We’ve already admitted more foreign students into Canada than we did in the same time period last year.
In the middle of a housing crisis.
At a time when health systems across the country struggle to hire enough doctors and nurses to care for the population that is already here.
What’s worse, we aren’t just increasing the number of foreign students, we are also increasing immigration on all fronts and even the number of people claiming asylum in Canada is up over last year. If you thought you heard the Liberal minister in charge of all of this say something about capping numbers, you’d be right.
The problem is, he hasn’t done that yet even as his boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has admitted the problem.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive spike in temporary immigration, whether it’s temporary foreign workers or whether it’s international students, in particular, that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb,” Trudeau said at the beginning of April.
What’s been done since then?
Nothing.
As National Post first reported, between Jan. 1 and May 31, the Canadian government approved 216,620 study permits compared to 200,205 during the same period in 2023. For those keeping track, 2023 was a record year for foreign student admissions into Canada with more than 680,000 permits granted last year.
In January of this year, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the system was being abused.
“Enough is enough,” Miller said. “Through the decisive measures announced today, we are striking the right balance for Canada and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system while setting students up for the success they hope for.”
If that balance is coming, the numbers aren’t showing it.
Meanwhile, from January through May we took in 30,785 compared to 28,980 in the same period for 2023. Our immigration target for permanent residents in 2023 was 465,000 and we brought in 471,550.
A decade ago we were bringing in what was then considered a historic high of just over 250,000 per year and this year we will likely bring in double that.
Now, when you add all the different ways we bring people in, it’s a staggering figure. According to the Statistics Canada’s population clock which tracks growth in real time, our current population as of writing is 41,481,200.
On Dec. 19, 2023 when I wrote about our growing population, the clock stood at 40,720,342 meaning we’ve added 760,858 people in seven months or an average of 109,000 per month.
Again, all in a housing crisis and a health-care crisis.
Bringing in people on scale, faster than we can absorb them to use Trudeau’s terminology, means housing costs rise and health care wait times grow longer. Then there is the economic impact of such massive and uncoordinated growth.
A recent report from The Royal Bank found that Canada’s per-capita household spending is down, and that per capita GDP growth has declined in six of the last seven quarters.
“Canada’s economy might not be in recession but it feels like one,” the report stated.
Our population growth is masking the weaknesses in the Canadian economy.
“Surging population growth has prevented outright declines in Canadian gross domestic product, but per-person output is falling, and the unemployment rate is rising like it usually only would be during a recession,” RBC said.
So, we have a housing crisis, that is being made worse by a lack of supply and increased demand due to immigration, but that immigration is also masking a recession that would be taking place if it weren’t for all the consumer spending of newcomers.
Meanwhile, unemployment is rising in large part because we add more people to the workforce each month. StatsCan has been warning for the last year that population growth is outstripping job growth.
It’s a fine mess we find ourselves in, one created entirely by the policies of the Trudeau government.