November 19, 2024 - 2:30pm
Amid the last-ditch effort to reverse the wreckage of his government’s radical immigration policies, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing ahead with a series of restrictionist moves designed to signal to Canadian voters that he has heard their frustrations.
Trudeau released a social media video that seemed to acknowledge the gravity of the crisis he abetted, but only in a roundabout way. He quickly deflected all of the blame to certain “bad actors” in the private sector, in higher education, and in the scarcely regulated immigration consulting industry, where fraud is rife. Indeed, this volte-face comes after three years of prioritising the demands of these special interest groups over the welfare of the broader Canadian public. Near the end of his message, the Prime Minister admitted: “We could have acted quicker and turned off the taps”. That may well be the understatement of the century.
A housing crunch, rising competition for jobs, and growing unease over migrants’ ability to integrate have generated a rare Canadian popular backlash against immigration after years of a robust pro-immigration consensus. However, this welcoming attitude had always been based on prudent controls around maintaining the right economic balance — and it is this balance which his government fatally undermined when it opened the floodgates to cheap foreign workers in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic; this was done in response to the business sector’s persistent but dubious claims of an ongoing national “labour shortage”.
In reality, the tight labour market created the right conditions for rising wages and increased job security, something which the captains of Canadian industry could scarcely tolerate. These attitudes were embodied by the likes of former Trudeau advisor Dominic Barton, who founded the Century Initiative, with its calls for one hundred million Canadians by 2100. Rather than allow workers to enjoy the benefits of such an economy, Ottawa readily bought the “labour shortage” narrative and went about creating a lumpenproletariat, through the importation of hundreds of thousands international students and temporary workers.
Trudeau’s message tried to portray the move as the initially correct one — as a post-pandemic recovery and stimulus measure — even though it is seen now by economists for what it was: a clumsy “band-aid” solution to cover up an imminent recession by artificially inflating growth numbers. Trudeau then tried to shift the blame to the said “bad actors” seemingly without any understanding that it was his government that created the very conditions which allowed these bad actors to thrive over the last few years. Now, the Prime Minister says he is all in on finding ways to “effectively pause population growth” such as cutting both temporary and permanent immigration streams, and refocusing on skilled immigration.
After years of broken promises, however, Canadians are unlikely to buy it. Already, many of these temporary residents are beginning to claim asylum, to the tune of 14,000 new claims this year, as a means of circumventing their imminent deportation orders. The challenge for any Canadian government, now and in the future, will be in resisting the attempts of these migrants to stay. Reductions in future growth numbers will not be enough; Ottawa has to show Canadians that it has the will and the means to enforce its own policies and prevent the entrenchment of a new underclass, with all the threats to social and economic stability that it entails.
1TrueCuencoism
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIn recent decades the Democrat Left re-oriented itself from its collectivist economics fairytale to its new selective-victimhood /grievance fairytale (and has done immense damage to America’s social and cultural fabric in the process). But if economic policy is back on its agenda then looking to some kind of quasi-socialist command economy as an answer remains the delusional rabbit hole that it ever was. Yes Globalism’s fraying of community bonds is perhaps the greatest threat to all Western societies. But I have my doubts about the ability of ‘economic populism’ to do much about this. I am not a great believer in political solutions….more a believer in unintended political consequences.https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/globalism-vs-national-conservatism
Looking to any kind of quasi-socialist command economy as an answer remains the delusional rabbit hole that it ever was.
Kamala – airhead, all style, no substance. Obama in a pants suit.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw
Yay Kamela is lying and making lots of empty promises, yay! It’s like when Biden pushed through a student loan forgiveness program right before the midterms. A program he knew wouldn’t work he knew was unconstitutional and that everyone knew was going to get struck down immediately. That’s been consistent with the left recently say ormake whatever promises sound good and promptly forget them as soon as the election cycle is over.
Not to mention she’s already the incumbent right now I mean it’s been clearly demonstrated Joe isn’t running the country so whoever the hell is isn’t going to let cackling Kamela change things too much.
As a final point
> This would be coupled with $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-time buyers,
This is an absolutely idiotic policy that will do nothing to help costs of housing all it will do is make it more unaffordable as it introduces a ton of new money into the supply but only for one thing. This is the exact same problem we saw with college costs as soon as the government started promising everyone money for college the cost of college skyrocketed.
As evidence of this what are the three things in the US that people complain about the out of control price on healthcare, college and housing. Which three areas does the government subsidize most heavily and does the government give the most money to help people with? Healthcare, through Medicare and Medicade, college with student grants and loans, and housing by offering numerous tax breaks for home owners.
These policies are as idiotic as price controls and taxing unrealized capital gains they will destroy this country. If we really wanted to change things we should be looking to what Argentina is doing as they are one of the only increasing economies in the world, not following in the path of idiotic failing states like Brazil.
It is telling that even a mild migration towards the postwar economy is considered ‘populist’. Back in that age, the 50s and 60s, neoliberal ideas were actually considered extremist and outdated, but they are still largely mainstream now. Despite failing on many occasions.
That is almost a reason to be optimistic since economist have been wrong on so many occasions in the 21st century. And they just keep clinging to their economic dogma’s. That said, the housing crisis is because of asset inflation caused by central banks. Giving first time buyers 25k pumps up the bubble even further. And honestly, it isn’t even enough, many home owners got at least 200k virtual value out of nothing. Something must be done to deflate the bubble.
Although both parties are by and for the oligarchs it is a bigger step for republicans to embrace the economic policies that will actually be beneficial for the working class voters I think. Can they trick them once more with stories like trickle down? On other hand, the democrats have alienated and even betrayed working class voters, that is hard to forget. In Europe some social democrats are starting to figure out that left wing economics combined with a ‘cultural conservatism’ might get them back into power. However, I don’t think the democrats will make that shift any time soon.
In Britain the housing crisis is as much a consequence of mass immigration and over-regulation as it is of central bank action – though I’d agree that QE has played a major part as well. We’ve basically created a system under which productive activity is taxed in order to reward the rent seeking of a parasitic metropolitan class, all the while wondering why our economy remains stagnant.
Well, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation as far as I can see. Everywhere in the West we see a housing crisis correlating with the monetary policy. At the same time we usually see that very few new houses are being realized while migration is also high. Could it be connected? If you think about it, scarcity and keeping demand high is basically not a bug but a feature when you have a bubble and you want to engage in rent seeking.
What matters in Presidential elections is not who the candidate is or which policies they tout on the stump, but who is paying for the campaign, because that determines what policies the candidate will pursue once in office. Harris is every bit as much a Wall Street candidate as Biden, Obama and both Clintons before her.
So your vaunted exception is Donald Trump, an actual oligarch?
At least Mitt Romney had an anchoring faith, and an evident decency.