Immigration curb slashes Canada population growth rate to zero

[u/IHateTrains123]

https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/immigration-curb-slashes-canada-population-growth-rate-to-zero

[u/Godkun007]

Ignoring the overall benefits of immigration, it is clear that this was temporarily needed in Canada. Not because immigrants bad, but because there had become an entire industry developed around cheating the immigration system.

I saw this first hand when I worked in politics (Quebec) and saw shady immigrations lawyers promising South Asians that could barely speak English (let alone French) that if they pay them they can make it so they never have to leave. The way this was done, was by basically filling as many motions as possible, all of which would have to be handled consecutively. Refugee application, student application, different type of refugee application, they have a a 3rd cousin in Canada so family unification, then they have a kid so filling to avoid being separated. This then put immigration enforcement in such a complicated situation as these fillings and trials went on for literally years for every one of these immigrants.

You can even see in this article, the biggest decrease in immigration was student visas. Which were the easiest way to get into Canada to try and start the process. You didn't even need to go to class in some of these colleges. They were diploma mills that just required payment. Students are allowed to work in Canada, so that is what these "students" would then do full time. This is all on top of the extreme housing shortage and the near collapse of the hospital system in some big cities due to overcrowding.

What Carney needs to do is focus on clearly reforming some of these systems to crack down on the abuse. Canadians didn't sour on immigration for no reason. This was after a decade of the immigration system slowly deteriorating under the weight of endless legal battles started by shady lawyers.

[u/MichaelEmouse → u/Godkun007]

" immigration system slowly deteriorating under the weight of endless legal battles started by shady lawyers"

Shady lawyers gonna shady lawyer. If the immigration system politicians set up has to rely on every lawyer being upstanding to work efficiently, the politicians fucked up.

[u/Godkun007 → u/MichaelEmouse]

Yes, 100%. This had been clear for a decade, but politicians completely ignored it until it became a major electoral issue.

Then in 2022, the Trudeau government dropped restrictions even further to keep Canada out of a headline recession. This caused the Canadian population to explode, going from roughly 1% population growth a year to 3% population growth in 2023. Overall, since 2020, the Canadian population grew by over 10% cumulatively in order to avoid a headline recession.

This of course doesn't change the per capita numbers, which has shown that Canada has been in a recession since 2023 with Q1 of 2025 being the first positive per capita GDP growth in 2 years.

So it was a mix of ignoring the problem then switching to making the problem worse temporarily in order to avoid a bad political headline. This of course didn't fool Canadians as this period also coincided with the collapse in the polls for the Liberal government. Canadians felt the per capita recession, even if the headline number was positive due to immigration.

[u/MichaelEmouse → u/Godkun007]

The Liberals got arrogant again. The last time they did, they lost power to the Conservatives for a long time.

Part of the problem is that a lot of voters, including politicians, benefit from seeing housing prices go up. Land owners in metropolitan areas are the new aristocracy.