Oppn hits out govt over foreign workers 'taking Canadian jobs'
Toronto, Aug. 29 -- Immigration has emerged as a political rife issue in Canada again as the government has come under sustained fire from the opposition over high levels of foreign temporary workers arriving in the country despite increasing youth unemployment.
Attacking the Prime Minister while speaking in Prince Edward Island on Wednesday, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said, "As our young people have a quarter-century high in their unemployment, Mark Carney this year is expected to bring in a record number of temporary foreign workers to take the jobs of Canadian youth," according to the agency Canadian Press.
Statistics Canada, the government's data agency, has placed overall unemployment at 6.9% with youth employment levels nearing 15% and at the "the lowest rate since November 1998 (excluding 2020 and 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic)".
With just over two weeks to go before Poilievre returns to the House of Commons and, for the first time, faces off against Carney, his party has claimed that the promised cap Temporary Foreign Workers programme was 82,000 for the first half of 2025 while the number of permits actually issued stood at 105,000 so far.
In addition, for temporary workers under the International Mobility Programme (IMP), the promised cap was 285,000 while those admitted numbered 302,000 in the first six months of 2025.
In response, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said, "We have committed to returning immigration to sustainable levels, including reducing Canada's temporary population to less than 5%." IRCC stated that the figures in its datasets were for new visas and also renewals and the former category only totalled 33,722 or 42% of the annual target.
However, with anti-immigration sentiment again rising in the country, verging on xenophobia, the continued high levels of temporary workers being admitted is unlikely to mollify a large section of voters.
In the first six months this year, Indians secured 94,010 of the total 302,280 work permits issued under IMP. In 2024, they accounted for 209,065 out of 715,870, a decline from 2023 when the corresponding figures were 250,785 and 761,600. Prior to immigration policies of then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking effect in 2015, 21,635 Indian citizens entered the country under the programme out of a total of 186,005.
As for the temporary foreign workers programme, 16,560 Indians received visas out of a total of 10,5195. In 2024, Indians accounted for 39,695 out of 191,270 and 28,120 out of 183,275 in 2023. In 2015, Indians were issued just 1955 such work permits out of 72,960.
IRCC has said that the measures implemented have resulted in "125,903 fewer new temporary workers arriving in Canada between January and June 2025 compared to the same period in 2024".
However, the opposition has called for even lower numbers so "jobs, healthcare and housing can catch up. "Instead, the Liberals' radical open-borders policies broke Canada's immigration system and made all these problems worse, which isn't fair to anyone," a statement from the party said....
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