Canada’s politicians are fuelling the racist bandwagon, which is growing from governments
internationally. But the investing class is the real problem, argues John Clarke

The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has drastically reduced plans to increase the number of permanent residents allowed into Canada and it has done so in the face of a right-wing anti-immigrant backlash. The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller, announced the ‘slashing (of) the projected number of new permanent residents from 485,000 to 395,000 in 2025, with further cuts to 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.’

According to the CBC, the Liberals are aware that this change of plans ‘will cause a 0.2 per cent population decline over the next two years’ but they argue that this is necessary in order to ‘reduce the housing supply gap by approximately 670,000 units’ over the next few years. Miller stated during an interview that “I think we’ve realized importantly that we have to have a managed migration system that makes sense for everyone, including newcomers that we need to set up for success.”

Further linking immigration to Canada’s housing crisis and other social problems, Miller insisted that “Canadians that we hear at the door…expect us to have a controlled, managed migration plan that is ambitious, reflects what we need to do but also reflects the stress that flow has had on Canadians, on affordability.” Miller is well aware that ‘(r)ecent polls have shown that Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration have soured. An Abacus survey released last week found that more than half of respondents held a negative view of the immigration system.’

Alicia Backman-Beharry, an Alberta-based immigration lawyer, accurately contended that Miller’s measures represent “a big about-face. It is a big change in the direction that the Liberal government had projected to go.” She added that “I think it’s also political in nature. It was a plan I would have expected to see from (a) Conservative government.”

Political flashpoint

The Guardian correctly noted that, with a federal election fast approaching, the Liberals recognise that the immigration issue has become a ‘political flashpoint.’ Miller’s announcement, moreover, is linked to a broader set of initiatives and ‘Canada is taking steps, both official and unofficial, to curb the number of people coming to the country.’ For example, ‘the ratio of refused visitor visa applications to approved ones was higher in recent months than at any point since the height of the pandemic. Immigration officials rejected more applications than they approved in January, February, May and June 2024…At the same time, the number of approved study and work permits dropped.’

In this climate, the government is even moving to reduce the number of highly exploited ‘temporary workers’ that are allowed to enter Canada, under a system that a UN special rapporteur has deemed a ‘breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.’ The Liberals are now blocking the movement of these workers into sectors where the unemployment rate is 6% or higher.

The Conservative Party, which has moved sharply to the right under the leadership Pierre Poilievre, has pressed the Liberals very hard on the immigration issue and, sensing weakness, Poilievre has been only too happy to keep up the pressure. Far from offering any words of approval for the government’s measures, he responded in Trump like terms, suggesting that the Liberals were “radical and out of control” and declaring that they had “destroyed our immigration system.”

It should be stressed that Poilievre’s party seems very likely to emerge as the winner in the next election, which must be called in less than one year from now. The polls consistently show that there is strong backing for the Tories and a disastrous loss of support for the Liberals. Though the factors that are driving anti-immigrant initiatives cut much deeper than electoral calculations, there is no doubt that the motive of self-preservation has a lot to do with the Liberal’s about face on this issue.

Poilievre and his co-thinkers on the right are indeed the real architects of this initiative. The Conservative leader has articulated the absurd theory that a correct population balance is the key question when it comes to social well-being. According to the Financial Post, Poilievre feels that ‘the country needs to slow its soaring population growth to better align with the growth in housing, jobs and health care.’ He told reporters that “(w)e have to have smaller population growth, there’s no question about it.” He also claimed that Trudeau had been allowing new residents into Canada at “three times the rate of the housing stock.”

Poilievre is anxious to consolidate a following among conservative layers within Canada’s immigrant communities and he plays this card somewhat cautiously, avoiding the crude immigrant bashing associated with Donald Trump south of the border. However, some of his counterparts at the provincial level have gone further in this direction.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith emphatically called for very much more substantial cuts to immigration levels than the federal Liberals have enacted. She asserted that ‘(t)he federal government’s reckless and irresponsible open-border immigration policies, permitting almost two million newcomers to enter Canada last year alone, have led to unsustainable financial pressures on all provinces.’

Smith added that ‘a mere 105,000 new permanent residents will not solve these pressures when they are bringing in almost two million additional people annually.’ This figure of two million includes those who enter Canada without permanent status but Smith is quite content to blur that distinction in order to advance false claims of social breakdown in the face of a massive inflow of immigrants.

Right-wing narrative

It is essential to challenge the Malthusian falsehoods woven into the right-wing narrative. An article that was published in Canadian Dimension in May, countered such assertions when it comes to the housing crisis. It pointed out that ‘(t)here are now 40 million inhabitants in Canada (2.5 million of these are temporary residents, one million are here on study permits, and another million are hyper-exploited temporary foreign workers)…we have more than enough homes for citizens and non-citizens alike—all 40 million of us. The trouble isn’t that there are too many people or too few houses, the trouble is who owns the houses and why.’

The article argued that ‘(t)he investor class is holding our homes ransom. They are extorting vast sums from renters and pressing those who cannot pay into homelessness…This is not a population crisis; this is a commodity bubble created by investor enthusiasm and avarice.’ Similarly, the notion that the lack of decent paying jobs or the impacts of austerity on healthcare and other public services would be magically remedied if immigration were curtailed is a destructive myth of the political right that has been allowed to gain far too much traction.

The measures that the Trudeau Liberals are taking are very much part of an international pattern. Donald Trump, gleefully posted on social media that ‘even Justin Trudeau wants to close Canada’s borders’ and took the opportunity to rail against the supposed ‘open borders’ policy of his Democratic rivals. Contrary to these assertions, the Biden Harris administration has actually implemented, as Amnesty International has put it, ‘cruel border policies that create heartbreaking human rights and humanitarian crises.’

Not surprisingly, Labour under Keir Starmer has been more than ready to accept this prevailing trend. Open Democracy has argued that the new Border Security Bill that was announced in the King’s Speech ‘is just as racist as the Rwanda plan’ and that it ‘is part of a turn towards approaching migration through counter-terror, making space for even greater surveillance of and denial of rights for migrants, including refugees.’

The same approach is also being taken in Germany, with border restrictions being implemented that the Guardian suggests ‘deal a heavy blow to Europe’s prized free movement and could severely test EU unity.’ Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, left no room for doubt as to the government’s motivations when she asserted that the measures being taken would ‘protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime.’ Marcus Engler of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research observed that ‘(t)he intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and to potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here.’

A virulent and highly dangerous effort to criminalise immigrants and to blame them for economic instability and the impacts of austerity is underway in a range of countries. It is vital that working class unity and solidarity be advanced in the face of this attack and that all anti-immigrant policies and measures be challenged and defeated.