Immigration Minister Marc Miller made the media rounds on the weekend promising to think about – maybe, perhaps, possibly – capping the number of international students Canada accepts, and pinning the blame for an “out of control” problem on others.
“Well, we’ll consider it. We’ll consider it, and we’ll continue to consider it,” Mr. Miller told CTV’s Question Period. “If provinces don’t do their jobs, we’re ready to do it.”
OTTAWA – Canada is good at pointing fingers at other countries but is missing in action on the international scene when it is most needed, said former Liberal deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister John Manley on the podcast The Global Exchange.
Manley, who famously said two decades ago that Canada cannot sit at the G8 table and then excuse itself to go to the washroom when the waiter arrives with the bill, was asked if the country is now pulling its weight on the international scene during an episode recorded with former Quebec premier Jean Charest and former Conservative defence minister Peter MacKay.
Link fixed
As a teenager in Beijing, I attended an international high school for students who wanted to go to university in Canada. My parents thought I’d have a better education in Canada, which they’d heard was a safe country with more affordable tuition than the U.S. In Grade 12, I did a half-year exchange to Bathurst, New Brunswick. I fell in love with the small-city vibe there—the population was only 15,000, compared to 21.7 million in Beijing. The experience made me realize that I didn’t like bigger cities. Everyone was so friendly, and there were lots of French speakers, which I thought was charming.
Pretty bad when they start preferring Smog City.
Canada’s economy has been making headlines for leading the G7, but many aren’t feeling the effects. That’s because gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has barely moved. Rather than growing the economy through economic improvements, Canada has only added more consumers through immigration. Adjusting for population, US households have seen their economic picture grow 10x faster over the past decade. The OECD previously warned Canada was heading into dangerous territory with their reliance on a debt-driven housing bubble.
The Trudeau government was elected in 2015 based in part on a new approach to government policy, promising greater prosperity for Canadians through short-term deficit spending, lower taxes for most Canadians, and a more direct and active role for government in economic development. However, the result has been economic stagnation and a marked deterioration in the country’s finances. If Canada is to restore its economic and fiscal health, Ottawa must enact fundamental policy reform.
The Trudeau government has significantly increased spending from $256.2 billion in 2014-15 to a projected $449.8 billion in 2023-24 (excluding debt interest costs) to expand existing programs and create new programs.
When he testified before a House of Commons committee on foreign interference in Canadian elections last year, David Morrison, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, said that in his experience no item of intelligence paints “a full or concrete or actionable picture.”
… But the Liberal Party since the days of Clifford Sifton in the 1890s has counted on immigrant voters for support. And between 2001 and 2021, the Muslim share of Canada’s population grew to 5 per cent from 2 per cent, even as the Jewish share of the population decreased slightly, to just below 1 per cent.
Mr. Trudeau’s promise during the 2015 election campaign to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada helped him win that election. Immigrant voters, many of them Muslim, in suburban ridings surrounding Toronto and Vancouver, helped the Liberals squeak through in the 2019 and 2021 elections. Now in the wake of the Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7 and the severity of Israel’s response in Gaza, the Liberal caucus is divided.
Canada is caught in a “population trap” and needs to significantly rein in immigration to escape it, National Bank of Canada economists said on Monday, one of several such critiques to emerge from Bay Street in recent days.
In a report, National Bank economists Stéfane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme said that “staggering” population growth is stretching the country’s absorptive capacity, notably seen in residential construction that is nowhere near sufficient to house all those newcomers.
Canada has been shaped by large-scale immigration. With the exception of Indigenous Peoples, the vast majority of Canadians today are either immigrants or descendants thereof. Our nation has thrived as a pluralistic and multiethnic society, built through the gradual integration of people from around the world.
While this is largely a good news story it should not obscure a hard truth: in the 21st century, the challenges associated with immigration are vastly different from those of 50 or 100 years ago, and until recently policymakers have been unwilling to discuss immigration policy accordingly. These challenges can be broadly categorized into three areas: economic impact; infrastructure capacity; and cultural friction.
George Orwell wondered why it was that in decisive moments during the 1930s British statesmen always managed to do the “wrong thing with so unerring an instinct.”
The Trudeau government is treading in these footsteps.
It took the Liberals days to craft a statement on their position on Israel being accused of genocide by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.
The story of the Trudeau government has been one of storm winds repeatedly knocking them off course.
In their first mandate, it was the Trump presidency. In their second, it was COVID. Coming out of the 2021 election, the Liberals no doubt hoped their third mandate would be their chance to make up for lost time — but…War! Downtown Ottawa is occupied! Foreign interference! State-sponsored assassination! More war!
Over the weekend, a cluster of approximately thirty-six demonstrators gathered at the residence of a known public figure, Mélanie Joly, setting up a tent and using a loudspeaker to express accusations of complicity in an alleged ‘genocide.’ The act was not well-received by the public, particularly on social media platforms, where it faced widespread criticism. Several public figures and politicians didn’t hold back in condemning the strategy of protesting at a private residence.
Let’s see the Liberals can implement a cruel mass immigration policy that;
… makes rent so unaffordable that Canada’s homeless population is ever growing and the dream of home ownership is destroyed,
… creates a strain on limited healtcare resources,
… pushes seniors into abject poverty,
… depresses wages,
… destroys the nation’s GDP,
… destroys the economy through their Net-Zero Tyranny,
… destroys the social fabric by importing incompatible cultures who fight out their ethnic and religious hatreds in our streets.
I could go on but you know the litany of disaster the LPC has inflicted on Canada.
Joly is lucky she wasn’t tarred and feathered. I say let her and her fellow LPC MP’s enjoy what they have subjected others to.
Palestine supporters in Toronto, Canada, take to the streets to express solidarity with Gaza and urge an immediate end to the Israeli genocide in the besieged strip.#GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/rLnn1F1OB1
— Palestine Highlights (@PalHighlight) January 15, 2024
Poor Joly!
Breaking: Montrealers rally at Foreign Affairs Minister @melaniejoly‘s home to call for an end to Canada’s military and diplomatic support for Israeli genocide. pic.twitter.com/tjIWLBgFpc
— hussan (@hussansk) January 13, 2024
For a brief moment, it appeared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had come out against South Africa’s ludicrous genocide case against Israel. Not as forcefully as other countries, but just enough to show our nation stood with its longtime ally.
That sentiment turned out to be fleeting. Let’s examine why.
“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win,” said Chris Christie as he announced the end of his presidential campaign before the first votes were cast in the Republican primaries.
The premise of the remark is not highly contested, that success in politics requires a level of dishonesty. Christie thus characterized his campaign’s lack of success as the price paid for honesty.
The Trudeau government was warned that their rapid push for higher and higher immigration numbers was having a negative impact on housing and health care across the country. A presentation to the government in 2022 warned of the problems but rather than rethinking or adjusting their policy they pushed ahead.
