xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd Al Jazeera on GoogleinfoPeople wait to seek help from the FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto, Canada, August 7, 2023 [Wa Lone/Reuters]By Jillian Kestler-D'AmoursPublished On 17 Jun 202617 Jun 2026Toronto, Canada – When Diana Gallego listened to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s widely touted speech at the World Economic Forum at the start of this year, she couldn’t help but feel a disconnect. Carney had made an impassioned plea to the world’s “middle powers” to break with a United States-led international order that he said was no longer working, and his words found receptive audiences around the world. But for Gallego, co-executive director of FCJ Refugee Centre, an organisation that supports refugees and asylum seekers in Canada’s largest city, the prime minister’s statements rang hollow amid his government’s hardening approach to immigration. “We saw the [prime] minister going to Davos [with] this beautiful discourse, saying we should not copy our neighbours … But internally, the policies are telling us another story,” Gallego told Al Jazeera. “Canada is closing the doors now.” Gallego is among more than a dozen experts – from lawyers to professors, rights advocates and former government officials – who told Al Jazeera that Canada is at a “troubling” crossroads in its policies towards migrants and refugees. As Canadians have grappled with rising economic and social pressures in recent years, a decades-old consensus on the benefits of immigration has frayed. Hostile rhetoric blaming newcomers for Canada’s ills has intensified, and Carney’s government has slashed temporary visas and restricted access to asylum. Experts say a “generational shift” is under way. “The general rhetoric is, ‘We don’t want you here’,” said Gallego. A settler-colonial state, Canada has encouraged successive waves of immigration throughout its history, from largely European settlement in the early to mid-1900s to specialised programmes that brought refugees and high- and low-skilled workers to Canadian shores. For decades, that influx of newcomers was widely viewed as a positive thing: immigration was fuelling the country’s economy, staffing key job sectors and counteracting a rapidly ageing population. But over the past few years, Canada has seen one of the most dramatic shifts in how the public views immigration – and the government has tapped into increasingly negative sentiment to cut programmes and pass new, restrictive laws. The policy changes began under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal Party government had dramatically increased temporary immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic to fill labour market gaps. The figures shot up rapidly and, by October 2024, there were nearly 3.15 million non-permanent residents in Canada, accounting for roughly 8 percent of the population, according to official figures. At the same time, systemic issues – from a shortage of affordable housing to high grocery costs and long hospital wait times – were putting the squeeze on many Canadian households. Public attitudes quickly hardened, and a 2024 poll (PDF) found a majority of Canadians saying for the first time in decades that there was “too much immigration”. Since then, several incidents of xenophobic violence have been reported, including in some of Canada’s largest cities, where the influx of migrants has been among the most visible. Under pressure as angry discourse soared, the Trudeau government promised in 2024 to get immigration back to “sustainable” levels, and the cuts began, including most notably to international student visas. “The reality is that not everyone who wants to come to Canada will be able to – just like not everyone who wants to stay in Canada will be able to,” Marc Miller, Canada’s former immigration minister, said in September that year. The numbers of arrivals dropped quickly as student and work visas were cancelled, forcing thousands of people to leave Canada or remain without legal status. By the start of this year, non-permanent residents totalled about 2.67 million, according to government figures, a 15 percent drop from the peak in October 2024. “I don’t think you can blame the housing crisis in Canada on immigration, but there’s no doubt that the radically increased numbers under Justin Trudeau’s regime had a political effect,” Allan Rock, a former Canadian justice minister and Liberal lawmaker, told Al Jazeera. The government, Rock explained, has been “reading the room and sensing that Canadians were connecting local economic and financial difficulties with migration”. At the same time, right-wing politicians have seized on those public attitudes, with the opposition Conservative Party earlier this year pushing the governing Liberals to cut healthcare for people it described as “fake refugees”. The Conservatives, also, have echoed US President Donald Trump in advocating for changes to “birthright citizenship”, claiming that the “outdated rule” that grants citizenship to anyone born in Canada “presents yet another strain on our immigration system that Canada can’t handle”. “With over 7 per cent of Canada’s population here on temporary status – and arrivals massively outpacing the capacity of our housing, healthcare and jobs markets – something needs to change,” the party said. Rights advocates have denounced that rhetoric while accusing policymakers of falsely linking migrants and refugees to social problems to absolve themselves of responsibility for a years-long failure to properly fund healthcare, education and other services. On the housing issue, for instance, experts have found (PDF) that, while immigration increases demand for housing stock, its effect on prices is far less important than public discourse would have people believe. “Leadership means not simply caving into public opinion when it’s based on erroneous beliefs,” Rock told Al Jazeera. “We’re buying into, and we’re supporting, a growing international trend to tighten borders and build walls and validate erroneous beliefs about refugees and migrants.” “It’s a betrayal of values that this country has always stood for, and I find it troubling.” Yet, since taking office in April 2025, Carney – the prime minister – has continued where his predecessor Trudeau left off on immigration. In late March, Carney’s Liberal government passed a sweeping new law that grants Ottawa the power to cancel visas en masse, including for permanent residents, if it deems it in the “public interest” to do so. The law, known as Bill C-12, also restricts access to Canada’s refugee status determination system in ways that lawyers told Al Jazeera are “arbitrary” and likely run counter to the country’s constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government has justified the measure – which is expected to face a constitutional challenge in court – as part of an effort to streamline a backlogged asylum system and prevent “fraud”. At the end of last year, nearly 300,000 cases were pending at the independent tribunal that adjudicates refugee claims in the country, known as the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, told Al Jazeera that it had introduced Bill C-12 “as global migration pressures intensify”. The law introduces “measures to address challenges such as sudden increases in asylum claims and situations where existing processes may be used to circumvent regular immigration pathways”, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Original Source: Al Jazeera
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