The real issue is Canada's demographic decline. Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. We're not getting rid of these people, they will become citizens if they choose to. Personally, I doubt that any announcement by the government will be anything but a temporary hold, to be returned to high levels post-Liberal election victory. All of these people have already been educated (to varying levels of quality) so on paper, they fill out the population pyramid.<p>The problem is the policy driving it is bad. Rather than high-skilled workers, we're letting in low-to-mid-skilled young people. On paper, this plugs the demographic hole. But a lack of planning on infrastructure (housing, etc.) means that prices of those assets has gone through the roof. This has created poor economic incentives to invest in labour intensive industries and housing rather than the innovative, productive part of the economy. What happens when you want to open a software company but can't find workers? Maybe you open a house painting company instead, if the money on offer is high enough.<p>We shouldn't blame the immigrant -- they are trying to improve their lives. But you definitely can blame poor policy.
> He will announce further changes soon to restrict students’ off-campus work hours<p>He just extended the “temporary” increase to the weekly hours limit 2 months ago…<p>And expanded it to a larger group of study visa students.<p><a href="https://www.cicnews.com/2023/12/canada-extending-international-student-off-campus-work-hours-policy-until-april-2024-1241764.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cicnews.com/2023/12/canada-extending-internation...</a><p>He doesn’t even need to start by changing anything, he could have started by doing nothing and let his own department’s exemptions expire.
This looks like the result of an abuse of the foreign students visa as work visas, partly due to leftover pandemic era policy. In a typical government response, instead of actually fixing the loophole, they use the blunt weapon of cutting visa quotas, and then make generalized comments against foreign labor.
500k -> 1.1M foreign students since end of covid. Truely absurd. I hope this is 5th dimension chess to con Indians on false hope of PR to inject a few years of expensive international tuition to pay for covid response. Doesn't make sense to let them work and possibly send remittances back home (as if cost of living is not high enough) because that's what you get when you start brain draining more than those who can afford to buy citizenship.
The world must end reliance on cheap labour or we're always going to have slums next to the factories that make our clothes.<p>Can you have a population of 8 billion humans with something close to a modern lifestyle... we can try I guess
The root causes of all this is the fact that way back in like the 1990s in order to balance the budget the Fed Liberals under Chretien did big time austerity and cut transfers to the Provinces, and then the Provinces reacted by doing big time austerity and cutting budgets to post secondary education. Then post secondary education reacted to that budget hole by increasing the amount of foreign students they brought in to cover the shortfall.<p>This continued on and on and at some point folks really started to realize these high foreign student tuitions were an exploitable, profitable business, and we started seeing more and more private for-profit diploma mill style schools bringing in foreign students. The students paid a high price for useless hotel management degrees but in exchange got a boosted chance at permanent residency.<p>At some point the current government realized that they had a labour shortage and that all these foreign students milling about getting useless degrees were a source of cheap labour. Accordingly they relaxed rules and allowed them to work more hours.<p>Really poor and gross decision making all around dating back decades.<p>In 2014 the current PM, when he was in third place in the polls, wrote a scathing op-ed against the related Temporary Foreign Worker program but after being elected did nothing but make everything worse.<p><a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-how-to-fix-the-broken-temporary-foreign-worker-program/article_c27f214f-1fa2-5fdf-af61-5a7642e4eb7c.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-...</a><p>Given that the Conservatives were the ones that kick started the abuses of the TFW program. It's hard to believe either Liberals or Conservatives are credible on this file.
Challenge 1. "Soaring rents and house prices"
Challenge 2. Lots of immigrants wanting a decent job and competing with existent population to apply for these.<p>In a country with as much undeveloped land as Canada has, I think, there might be a win-win solution to be had here? ;)<p>OK ok, to be fair it takes a little while to train as builders, electricians, plasterers etc etc, but it does seem like Canada has the solution right in front of them. Just build a couple more Torontos, and, problem solved?
Contrary opinion: well, we like paying less! We get angry on high prices, swan at deals, and then get mad that businesses want to pay less too!<p>Something has to give - either the buyers get shafted, or the workers. I don't believe that margins will be the first to get a cut - margins go to the wealthiest of the bunch who're running the show :)
I’m an immigrant. I’ll be the first in line to agree that <i>all</i> the demands (and the specifics of those demands: personal space, hygiene, clothing, noise etc) for assimilation by western societies that I’ve ever heard re: immigrants, are reasonable - assuming such luxuries can be afforded (nobody crams themselves 8 to a room <i>by choice</i>).<p>But, people aren’t robots whose movements are controlled by an on-off switch. The government introduced the means for people to arrive and work, and so the people arrived. They are continuing to arrive because the policies have not been updated yet. How is it the immigrants’ fault? Why the hate and the attacks on their dignity & humanity?<p>The nonstop online vitriol hurts me deeply to read - nowhere is “safe” - Reddit, HN, Instagram… the hate spewers seemingly spend all their time spewing on these platforms to manipulate opinions and tap into the fundamental atavistic psychological flaws of the human mind.