Michael Taube: Poilievre's right — Canada needs a hard cap on immigration

Yahoo

18-07-2025

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has long recognized what the Liberals have only started to acknowledge: immigration levels in Canada are too high and unsustainable. He has a plan to get things back under control, and it's a sensible political strategy to take.
Poilievre suggested a new immigration policy for the Conservatives in June. 'We want severe limits on population growth to reverse the damage the Liberals did to our system,' he said at a press conference last month. 'The population has been growing out of control, our border has been left wide open. This has caused the free flow of drugs, illegal migration, human trafficking and much worse.'
Global News asked him to elaborate on his remarks at a press conference in Ottawa this week. 'In order to fix the problem,' he replied, 'we've got to put very hard caps on immigration levels. We need more people leaving than coming for the next couple of years … so our country can actually catch up.'
In addition, Poilievre pointed out that, 'We've had population growth of roughly a million a year under the Liberals, while we barely build 200,000 homes. Our job market is stalled and yet we are adding more people to the workforce. Our young people are facing generational highs in unemployment because … multinational corporations are giving jobs to low-wage temporary foreign workers.'
He's right. Conservatives recognize the importance of immigration on everything from promoting diversity to achieving economic success, but they also recognize that Canada simply can't handle the financial burden that the annual influx of immigration has caused over the past decade of Liberal rule.
It wasn't always this way. Statistics Canada's 2016 paper, '150 years of immigration in Canada,' noted that the number of landed immigrants since the 1990s had 'remained relatively high, with an average of approximately 235,000 new immigrants per year.' The highest tally ever recorded to that point was in 1913, when 'more than 400,000 immigrants arrived in the country.'
Canada experienced a steady level of population growth through immigration for more than a century. Until Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister, that is.
Trudeau's early years actually didn't witness a significant spike in immigration. A total of 296,350 immigrants arrived on our shores in 2016, while the number decreased slightly to 286,480 in 2017. Nothing out of the ordinary, all things considered.
But in 2016, the federal government's advisory council on economic growth suggested that immigration targets could be increased by 150,000 annually over the next five years. It specifically recommended Ottawa take a 'gradual approach to scaling annual immigration to the recommended 450,000 level over the next 5 years.'
This was all the evidence Trudeau needed to follow in his late father's footsteps as a champion of immigration and acquire more votes from appreciative new Canadians for elections to come.
The Liberals increased Canada's immigration level to 321,040 in 2018 and 341,180 in 2019. It dropped to 184,600 in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but rose to 406,055 in 2021, 437,630 in 2022, 471,820 in 2023 and 482,640 in 2024.
Trudeau eventually admitted that Ottawa 'didn't get the balance quite right' and announced a pause on population growth. But it was too little, too late. His immigration policies have caused numerous problems, including an affordability crisis, skyrocketing house prices and fewer job prospects.
Poilievre, like most sensible Canadians, knows this to be true. We're in a financial hole and need to start digging ourselves out.
As an example, Canada has built an average of 227,130 new homes annually since 2015, while the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation noted last month that, 'Housing starts must nearly double to around 430,000 to 480,000 units per year until 2035 to meet projected demand.' You can't let more people into Canada if there's nowhere for them to live. That's common sense, ladies and gentlemen.
The solution to getting our shaky economy back under control is to follow Poilievre's suggestion and establish a hard cap on immigration levels. We need to keep immigration at a very low level for a couple of years to help get our financial house in order.
Once that's been accomplished, immigration levels could be gradually increased. Not to the ridiculous numbers that Trudeau set, but a more sustainable level that allows all Canadians, including immigrants, to live, work, prosper and achieve success.
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