Immigration plan: a reversal from previous announcements
By Joan Janzen
The sign said: I’m getting stronger with age. I can now lift $100 worth of groceries with one hand.
There’s truth in that statement as we watch prices and situations change around us. Brad Wall, former Premier of Saskatchewan, is now retired and watching those changes take place. He served from 2007 until 2018 and was recently interviewed on the Shaun Newman podcast. Shaun asked Brad, “As a political nerd who has spent his life in politics, what helps formulate your viewpoint on watching politics play out?”
Brad responded by suggesting two important questions people need to ask. The first is, what do you want for your family from the government? The second is, what would you like them to stay away from?
“We want a party that has policies that lift people up, not bring people down. A party that has a platform whose commitments lift you and your family up, and leave families alone where it’s important that they leave them alone,” he said. “I think that’s what we should look for.”
Stephen LeDrew, who served as President of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1998 to 2003, now hosts The LeDrew 3 Minute podcast. He commented that the number of Canadian bureaucrats is increasing by 40 percent. “We have to shrink highly paid government employees who don’t have enough to do, and are looking for ways to get into somebody else’s business or family life,” he said.
His guest, Jay Goldberg from the Canadian Taxpayer Foundation, agreed, saying, “The government hires more and more staff to be less and less effective. They aren’t helping; they’re hurting Canadians.”
Immigration is one area which Canadians expect the federal government to be involved in. Hosts of Northern Perspective, Ryan and Tanya, commented on the Prime Minister’s 7-minute You Tube video about the recent reduction in permanent residents being admitted to Canada and changes to the temporary foreign worker program.
“Today I’m going to let you know where we made mistakes,” Justin Trudeau explained. The Prime Minister reported the Globe and Mail’s statistics that nearly 14,000 asylum claims were filed by international students in Canada so far in 2024. In his video clip, he continued to explain some temporary students turn to the asylum system as a short cut to stay in Canada when their visa expires. These claims are analyzed, processed, and if claims fail, they will be sent back home. It often takes over a year to process these claims.
Ryan informed his listeners of information which was not included in the 7-minute video. “Here’s the numbers for you folks! We knew well over a million people were coming into Canada, but I thought the majority were temporary foreign workers, asylum seekers and refugees,” he said. It turns out those three categories amounted to approximately 250,000. “In 2023 there were 900,000 international students who came in Canada!” Ryan exclaimed. He compared that number to the 350,000 international students who came into Canada in 2015.
“You have 240,000 homes completed in 2023, and you had almost 1.5 million people coming into the country!” Ryan reported. “The Prime Minister is saying we need all these workers in Canada, and yet unemployment is going up.”
His wife and co-host Tanya chimed in saying, “The number of jobs being created is the same or less than the number of people who are coming to the country and are looking for work. And a lot of those jobs are in government since they’ve increased public service jobs by 40 percent.” Tanya observed. “Those jobs don’t give back to the economy, but cost taxpayers.”
Unfortunately, there was more bad news. “Trudeau says he’s being responsible,” Ryan said. “But in the first six months of 2024, we were on track to breaking the record of 2023, which was 900,000! I was incredulous; I thought it was fake news! This is what happens when you have open border policies.”
Tanya noted that the government should build the infrastructure first and ensure our healthcare system can handle the influx of people before bringing them in. That would be the common-sense solution.
Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the government is putting up “sprung structures,” otherwise known as tent encampments, to house asylum seekers. David Krayden, host of Stand on Guard, said what is happening in Ottawa is incredible.
“You’re going to hear it every day in the mainstream media about the asylum seekers. These are not asylum seekers; they are illegals sneaking across the border and getting into Canada,” he said.
Harrison Faulkner from True North also reviewed the Prime Minister’s video and observed, “Canada’s new immigration plan is a complete reversal of their announcements just six months ago.”
If you listen to the video you’ll hear the Prime Minister say many people are coming to this country who need a decent job, health care, and a decent place to live. “We need to make sure our population isn’t getting ahead of those things. Immigration is primarily a federal job. We have the levers to rein it in,” the Prime Minister said. It would have been great if he had come to that realization years ago, instead of prior to an election year.
His solution is to put a pause on immigration and then resume it in 2027. However Faulkner noted, “You can’t just stop this train and then pick it up a few years later and pretend as though everything is fine.”