The Canadian government is lowering these immigration targets, choosing the people who have the right to come and settle and work on its territory during a fairly complex bureaucratic process. Facing numerous criticisms regarding the lack of available housing and the difficulty of accessing public services, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a 20% reduction in new arrivals compared to the initial plan, i.e. 380,000 in 2026 rather than 500,000.
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With our correspondent in Quebec, Pascale Guéricolas
“ It’s a responsible and pragmatic break “. This is how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau justifies the curb on the number of people welcomed into Canada. According to him, the situation has changed since the pandemic.
In other words, labor may no longer be needed as much as before, and the current lack of housing makes it difficult to accommodate new arrivals in large numbers.
The main thing for Justin Trudeau, according to political scientist Chedly Belkhodja, of Concordia University, is to show that he masters the migratory process: “ He is simply trying to say “we are regaining control, we are reminding ourselves that our system is robust, rigorous”. Prime Minister Trudeau would not like to campaign on the issue of immigration. »
His opponents are hot on his heels on this theme, but without the acrimony that reigns in the United States, as political scientist Catherine Xhardez of the University of Montreal explains: “ Canada remains a country where immigration is part of its construction. There is no anti-immigration, xenophobic, racist discourse, that’s not the paradigm at all. Immigration is an economic and demographic engine. »
The slowdown in welcoming immigrants could therefore only be temporary.
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