Part One of “Canada at a Crossroads” — a Narrative post on what’s really driving Canada’s population growth, and why turning down immigration now is the wrong move.
Planning for immigration also needs to plan around the service and infrastructure needed to support and sustain such growth and change. Under Trudeau, immigration targets were increased without coordination with provinces, leading to issues with services, the job market, and housing. I do not believe people travelled halfway around the world to live in a subdivided home with several others to overpay on rent and study in a diploma mill for low-wage work.
At the same time, I don't believe it is right for doctors coming from Australia, Europe and the USA to languish in bureaucratic limbo and be stuck in survival jobs while the authorities take their sweet time to review their credentials, while locals badly need healthcare professionals and doctors. Or worse, they eventually get approved but age out of being qualified to be PRs due to the wait.
You’re absolutely right. Planning for immigration has to go hand-in-hand with planning for the services and infrastructure that sustain it — not just numbers on paper.
The good news is that the 2025–26 adjustments — including the targeted clawback on immigration levels, the push to break down provincial trade and credential barriers, and the new Build Canada Homes initiatives — are finally moving in that direction.
But we still need to keep pressure on both federal and provincial governments to hold that focus. The real fix is rebuilding capacity — housing, healthcare, infrastructure — not slamming the door on newcomers, and certainly not slamming them.
It’s always easier to point fingers than to do the hard, careful work of rebuilding what’s broken.
Yes but we will need see the full effects for another 12-18 months. I am not sure we have that luxury of time given how things are degenerating in the USA.
You’re right — pretty much everything these days feels like a race to the finish line. That’s why cooler heads have to work twice as hard to keep facts front and centre, both online and in our communities.
It took decades for us to drift into this situation, and—like it or not—it’ll take time to turn this big ship called Canada around. My worry is the same as yours: if frustration keeps building faster than trust, people could rush back to the polls out of anger, and we might wake up with a populist federal government steering the wheel.
That and the American Anschluss. The annexation part is the more immediate threat than Carney fucking it all up to enable a PP or Ford government in Ottawa.
I wish you were wrong about that. We are definitely deep in Trump’s crosshairs and it isn’t a good feeling. We are hanging on by a thread…and that thread is a minority federal government banking on strengthening relationships abroad. Unfortunately that won’t stop the USA from wanting our water, minerals and the Northwest Passage. All we can do is buckle up and try and ride the storm that has just begun … and push back when home grown politicking threatens to break us from within.
Clear-eyed remarks. I find in myself a tendency to watch the American drama because it IS such a drama and, when it functions as entertainment, distracts me from Canadian issues. But we can’t afford to be distracted to the point where we lose sight of our own populists, our own vulnerabilities. Everything in this commentary rings true. Every casual conversation in which we can make these points counts. As you say Leni, we buckle up, push back, build community and trust, hold the line. Be true to ourselves.
Donna, that’s beautifully put — and exactly it. The American spectacle can be so loud it drowns out our own storylines. It’s tempting to measure everything against their chaos, but as you say, we’ve got plenty to wrestle with here at home — and we still have the civic muscle memory to do it differently, if we choose to use it.
I keep coming back to the idea that democracy isn’t defended once, it’s maintained — like a garden, or a kitchen table that keeps needing another chair pulled up. So yes: buckle up, push back, and keep building trust, one honest conversation at a time.
Planning for immigration also needs to plan around the service and infrastructure needed to support and sustain such growth and change. Under Trudeau, immigration targets were increased without coordination with provinces, leading to issues with services, the job market, and housing. I do not believe people travelled halfway around the world to live in a subdivided home with several others to overpay on rent and study in a diploma mill for low-wage work.
At the same time, I don't believe it is right for doctors coming from Australia, Europe and the USA to languish in bureaucratic limbo and be stuck in survival jobs while the authorities take their sweet time to review their credentials, while locals badly need healthcare professionals and doctors. Or worse, they eventually get approved but age out of being qualified to be PRs due to the wait.
You’re absolutely right. Planning for immigration has to go hand-in-hand with planning for the services and infrastructure that sustain it — not just numbers on paper.
The good news is that the 2025–26 adjustments — including the targeted clawback on immigration levels, the push to break down provincial trade and credential barriers, and the new Build Canada Homes initiatives — are finally moving in that direction.
But we still need to keep pressure on both federal and provincial governments to hold that focus. The real fix is rebuilding capacity — housing, healthcare, infrastructure — not slamming the door on newcomers, and certainly not slamming them.
It’s always easier to point fingers than to do the hard, careful work of rebuilding what’s broken.
Yes but we will need see the full effects for another 12-18 months. I am not sure we have that luxury of time given how things are degenerating in the USA.
You’re right — pretty much everything these days feels like a race to the finish line. That’s why cooler heads have to work twice as hard to keep facts front and centre, both online and in our communities.
It took decades for us to drift into this situation, and—like it or not—it’ll take time to turn this big ship called Canada around. My worry is the same as yours: if frustration keeps building faster than trust, people could rush back to the polls out of anger, and we might wake up with a populist federal government steering the wheel.
That and the American Anschluss. The annexation part is the more immediate threat than Carney fucking it all up to enable a PP or Ford government in Ottawa.
I wish you were wrong about that. We are definitely deep in Trump’s crosshairs and it isn’t a good feeling. We are hanging on by a thread…and that thread is a minority federal government banking on strengthening relationships abroad. Unfortunately that won’t stop the USA from wanting our water, minerals and the Northwest Passage. All we can do is buckle up and try and ride the storm that has just begun … and push back when home grown politicking threatens to break us from within.
Clear-eyed remarks. I find in myself a tendency to watch the American drama because it IS such a drama and, when it functions as entertainment, distracts me from Canadian issues. But we can’t afford to be distracted to the point where we lose sight of our own populists, our own vulnerabilities. Everything in this commentary rings true. Every casual conversation in which we can make these points counts. As you say Leni, we buckle up, push back, build community and trust, hold the line. Be true to ourselves.
Donna, that’s beautifully put — and exactly it. The American spectacle can be so loud it drowns out our own storylines. It’s tempting to measure everything against their chaos, but as you say, we’ve got plenty to wrestle with here at home — and we still have the civic muscle memory to do it differently, if we choose to use it.
I keep coming back to the idea that democracy isn’t defended once, it’s maintained — like a garden, or a kitchen table that keeps needing another chair pulled up. So yes: buckle up, push back, and keep building trust, one honest conversation at a time.
Yes, and this is especially true given the wildly long wait times currently in many immigration streams.
I wrote this article on the housing crisis and immigration, which I think you would find interesting: https://open.substack.com/pub/leftiejane/p/stop-scapegoating-immigrants-for?r=pm4cz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Such an excellent overview of the reasons why immigration is in fact necessary to Canada's future.
I wrote an article specifically on debunking myths about the role of immigration in the housing crisis, which I think you might enjoy. https://open.substack.com/pub/leftiejane/p/stop-scapegoating-immigrants-for?r=pm4cz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false