Yes, they are limiting the government assisted ones, but not the privately sponsored. If you take the whole number with protected persons aswell it is 76k, almost the same number of Federal High Skilled awarded for this year.
Those numbers are completely off the charts and unsustainable to accommodate nor integrate. The fact that Pierre Poilievre hasn't commented on it yet, you bet there is no support on this but he can't make the right arguments at this time and won't risk to turn the direction of the debate from inflation, to immigration.
Read the wonderfully short-explained article below from a well informed individual to really understand the game:
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/macdougall-liberals-immigration-policy-could-set-a-trap-for-pierre-poilievre
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MacDougall:
Liberals' immigration policy could set a trap for Pierre Poilievre
Canada hopes to boost its annual intake of immigrants to 500,000 by 2025. It's an opportunity — and a problem — for the Conservatives.
Has Justin Trudeau found his wedge issue for the next election, whenever that might be?
Well, the ground has certainly been prepared for a wedging, following Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s announcement that Canada is seeking to boost its annual intake of immigrants to 500,000 by 2025, a 16 per cent increase from the current 431,000 per annum. In reality, the figure is set to be even higher, as the new federal target is only for permanent residents, which doesn’t include students or work permit holders. That’s a lot of people. Are the Liberals trying to bait Pierre Poilievre’s more nativist Conservatives into a debate over immigration? And will the Tory leader take the bait?
On its face, the Liberal plan to open the taps wider makes total sense. There are more than one million job vacancies across the country and business organizations in every province are begging for more bodies. If Canadians haven’t bred the next-gen workforce, there’s only one other place to look.
This is why, from 2016 to 2021, immigrants accounted for four-fifths of Canada’s labour-force growth. Whatever the source of new workers, the fact is, the Canadian economy simply won’t grow at the rate the country needs until more working cylinders are in place and firing. But the how and why matters, and here it’s not clear the Liberals have much of a plan.
“Canada needs more people,” Fraser told the audience assembled for his policy launch in a Toronto trade school. Despite the urban setting, Fraser actually wants more of Canada’s new arrivals to arrive in places more rural, what with Canada’s cities being jammed to the teeth and all. Well, good luck, as they say, with that.
That’s because much of Canada’s future opportunity — like that of most other major developed economies — lies in our urban areas. And that’s where the new arrivals will want to be. And it’s in those same urban areas that multiple levels of government have failed — repeatedly, over generations — to improve the provision of housing, public transport, and other civic infrastructure.
As a result, our cities are becoming tougher and more expensive places to live, including for immigrants, with fewer able to get on the housing ladder. If politicians are wondering why not enough Canadians are bearing offspring, they could do worse than look at the sky-high cost of living in our cities for their answers. This is, in fact, territory Poilievre has been eager to mine, even if he has no concrete solutions either.
And so, while inviting more permanent residents in the short-term is sensible with the right support, adding more people to our major urban areas without a better plan to house them is a guaranteed short-term headache on affordability, and a medium-to-long term one on inclusion. There is a short-term economic critique to high immigration — centred on the cost of living — for a skilled and reasonable political operator like Poilievre to make ahead of the next election, if he is that way inclined. But it’s also a third rail, if grasped incorrectly.
As Poilievre will know, even the most reasoned economic critique of high levels of immigration leaves its maker exposed to accusations of racism. This goes double when Liberals are available to make the accusation. Indeed, this is the trap the Liberals are hoping they’ve laid. Poilievre will have to gauge how much pain the cost-of-living is causing before he proceeds with an attack and leaves himself open to cries of nativism.
Poilievre will also know the nativists will speak up because the cultural impacts of high immigration are real. To pick one example, just look how little we speak of French versus English these days versus broader claims of racism and lack of inclusion. Immigrants and permanent residents already account for 23 per cent of Canada’s population. How much higher can that figure go without prompting more serious ructions?
Fortunately for Poilievre, the answer to this problem also lies in the country’s economic opportunities: as long as Canadians feel there is opportunity and employment for all, they will be more comfortable with mass arrivals. If they don’t, then they won’t.
It’s that simple — and it has always been the Canadian way on immigration.
Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.
