By Lisa Lalande and Muraly Srinarayanathas
When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
The reactions to the Liberal government’s announcement that it will cut its previous Permanent Resident targets by 20 per cent in 2025 are a painfully predictable symptom of a failure to plan for growth.
It’s a truism that good policy is only sustained by good politics. And right now, the politics of immigration in Canada are fragile.
For the first time in a quarter century, a majority of Canadians believe there is too much immigration. A historic break driven not by passive concerns, but a fundamental shift in perception. Namely, that we are not just welcoming too many people, but that Canada’s housing, infrastructure, and affordability crises are being worsened by it. And it is this pressure, this perception, that has driven the Liberal government to make this political decision.
It’s the wrong one. It projects panic and instability at the exact moment when we need clarity and long-term thinking. While the decision was made with short-term political calculus in mind, we fear the repercussions will be long.
As a country already struggling with talent retention and foreign direct investment, our ability to project a stable, predictable, and welcoming place to do business is compromised.
In particular, the economic class of immigration has long stood as the lifeblood of our economy. A 60 per cent cut to this class will inevitably worsen shortfalls in our care centres, construction sites, and research institutions.
Canada’s competitive edge relies on our ability to attract and retain skilled immigrants. As data from Environics Institute shows, 73 per cent of Canadians prioritize skilled immigrants, and 64 per cent value education and expertise — proof that Canadians understand the importance of high-skilled talent to our future.
Rather than pursuing strategic reforms in temporary migration, the government opted to cut the very program that Canadians prioritize — permanent migration. In doing so, it missed a critical opportunity to address the real challenges we are facing in the country with a comprehensive national growth plan.
Such a plan would align immigration with targeted commitments to expand housing, boost productivity, and strengthen health care and services, ensuring that population growth enhances, rather than overwhelms, these vital areas.
Cutting our immigration targets is the ultimate hammer solution to a problem far more complex than a few loose nails. While it might serve up a digestible, convenient political answer, the real issue is not Canada’s immigration targets, but our broader, systemic growth challenge.
We need to meet the challenge with a smart, integrated framework that lays the foundation for sustained economic health — one that goes beyond tinkering with numbers and prepares for the long haul. This work is vital — not just for immediate results but for preserving Canada’s immigration consensus over the long term.
This is not an untested idea. In 2021, Scotland introduced its first national population strategy, focusing on immigration and services to support young families. This summer, South Korea established a “population ministry” to manage aging demographics and integration. While Singapore, Finland, and Australia have also successfully linked population policies to sustainable infrastructure and social services.
Here at home, the fact is we are feeling the consequences of doing the opposite — of failing to plan holistically for growth and relying instead on fragmented, siloed solutions. The real danger of this patchwork approach isn’t just the economic strain it creates, but the scarcity mindset it provokes within our population — when we should be demanding abundance.
When a country faces large-scale social or economic change, as Canada does, we need leadership from government, and a vision based on where we are today and where we can aspire to go. Instead, we’re seeing our policymakers swing from month to month based on the opinion environment, chasing after the low-hanging fruit to reduce demand for housing over the nation-building need to plan for supply.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can replace these fragmented, whack-a-mole efforts with a long-term, national smart growth framework — one that builds inroads between immigration targets and housing, workforce, and infrastructure.
It’s not enough to change the tires; we need to rebuild a more resilient economic engine for Canada’s future.
Read the article on the Toronto Star website.
