Canada Doubles Down On Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge

Canada’s Immigration Minister Sean Fraser recently announced a bold immigration plan that has serious long-term deleterious consequences for the nation’s population growth and environmental degradation.

Fraser’s goal is, by 2025, to add 1.45 million permanent resident immigrants to address what he and other government officials claim is a critical labor shortage; allegedly 1 million Canadian jobs are unfilled. Fraser said: “Make no mistake. This is a massive increase in economic migration to Canada.” The Minister’s new plan projects a flood of new arrivals that will see 465,000 foreign nationals in 2023, rising to 500,000 in 2025. By comparison, 405,000 permanent residents were admitted last year.

Fraser’s immigration vision to admit a record-breaking number of immigrants is inspired by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sentiments. Following his 2019 election wherein he campaigned on more immigration, he followed up with welcoming messages to refugees. Defending his massive immigration increase, Fraser repeated familiar refrains about an aging Canadian population and a low birth rate. Without immigration, Fraser foresees a Canada that won’t have the financial resources to fund schools, hospitals and other services. In short, Fraser used scare tactics to deceive Canada’s citizens.

Canada’s long-standing commitment to higher immigration levels has created an unprecedented population surge. In 2021, Canada’s population rose to 37 million people, up 5.2 percent from 2016, driven mostly by immigration, according to official government data. Downtowns and distant suburbs of large cities have experienced the largest growth rates.

Canada added 1.8 million people between 2016 and 2021, with nearly 80 percent of those new residents arriving from across the globe....

Fraser’s plan is so ill-conceived that even the most basic and fundamental need of arriving immigrants – affordable housing – will be an insurmountable challenge....