One of the first major pledges of the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau upon forming government in 2015 was to bring in a large number of Syrian refugees within a short period of time.
There was both political and public will to see this happen, as Canadians watched with concern as war in Syria caused a growing refugee crisis.
But there was one set of voices that at one point in the process wanted to temporarily pause the rush of arrivals to Canada. They weren’t anti-immigrant voices. In fact, it was the opposite. Refugee resettlement agencies were, for a brief period, calling on the feds to slow things down.
Bringing in tens of thousands of people so rapidly was causing logistical challenges, they said. They didn’t have the staffing resources and they hadn’t identified adequate housing for the refugees.
It was an interesting little footnote to that whole episode, learning that the most pro-refugee groups out there knew there were limits to the number of people you can bring into Canada in an orderly and successful fashion within a certain time frame.
The new plan is to bring in 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and a whopping 500,000 by 2025. It’s a big leap and it’s happening quickly. To give a sense of how much that target has ballooned, the 2016 number was 250,000 newcomers. We’re doubling the volume in under 10 years.
There was a time when people were sheepish about publicly critiquing immigration numbers as being “too much.” Anyone who criticized the volume of the intake was seen as also criticizing the country of origin or race and ethnicity of the newcomer. (And of course, that remains the motivation for some people’s criticism of immigration.)
But concerns around immigration targets have now become mainstream as Canadians grapple with challenges that include housing costs, health-care systems in tatters, and worsening congestion.
