Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government will be putting a restriction on the number of temporary residents entering Canada this fall for the first time in an attempt to address the ongoing housing crisis and control inflation.
Currently, Canada has about 2.5 million temporary residents, making up about 6.2 percent of the total population. This group includes students, asylum seekers, and temporary workers. Immigration Minister Marc Miller aims to decrease this number to around five percent over the next three years.
Miller will consult with provincial and territorial counterparts to establish an annual target for temporary residents, similar to the process the federal government currently uses for permanent residents in Canada’s annual levels planning.
At a press briefing in Ottawa, Miller stated, “As global conditions change, as our labour market tightens and as the types of skillsets we look for in our future workforce evolves, so should our policies.” “We need to be more strategic in how we assess demand and the international students and temporary foreign workers that we are welcoming.”
At present, 42 percent of temporary residents are students, nine percent are temporary workers under the temporary foreign workers program, while 44 percent are workers under the international mobility program, including post-graduate work permits, spousal work permits for students and workers arriving through inter-company transfers or humanitarian pathways, such as those fleeing Ukraine.
Canada depends on immigrants to strengthen its economy and replace its aging population. However, the notable population growth in the past two years, mainly due to a rise in temporary residents during a housing shortage, has led economists and think tanks to urge Ottawa to provide more clarity on how it plans to accommodate hundreds of thousands of newcomers annually.
Introducing targets for temporary residents is the federal government’s latest effort to address the situation. Last year, Canada implemented a two-year cap for new international students and restricted eligibility for work permits for post-graduates and their spouses. Additionally, the government chose not to increase the number of permanent residents it aims to bring in from 2026 onward.
Miller emphasized that the ultimate goal is to ensure a “well-managed, sustainable immigration system based on needs rather than prioritizing profitability over integrity and sustainability.”
According to a report released Thursday by the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada should reshape its immigration policy rather than pursuing a “quick fix” to address its declining labor productivity issue, the Bank of Nova Scotia said in a report released Thursday.
The report urged the government to invest more in providing newcomers with the tools they need to increase productivity and to focus on economic migrants.
The report presented two scenarios in which Canada’s productivity could have remained stable instead of declining in the past two years. One was to limit annual population growth to 350,000 instead of over a million. The report also suggested that a significant 15 percent increase in business investment could have achieved the same outcome by equipping people with the necessary tools to enhance efficiency.
- Foreign workers on temporary contracts are increasingly being hired for jobs with low wages
- Canada's job gains are twice what was expected
- New immigrants to Canada are lowering their expectations
Rebekah Young, one of the two economists who wrote the report, said, “Everyone talks about productivity and output per employee, because it’s an indicator of well-being and quality of life. If that decreases over time, everyone will be worse off. And it will take some time before we notice it.”
Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2023, but its GDP per capita, which divides the GDP figure by population, has declined in five out of the past six quarters, according to economists.
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