Here’s What the Liberal Cuts to Immigration Will Mean

In politics, you are often vilified when you admit a mistake. In the case of the Liberal government’s official announcement Friday that immigration intake for the next two years would be greatly reduced, the criticism began the day before, when the official announcement was leaked.

The highlights are that Canada will accept about 100,000 fewer permanent immigrants in each of 2025 and 2026, down to about 400,000 from the current 500,000. Temporary worker and student permits will be reduced significantly, by about one million permits in the same two-year period. Projected processing of refugee claims and family reunification applications will also be slightly reduced.

There is much detail in the announcement to parse through and contextualize.

If you break it, it’s yours

The Liberals’ brand has been pro-immigration for at least the last three decades during which I have practised immigration law and advised on immigration policy.

Reducing immigration levels will be a hit to the Liberal brand, but I doubt that the Conservatives will pick up the pro-immigration baton and run with it. Rather, leader Pierre Poilievre will focus on attacking the shift in policy without proposing any tangible alternatives.

For the Liberals, there were few choices left. Temporary residents in excess of one million were, rightly or wrongly, linked to the housing crisis, inflation and rising income disparity in Canada. The COVID pandemic reduced the federal government’s plans to manage immigration levels over the past six years. Temporary residents who were stranded in Canada during COVID were provided with easily extendable work permits and student permits.

The short-term fix served its purpose, but over the past 24 months the rules have been tightened. Now many workers and students inside Canada find themselves running out of legal options to remain.

When temporary becomes permanent

As Canada is discovering, the only thing “temporary” about temporary permits is the title. For the holders of the permits, their intentions are often to reside permanently in Canada, one way or the other. With over one million temporary permit holders having few options to permanently remain in Canada, many are overstaying their permit validity period.

This “illegal” problem will grow over time as this demographic becomes more and more desperate. In addition, refugee claims made by temporary residents are on the increase. As of June 30, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada had over 200,000 claims in its backlog. The major source countries are India, Mexico, Nigeria, Colombia and Bangladesh.

Pending immigration-related appeals to the Federal Court of Canada are also at an all-time high.

As more stories about desperation surface, the growing ugly mood about Canada admitting too many immigrants or being too lax in removing overstays will only grow. The long-cherished consensus, at least by some, that Canada is open to immigration, is beginning to crack. I can only imagine it getting worse in the short term. Canada is not immune from the anti-immigrant winds that are blowing across our neighbours to the south and our allies across the Atlantic.

No more golden eggs

For Canada’s private and public post-secondary institutions, foreign students, to paraphrase Aesop’s fable, were the geese that laid the golden eggs. Over the past decades foreign students have added billions to the coffers of education institutions as provincial governments underfunded them. Foreign students paid significantly more in tuition fees than domestic students.

Everyone looked away as the numbers, and their attendant problems, grew. Many private schools became “the diploma equivalent of puppy mills,” said Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

Now, as the foreign student visa regime is tightening up, Canada’s universities and colleges are facing huge deficits.

The very people who claim that Canada has too many foreign students may soon discover that they and their families will be facing increased post-secondary student fees. In return, they will receive reduced programs and services. The federal immigration cuts will translate into a provincial jurisdictional headache that few provinces are ready to deal with. Cue the pictures of angry premiers pointing fingers towards Ottawa, asking for more money.

The past is prologue to the future

Canadians, like those in many rich western economies, have a disconnect between the foods they eat, the services they cherish and the role of foreign workers. The hothouse-grown vegetable, the fast-food delivery and the restaurant meal that many take for granted are often provided by foreign workers on temporary work permits. They live precarious lives, tethered to their employers. This is not a new phenomenon; it can be traced to the founding of Canada.

Recently the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery issued a report taking the government of Canada to task for its treatment of foreign workers.

As Canada moves to limit temporary work permits, the high-skilled workers might not be as affected. But for the low-skilled workers and those foreign students who currently have work permits, the impacts will be profound — lost jobs and limited future pathways to permanent immigration.

Wait for industry groups to increase public lobbying that their sector should be spared any cuts in foreign worker permits.

The cycle of increasing foreign worker permits, reducing them and increasing them again has been going on since at least the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper. Do not expect this cycle to change very soon.

What’s ahead

Canada cannot shelter itself from the movement of migrants, permitted and unpermitted. More than 200 million people are on the move in the world as migrants. Regional wars are leading to millions more on the move, with uncertain destinations. Climate change will create even more displacement.

Rest assured that Canadian immigration policy will continue to be a very contested topic over the next decades.