Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Canadian businesses bear some responsibility in the immigration crisis, noting that they have become reliant on temporary workers.
“I’ve also acknowledged that the [immigration] system has gotten overheated. To some extent, the country has indeed gotten addicted to temporary workers, and businesses have taken advantage of that. They’ve leveraged that opportunity, and I think there’s some responsibility there,” Miller said during the Oct. 8
Senate Question Period.
The minister was addressing a question about his upcoming Immigration Levels Plan for 2025–2027, which will be presented to Parliament on Nov. 1, as first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.
Senator Tony Loffreda cited Miller’s earlier remark about potentially reducing the number of permanent residents to help stabilize the immigration system, noting that this raised concerns among some industries that remain heavily reliant on these new workers.
In response to the senator, Miller warned against “overcorrecting,” noting that any changes must avoid pushing the country into a recession or damaging vital industries that support rural communities.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of business associations, chambers of commerce; without a fault, all of them ask for more and more temporary foreign workers,” Miller said, adding, “But I think the responsibility that we have as a country is that we can’t get complacent about that.”
The federal government has set a target to welcome 485,000 new permanent residents this year, increasing to 500,000 in 2025 and maintaining that level in 2026.
Ottawa recently
announced plans to introduce targets for temporary residents for the first time, in addition to the existing cap on permanent residents. The goal is to reduce the number of temporary residents from 6.5 percent of Canada’s total population to 5 percent over the next three years, which will be reflected in the new immigration levels planning, the
government said.
The number of temporary foreign workers coming to Canada has more than doubled in recent years, increasing from 437,000 in 2019 to over 1.2 million in 2023.
“It’s not fair to Canadians struggling to find a good job, and it’s not fair to those temporary foreign workers, some of whom are being mistreated and exploited,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said while
addressing the issue during a cabinet retreat in Halifax on Aug. 26.
Additional measures have been implemented to limit the number of international students and their impact on the job market. In January, the government announced a cap to approve 360,000 study permits this year, which represents a major decrease from the approximately
682,000 granted in 2023.
In April, the government
announced that the temporary policy allowing international students to work more than 20 hours per week off campus has ended and will not be renewed.
Noé Chartier contributed to this report.
