Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that the federal government could have moved sooner to rein in immigration programs, following his assertion over the weekend that “bad actors” were gaming the system.
On Sunday, Trudeau released a nearly seven-minute video to YouTube to discuss the recent reduction in permanent residents being let into Canada and changes to the temporary foreign worker program.
The permanent residency stream will be cut by about 20 percent over the next two years to 365,000 by 2027.
In a video message to party faithful, Trudeau said that immigration needed to increase following the end of the pandemic lockdowns to support the labour market, adding the move helped to avoid a full-blown recession.
But after that, Trudeau says, some “bad actors” took advantage of it for purposes not exactly legitimate, from employers who did not want to hire Canadians to schools seeking to find more international students for that higher tuition money or scams promising phoney paths to citizenship.
Trudeau concedes he and his team should have moved faster once it was clear businesses no longer needed the extra labour help.
According to Trudeau, the reason behind immigration cuts by the government is to “help stabilize population growth” while supply catches up with the demand of houses with plans to “consider gradually increasing immigration rates in the future.”
