In the Fall of 2024, we were told that 5 million non-permanent visas were expiring by the end of 2025 – but the anticipated drop in population hasn’t happened. Policy is being juggled to keep most of them in Canada.
POLITICAL YO-YO?
Watching the reactions to the recent announcement of the latest population figures by Statistics Canada has been interesting. Much of the mainstream media was corralled – perhaps willingly – into highlighting the StatsCan line that Canada’s population had grown at the slowest rate in more than 100 years. This serves the political objective of certifying the government’s claim that they ‘brought the immigration system under control’. Detractors of the government focused on the fact that the previously announced population numbers had been revised upwards, such that the small ‘drop’ in population that had been received with much glee just a few months ago had not really happened. In fact, population has been rising steadily since the government ‘brought immigration under control’.
It would be perfectly natural and justifiable to ponder whether population is growing in a markedly slower manner than we witnessed in the last few of the Trudeau years. If so, the claim of having ‘brought immigration under control’ would still hold true. Alas, that is not so. One astute X / Twitter user, Leah (@CanTrueCrime), dug up information at the ‘real-time model’ of StatsCan which shows that in 173 days (from April 3 to September 23, 2026) Canada’s population increased by 389,962 (see the post at this link). On an annualized basis, it means about 823,000 more residents in Canada – definitely a sizeable drop from the dizzying heights in the ‘Fraser-wave’ of immigration, when we added more that 1.3 million people to the population. Nevertheless, for the purpose for which there is a high support to ‘bring immigration under control’, the number of 823,000 is still too high to bring noticeable relief. It is worth bearing in mind that just a few years ago, in what is now being terms ‘BCE’ (Before Covid Era), the number of 823,000 would have been roundly condemned as reckless. Such are the times that we live in that this number is now sufficient to enable the government to brag about how responsible their policy is. The fact is that the figure of 823,000 is about 2% of the population – which is certainly much lower than the years of immigration frenzy, but still far in excess of the country’s capacity to absorb on a whole range of fronts.
As a side note, Leah’s post reminds us once again that pretty much all of the useful analysis and reporting seem to be coming from ordinary Canadians with no ties to the media. Nobody expects CBC – nicknamed ‘Pravda west’ by its harshest critics – to show the government in a bad light by taking a deep dive into the numbers and/or the outcomes of policies; they know which side of their bread is buttered. And since former PM Trudeau announced a ‘media subsidy’ of $595 million for the other outlets as long as they continue to be in the good books of the government, there has been less reason for them to do the same. Private individuals, on the other hand, have no such compulsions. Their sole motivation is to acquire a better understanding of what is happening in their country, and to share it with others – which bring me to Kanwar Sierah.
CONCEALED EXPLOSION
On August 18 of this year, Kanwar Sierah (@KanwarSierah), who is a registered immigration consultant, posted shocking numbers of the work permits issued in this year: 600,980. Of these, 501,780 were under the International Mobility Program (IMP) and 99,200 were under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). It is noteworthy here that the TFW program gets talked about a lot more than the IMP, despite the latter being a lot bigger. As Kanwar highlighted, in the first 6 months of 2026, more Post-Graduate Work Permits (PGWPs) were issued (247,840) than in the entire year of 2023 (239,990). In other words, the PGWPs are being issued now, when immigration has been ‘brought under control’, at TWICE the rate when immigration was out of control, as the government itself has acknowledged on several occasions.
These numbers resolved a question that I had ever since the ‘drop’ in population was reported a few months earlier. The ‘drop’ was marginal as far as numbers go – only 55,025 people according to StatsCan (see this link) – but the fact that there was a reduction at all caused much jubilation in several quarters. People who were complaining about immigration being too high breathed a sigh of relief and took the number as a harbinger of better news to come, while the ‘regime loyalists’ cheered that the government had ‘brought immigration under control’ as promised. However, I was doubtful of the number from the outset.
There are several moving parts to the changes in population, including emigration (i.e., people leaving Canada). Given that the total population was essentially unchanged, I wondered how all the additions to and subtractions from the population could have balanced out nearly exactly. Firstly, there are local births and deaths. Secondly, there are renewals of study permits and work permits as well as visa of one type being changed to another type (in all these cases, the person continues to be in Canada). Then there are new arrivals (on permanents as well as non-permanent plus refugee claimants) and emigrants. If, out of the 5 million people whose non-permanent visa was expiring by the end of 2025, sufficient number of people had left, then we would have seen a greater reduction in the population than 55,025. Kanwar’s work showed me that contrary to our (admittedly naïve) belief that many if not most of the non-permanent visa holders would be leaving when their visa expired, the government is actively helping non-permanent residents to stick around. We can only speculate as to why, but the likely sources of the impetus are perhaps the same collection of special interest groups that caused the disaster in the first place: big box stores (that then-Immigration Minister referred to as desiring access to cheap labour), other exploitative employers, immigration consultants / agents, slumlords and the ‘mortgage fraud’ industry that enables them etc. PM Carney and Immigration Minister Lena Diab can issue all the pious-sounding statements about reducing the number non-permanent residents to 5% of the population (which would still be too high), and they can attempt to do that partly by granting permanent residency to some of these people, but there are only so many PR spots available, competed for by other demographics as well. In the meantime, the pressure from the pro-mass immigration constituencies is unrelenting and, owing to the exigencies of politics, undefeatable. In a nutshell, what have is a movable object meeting irresistible force. The only recourse is to keep the non-permanent residents here in a way that no one notices. That is possibly why we are seeing the jugglery and skullduggery that is on display now.
