Is the Canadian immigration dream over?

“Wanting to come to Canada may be a dream, but it’s a privilege and not a right,” the Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller recently said. A warning that illustrates the change of tone in Ottawa on the subject. Indeed, the current government recently announced major changes to its immigration policies, such as the reduction of visas for international students and worker permits to manage high immigration levels. 

In detail, Ottawa intends to reduce visas for international students, including those undertaking master’s and doctoral degrees, making it more difficult to extend stays after their studies. A total of 437,000 study permits will be issued in 2025, a ceiling that will remain stable in 2026. Nearly 560,000 such visas were issued last year. Meanwhile, work permit eligibility will only be granted to spouses of master’s degree students enrolled in programs lasting at least 16 months. 

Experts fear an exodus of brilliant students from Canada because of this new immigration limit, while students are worried about not being able to stay after graduation. The Trudeau government hopes, however, that these measures will reduce the number of students or student-related permits by 300,000 over the next three years. Added to that, Ottawa also wants to reduce the number of low-wage foreigners recruited by companies on a temporary basis. Welders and mechanics, among many others, employed to meet labour needs outside large cities, may not be able to renew their work permits in future. 

These are significant changes in overall immigration policy, in a country that is considered a leader in welcoming and integrating new arrivals. “There is a generalized political discourse less favourable to immigration around the world,” said Christina Clark-Kazak recently, professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. “What we hear everywhere now is to have controlled immigration. What is happening in the United States and the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, has now ended up having an impact on Canada.” 

The anti-immigration rhetoric often makes headlines in Europe, particularly since the beginning of the 2015 refugee crisis and more recently with the rise of the far right, as seen in Germany. But for Canada, restrictions on immigration all seems rather new. However, provinces and a fringe of the population have been calling for a reduction in immigration thresholds for months. High inflation, accentuated by a housing crisis across the country, are all factors fueling this anti-immigration sentiment. 

“It seems easy from a mathematical perspective, if you have 200 people for 100 houses, it’s a shortage. But it’s wrong mathematics,” said Anna Triandafyllidou from the Canada Excellence Research Chair on Migration and Integration at the Toronto Metropolitan University. “The housing situation is broader and more medium-to long-term than current immigration rises. It’s more related to abandoned public investment and letting housing developers make a lot of money from building luxury buildings rather than affordable houses. Temporary migrants or newcomers are not the problem.”

The call for a federal election in the coming months and the drop of the Liberals in polls against the Conservatives has also led to this shift in immigration policies, believes Clark-Kazak. “We are in a context where Trudeau’s party is increasingly criticized for immigration. People say that Canada is too open or receives too many people. Trudeau still feels a little vulnerable, so going further to the right, close to the conservative positions, will save them some votes.”

A pandemic effect?

If we go back a few years, Canada increased immigration quotas due to extremely strong pressures linked to the labour shortage in different sectors across the country. “Canada was missing more than 1 million workers,” Triandafyllidou remembers. “At the time, economists, banks, and big business were telling the government that they were leading the economy to its death and that businesses would start to leave if they didn’t have enough people.” 

Ottawa then stepped up its efforts on immigration, seen as key to helping strengthen the Canadian economy. With the average immigrant being young, this was seen as helping to tackle the challenges of an aging population. At the same time, Canada was also focusing on a strategy of recruiting talented international students to compete at the international level, mostly with the US, the UK, and Australia. 

The pandemic also led to high inflation in Canada, as has the energy crisis since the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The situation in Canada changed quite dramatically. We went from missing 1.1 million workers to having too many. [However] employment is in decline, there are housing shortages, and a crisis in postsecondary education. The same people [who] were crying and said we missed a million people in 2022, [are] now saying you flooded the country with people, you broke the immigration system,” said Triandafyllidou. Indeed, sixty percent of Canadians agree that Canada is admitting too many immigrants, according to a new Leger poll, the highest number on record this century.

At the same time, Canada has also been strongly criticized for its lack of humanitarian involvement, whether supporting efforts to end the violence in Haiti, to the closure of the unofficial Roxham Road crossing, and the poor reception of Palestinians since the Gaza war commenced. Ottawa, for example, has set a limit of only 5,000 visas for Palestinians with very specific criteria, which contrasts sharply with the reception of thousands of Ukrainians, Afghans and Syrians in the recent past. 

“The modification of the agreement with the United States for the closure of Roxham Road for asylum seekers was the first major change. Now we are seeing discretionary policies for Palestinians or Sudanese. These are only small programs that are very restrained, and we put a lot of pressure on the members of the family, whereas there were no criteria there for Ukrainians or Syrians. This calls into question the humanitarian image that Canada had before,” said Clark-Kazak. Several reports have also shown that the closure of Roxham Road did not solve the problem of stopping asylum seekers who have found other avenues to enter Canada. Ottawa, for example, brought back the visa requirement for Mexican travellers earlier this year to curb asylum seekers. More than 25,000 Mexicans applied for asylum in Canada last year, making Mexico the top source of asylum claims.

Impact on the image of Canada?

Throughout the world, Canada continues to inspire dreams, both for its opportunities for a better life and its quality of life. You only need to travel to realize the very positive image that Canada enjoys in the eyes of the world. But could this change? or is it already changing?

“I’m concerned, but also at the same time I’m trusting the reflection of Canadian society,” said Triandafyllidou. “The intention of people coming to Canada hasn’t changed. We have found in our research that people still see Canada as the best combination of options, to have a good life, a public health system, and a society that counts on solidarity and inclusion safety in many ways.” However, she believes that Canada needs to have an informed debate and a new narrative on the topic. 

Some already feel the consequences of these new measures. “We see less demand from international students because for them the message is that Canada may not be closed but less open to international students than in the past,” said Clark-Kazak, who is also the director of a master’s program at the University of Ottawa. “This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this. Since Confederation, there have been fluctuations in support for immigration and refugees, but this time it appears it will last for the long term,” she added. 

Another factor that could influence the future and direction of Canada is the upcoming federal election. The Conservatives are leading the polls and very often use the immigration argument to win votes. It remains to be seen whether this will be a question that Canadians will consider at the ballot box.