Whether President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign for Canada to join the United States is a negotiation strategy, a passing fancy, or reflects a genuine belief, it has provoked a defiant and fiery “Never!” from Canadian politicians and public figures across the spectrum.
But the backlash against the idea of becoming the 51st U.S. state exposes a deep contradiction in a country where in recent years there’s been a systematic effort to erase the Canadian identity and founding history.
At first glance, the single bedroom for rent in Brampton, Ontario looks like a bargain. True, there’s barely any floor space, but the asking price is only C$550 (£300) a month in a Toronto suburb where the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat is C$2,261. Inspect it more closely, however, and this is actually a small bathroom converted into sleeping quarters. A mattress is jammed up next to the sink, the toilet is nearby.
The ad, originally posted on Facebook Marketplace, has generated hundreds of comments online. “Disgusting,” wrote one Reddit user. “Hey 20-somethings, you’re looking at your future,” says another.
In Canada, 2024 may eventually be remembered as the year of Milton Friedman’s revenge. Late in his life, the American sage of free markets said on a couple of different occasions that immigration was good, and the mass immigration to the New World of the early 20th century was especially good, but that radically open borders are incompatible with large contemporary welfare states. This may strike many as an uncontroversial claim, but Friedman has never been totally forgiven by radical open-borders libertarians who otherwise venerate him.
We need mass deportations of illegals and remigration of asylum seekers and Islamists.
The number of immigrants who choose to stay in Toronto five years after getting here is declining, Statistics Canada says, and one of the possible reasons why will likely not come as a surprise to most.
In a report released last month, the federal agency said it is seeing a “downward trend” in the five-year retention rate of immigrants in the country’s top three urban centres: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Demand for temporary foreign workers across Canada continued to rise last year, and experts don’t expect that to stop anytime soon — despite restrictions to the program introduced in September.
Third-quarter numbers from 2024, the most recent data available, show Canada approved 50,971 temporary foreign worker (TFW) positions July through September, up from 50,059 during the same period in 2023, according to figures from Employment and Social Development Canada.
He is intent on causing as much damage as possible to Canada before he is forced out. He and his Crony Capitalist thieves should be jailed.
Recently, a fierce battle over the H-1B Visa Program erupted on X. In one corner, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, a big believer in the program, where tech companies pay less for non-American talent. Indians (dot, not feather) have been primary participants. In the other corner, the MAGA Base, who believe in America First, and to hell with immigration, legal or otherwise. For them, H-1B was just another cog in the Population Replacement wheel.
A backlog of 267,000 cases at the tribunal that hears asylum claims in Canada risks rising even further if a predicted influx of asylum claimants crosses the border from the U.S. after president-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, immigration experts say.
The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) has a backlog four times higher than it was two years ago as a flood of claims has left it unable to keep up.
TORONTO — Canada long sold itself as a beacon for immigrants, who were widely viewed as key to economic growth in a vast nation with a small and rapidly aging workforce.
“Study, work and stay” was the slogan of a government campaign to lure international students, part of a broader push that included recruiting temporary workers and resettling refugees. After President Trump banned travel to the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries in 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada’s doors were open.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” he wrote on the platform now known as X. “Diversity is our strength.”
But in recent months, Canada has changed course.
Don’t harsh my mellow man!
Mass migration has been embraced to plug the gaps in a stuttering, low-wage economy.
Remember when we were told that Brexit would lead to a draw-bridge Britain, closed to migrants forever more? That particular Remainer scare story is now, officially, defunct.
This week, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that 728,000 more people came to live in the UK than had left in the year to June 2024. That’s three to four times the net migration the UK averaged annually during the 2010s. To put that into context, nearly the same number of people arrived in the UK in a single year as live in the entire county of Suffolk.
It has become increasingly difficult to argue that migrant-driven population growth is leaving Britain better off
Nowhere is the policy failure that seems to have engulfed virtually everything the Government touches more apparent than immigration.
I don’t know why anyone was surprised by last month’s revised data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). As a source of information on the economy, the ONS has become about as reliable as a number 16 bus – so much so that the Bank of England has come to prefer the reports of its own agents in the field to the official ONS data when assessing the economy’s true state of affairs.
In any case, it has been obvious for a long time now that the ONS has been wildly understating the extent of the surge in net migration. You only need to look around you to see the transformation that has occurred in the size and mix of the population.
Ontario’s Ministry of Labour is investigating the Alberta-based recruiter who was involved in bringing in scores of temporary foreign workers to staff low-wage jobs at Canadian Tire stores across Canada.
A ministry spokesperson told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail that it is conducting an open investigation into Allison Jones, the owner of a recruiting agency and an immigration consulting agency in St. Albert, outside of Edmonton. It did not provide any additional details about the probe.
Ms. Jones is a popular recruiter among franchisees of the Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons chains, helping franchise owners fill low-wage positions in their outlets with labour from abroad.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller introduced new regulations this week allowing foreign students to work full-time during academic breaks, a move his department admits could increase competition for Canadian workers, particularly young people seeking entry-level or summer jobs.
“This may result in increased competition for Canadian workers,” the Department of Immigration stated in a Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement.
Colleges and universities face job cuts, deficits amid international student cap
Ontario’s colleges and universities say the federal government’s cap on international students is taking a toll on the higher education sector as some schools face growing deficits, layoffs and, in at least one case, a temporary campus closure.
St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ont., said it has eliminated 30 administrative and support positions and warned of further job cuts after its foreign student enrolment dropped by 50 per cent.
President and CEO Glenn Vollebregt said the college is participating in a provincewide efficiency review that is expected to conclude early next year and as that unfolds, “SLC cannot guarantee that there will be no further layoffs.”
“This may result in increased competition for Canadian workers.”
— @CitImmCanadaPODCAST: @MarcMillerVM reneges on promise to limit work hours for foreign students.
“It’ll cost Canadian students entry level jobs. The feds know it and they don’t care.”https://t.co/94Bc2WPySd pic.twitter.com/3ekzqL9kls
— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) November 21, 2024
The explosion in refugee claims in Canada over the past few years is costing Canadian taxpayers billions in mostly unseen costs.
On Friday, CBC broke the news of the federal health program for refugees now costing $411 million per year, but that is just the tip of the iceberg shocking as it is.
Feds want $411 million to cover refugee health care as the number of new arrivals soars
The federal government is asking Parliament to approve hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending to cover the health-care costs of eligible refugees and asylum seekers — a budget line item that has soared in recent years as the number of these newcomers reached record highs.
The Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) is designed to cover migrants who don’t yet qualify for provincial or territorial medicare. By removing some barriers to health care, the program makes it easier for refugees — many of them fleeing conflict or persecution abroad — to get the care they need on arrival.