But another possible reason could also be that the removal (voluntary or otherwise) of non-permanent residents would create downward economic impacts that could create a major dent in the government’s approval ratings and thence, electoral prospects. I believe this aspect deserves its own exploration.
NOT YET THERE
Since then-Immigration Minister Miller announced the first of the reductions in the intake of international students and foreign workers, rents and house pries have declined by roughly 30%. The political ‘talking point’ at the time was that the rapid increase in population had tilted the demand-supply equation strongly, causing a spike in housing costs. This was true as well – demand was outpacing supply in a major way.
But if the population has not declined – indeed, it has gone up by what we would have considered a substantial percentage in earlier, normal times – then what explains the decline in housing costs? To borrow a technical term from economic analysis, it is ‘future expectations’. Immigration was booming (which may even be an understatement), the prevailing wisdom was that ‘housing can only ever go up’, and the ‘smart’ thing to do was to either buy a house and rent it out to 15 young people (majority of them Indian men) for as far into the future as the eye could see – and beyond – or to ‘get in on the ground floor’ by booking a pre-construction unit and then flipping it just before the closing date. In a theme that keeps recurring time and again, no one even considered the possibility that there was a downside. This unrelenting – and increasing – demand-pressure is what keep pushing housing prices higher and higher. Once the downside appeared on the horizon, there was a rush to the exits. The resulting drop in prices left stranded those who hadn’t rushed for the exits, which created a compounding effect.
The self-congratulatory fanfare by the government around having ‘brought immigration under control’ created a psychological impact among the speculators, slumlords and mortgage fraudsters that their nice little party had come to an end, and that the punch bowl had been taken away. The psychological effect of news, before the outcomes are known or even capable of reasonable prediction, is often seen in the financial markets. I believe that something similar has happened in the housing market in Canada. The effect has been supported by a constant stream of sob stories in the mainstream media about immigrants facing the prospect of leaving Canada, and about many post-secondary institutions facing dire financial situation.
If my theory is correct, then one can imagine what the impact on housing costs – and a lot of other indicators such as retail trade – resulting from an outflux of a couple of million residents would be. Not to sound alarmist, but it would be a literal shockwave through the economy, reminiscent of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis – the only difference being that it would be localized in Canada. Just as the too-fast influx of people has created economic distortions, too-fast outflux would create its own kind of downside effect of disastrous proportions. This brings us to an uncomfortable realization: the government is not doing anything to reduce the population of non-permanent residents because doing so involves painful economic implications that not too many people have a stomach for, least of all politicians. The best approach, as with many things in government, is to do nothing while creating a narrative that a lot is being done. With a complaint media, toady commentariat and an ideologically inclined academia that stopped looking for truth on many issues long ago, this is not a difficult task.
A ONE-TRICK (AND LAME) PONY
It is fashionable in conservative circles to lay all the blame for Canada’s current abysmal situation – and especially for the mess in the immigration arena – on former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There is definitely a lot of blame that he bears – but Justin Trudeau’s tenure as Prime Minister from October 2015 to January 2025 is not the entire story of how Canada became overly dependent on immigration to prop up the economy. As I have examined in detail, with official data, in my article ‘Immigration Does NOT Increase Prosperity’, for more than half a century, inflation-adjusted per capita GDP was growing at ever-lower rates, finally hitting bottom at just 0.50% (which continues to be the case). In the meantime, all the top-line economic indices were going up, and successive governments made puff-chested claims about their ‘stellar’ performance. One can indulge, for fun, in a thought experiment as to how these numbers would have looked like if we had not depended so much on immigration (which not to imply zero immigration, but rather to accept only very specifically skilled immigrants), but the fact remains that this over-dependence on immigration has enabled governments to sweep a lot of their bad performance under the carpet.
Here is a government’s dilemma: in the short term, they can show good economic performance only with high immigration, but over the long term, the same high immigration creates a downward pressure on the economic well being of Canadians. A political solution of this dilemma is to go for short term gains, take credit for these, and then ‘ride off into the sunset’ before the chickens come home to roost – which makes one ponder why Prime Minister Carney hinted in an interview with the New York Times that he could increase immigration in the not-too-distant-future. Of course, he termed it “controlled increase” and prefaced it by saying (once again) that Canada’s immigration system was “back under control” (which it isn’t). As for immigration being ‘controlled’, we will have to depend on the tender mercies of the proponents of mass immigration, including the Century Initiative and their choir in the media.
On reflection, maybe the downward economic impact of the tariff war with the US has forced his hand – he needs some factor – any factor – to counter that effect, so that the ‘top line’ economic numbers can be in his favour – or at least, not disastrous. Or maybe the aforementioned constituencies of employers, slumlords etc. have prevailed. Or maybe there is some other reason at play. Whichever the case, it is certain that (a) the promised reduction (expressly or implied) in population has not happened, nor is it likely to happen; on the contrary, population has not only increased at a high rate but also continues to rise, and (b) the challenging economic circumstances for individuals, such as housing, cost of living and availability of jobs and healthcare) will continue to worsen, as the population keeps, rising. As a reminder of the latter, I will leave you with this headline from the Toronto Sun on September 18, 2026: “Costco job fair brings ‘crazy’ massive lineups to Windsor over two-day span
More than 1,000 people believed to have lined up on one day for estimated 200-400 positions being filled at retail warehouse”
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