Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused the Liberal government of hiding facts about immigration levels as it advances a one-time permanent residency measure for eligible newcomers.
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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused the federal government on Friday of hiding facts about the number of newcomers Canada will admit, while the government promotes a new immigration levels plan that includes one-time permanent residency measures for people already in Canada.
Poilievre made the accusation in Brampton, Ont., during a news conference, after Prime Minister Mark Carney said in Winnipeg that the one-time pathway is aimed at making longtime temporary residents permanent.
Poilievre said the government is “blowing past” the previous Trudeau-era immigration numbers and proposed granting permanent residency to 200,000 temporary residents this year, in addition to a broader target of 380,000 permanent residents.
He said the move would bring the total number of new permanent residents to 650,000 and argued that Canada should accept immigration “in numbers that we can absorb, where there are jobs, health care and housing.”
Carney said the workers expected to receive permanent residency through the new levels plan are people who have been in Canada for years and whose workplaces apply annually to renew their permits, calling them “members of the community” and “permanent residents of the country” whose status is being formalized.
The federal Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s office declined a request to interview her about the levels plan and did not take questions after the plan was tabled on Thursday, the source said.
Immigration department officials said during a not-for-attribution technical briefing on Friday that the vast majority of those eligible for the one-time program are already in Canada. The one-year program would select 100,000 people on work visas who have already applied for permanent residency, and a further 100,000 applicants from humanitarian permanent residency streams.
Officials said the humanitarian stream is intended to clear a decade-long backlog, including about 32,000 former Hong Kong residents who came through a special program and nearly 19,000 Ukrainians who came through a program for those fleeing Russia’s invasion.
The government said the broader target of 380,000 permanent residents will be selected mostly from people already in Canada on work and study visas, with some applicants from outside the country.
Poilievre also said the Temporary Foreign Worker Program should not be open to communities with unemployment rates higher than 5.5 per cent, noting that the federal budget signalled an intention to reform the program with provinces while offering limited details in the plan.
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