which
at their highest point, but were typically much lower, in the 200,000 range. Furthermore, international students and TFWs will supposedly be capped at five per cent of the population, which will come out to
The supposed
on affordability was one of many myths used by the Trudeau government and its supporters to justify its immigration policy. Another myth was that mass immigration would “raise living standards for all Canadians,” as
by Century Initiative co-founder Mark Wiseman in 2016.
On July 7, the Conference Board of Canada released a report that
the slowing rates of immigration could help accelerate wage growth across the country, as businesses are forced to compete for labour. It has been a long time since blue-collar Canadian workers were treated as valuable.
Simply put, many business owners
for low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Michael Bonner, who worked as a policy advisor in the Harper government and later as Director of Policy for the Government of Ontario, has
, “wages and prices are kept artificially low, and Canadians — usually young people — are priced out.”
The market economy is the greatest engine for creating prosperity. However, business owners break the social contract when they deliberately exploit immigration to suppress wage growth.
Right now, young Canadians are feeling the worst effects of the government’s policies. The rate of youth unemployment stood at 8.2 at per cent at the beginning of 2020, but now it has risen to an alarming 11.2 per cent nationwide for those aged 15 to 24.
University graduates, born and raised in Canada, are spending their dwindling summers desperately churning out resumes in the hopes they can secure any meaningful employment before returning to school. The fortunate among them receive a polite rejection, and many have been forced to compete with temporary workers (TFWs) for low-skilled, minimum-wage jobs.
Needless to say, Canada’s standard of living has not improved. In fact, it has
since 2019.
Another myth of modern immigration policy is the
that Canadians will not work the same jobs as foreign workers. This is true in some sectors, such as
, but these are the exceptions.
Canada may have a low birth rate, but young people did not suddenly disappear between 2019 and today. When nobody else is available, native-born citizens are perfectly capable of taking these allegedly undesirable jobs.
Last year in the Globe and Mail, Christopher Worswick, an economist at Carleton University,
that the TFW program should be abolished completely. He outlined how many companies deliberately keep wages low and avoid improving working conditions, adding that, as foreign workers often cannot legally switch employers.
This system of mass, low-skilled immigration is cruel and disillusioning for all. Under the Trudeau model, per-person GDP growth
below half a per cent annually. It was hardly worth the cost.
Canadians are
about immigration than ever before in the 21st century, and rightfully so.
If Mark Carney’s Liberals are serious about rebuilding public trust, they must go further and faster to fully abandon the failed policies of the Trudeau government.
National Post
