Canada’s Corporate Welfare Class

Nearly half the international students who have been accepted by Canadian schools are being rejected by visa officers, and some public colleges in Ontario are seeing thousands of the would-be students they’ve admitted turned away.

New numbers analyzed by the Star offer a snapshot of the behind-the-scenes workings of this country’s international student system — a system that has become a major revenue source for post-secondary schools, but which critics, including the federal immigration minister, say has “lost its integrity.”

I predict immigration is going to be one of the biggest issues of 2024 because so many other issues – housing, employment, per capita GDP, health care and school crowding – are affected by it.

That means we will have to have an intelligent public debate about just how much immigration is the right amount. And that won’t be easy, because anyone who dares say there is too much immigration can count on being labelled a racist or a xenophobe. You neither have to be a bigot nor fearful of foreigners to understand the math, though.

The Canadian economy experienced a contraction “unprecedented outside a recession,” according to a new analysis from National Bank Financial, a trend driven, at least in part, by a population spike that has squeezed per capita GDP growth.

The bank’s monthly economic analysis says that “signs of an economic slowdown have been multiplying.”

A United Nations official who said that part of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program constitutes “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery” is standing by his comments, saying some agricultural and low-wage workers are subjected to unacceptable conditions, including surveillance.

Tomoya Obokata, the UN’s special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, said in an interview he found some temporary migrants were working in appalling conditions in Canada, and could not escape their employers because their work permits tied them to a single employer.

I don’t often agree with the UN but on this matter I do.

Trudeau’s temporary foreign worker program along with the foreign student scam are designed to harm Canadian citizens by allowing the corporate welfare class to depress wages and import as many indentured servants as they please.

The Trudeau Liberals have begun to find words to describe how they broke Canada’s immigration system, which was once a model for the world. But they have yet to start fixing what they broke. Instead, the breaking continues. At breakneck speed.

Statistics Canada’s quarterly estimate of the country’s non-permanent population shows it rose to 2½ million this fall, from 1.7 million a year earlier. At this rate, the number of temporary residents could grow to around four million by the end of next year – roughly 10 per cent of the Canadian population.

This is unprecedented. In 2000, Canada had 227,000 temporary residents.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

Canada’s rapid population growth is putting pressure on inflation and further interest rate hikes are a distinct possibility despite predictions saying otherwise, according to a Scotiabank economist.

Derek Holt, vice-president and head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank, remarked in a Dec. 19 note evaluating the latest inflation data that “Canada’s torrid rate of population growth is adding to inflationary pressures.”