The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Did Canada Break Its Own Immigration System?

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Canada has scaled back immigration targets in response to growing concerns about housing, affordability, and public services. But will lower numbers solve the problems Canadians are worried about, or could they create new challenges of their own? And how did Canada's immigration system end up under such intense scrutiny in the first place? Tony Keller, columnist with The Globe and Mail, argues that many of the system's shortcomings run deeper than the number of newcomers Canada admits. Then, Parisa Mahboubi of the C.D. Howe Institute and Sonia Sidhu of Green and Spiegel examine whether recent reforms are addressing the root causes of those concerns or simply reshaping them.Donate Today : https://tvo.me/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What a difference a year can make. When you support TVO, you're helping bring trusted stories, inspiring ideas, and lifelong learning to people across Ontario. And as a thank you, you can receive the 2027 TVO calendar. Filled with beautiful photography from the documentaries and programs your support helps make possible. It's a year-long reminder of the learning, beauty, and discovery your generosity supports. Donate $40 or more to claim yours today at TVO.com slash calendar 2027 and make every month a little more inspiring. For a long time, most Canadians thought the government was accepting the right number of immigrants. Then things changed. In 2023 and 2024, support dropped dramatically sinking to a 30-year low.

And according to the Canadian diversity study 2026, a majority of Canadians then said immigration levels were too high for the first time in decades. Ottawa got the message. And since then, the federal government has made some big changes to Canada's immigration system, sharply reducing the number of people coming into the country. So, where do things stand now and are we getting the balance right? Or have we created a different set of problems? I'm Jan Jaganathan. Welcome to the run now. Okay, so let's look at what's actually changed because there have been some pretty big cuts.

Take international students. In 2024, the federal government started limiting how many international students could come to Canada. And according to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the international student population has since dropped one third. And new arrivals have fallen even faster. From January to June, 26, there are 82% fewer new international student arrivals compared to the same period. in 2024. Permanent residency or PR applications are being scaled back too. In 2024, Canada hit a milestone number of permanent residency approvals with over 480,000 new residents. Since then, Ottawa has lowered its targets to 395,000 in 2025 and 380,000 in 2026. And based on data from the first half of this year, some experts believe Canada is on track to admit fewer applications than planned for 2026.

The changes aren't just happening at the federal level. In June 2026, the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program was overhauled, one of the pathways people can use to become permanent residents. Under the first phase of the new system, applicants must now qualify for one of three pathways, as a self-employed physician, a higher-skilled occupation, or a lower-skilled occupation with additional requirements for each. Cutting numbers is one thing.

The bigger question is what those cuts actually mean. Are these changes fixing the problems Canadians were worried about? Or could we actually end up creating new ones? Sonia Sidiu, Prisa Mabubi, thank you so much for joining us in our rundown studios. Prisa, I'm going to come to you. After years of backlash over immigration levels being too high, Canada has significantly reduced permanent residency targets. You dig into this data all the time with the CD-How Institute. Looking at the numbers, is this cut a step in the right direction or are we off track?

That's the right way to do to reduce the number of permanent immigration targets. And the reason is that for several years, Canada continued to increase its immigration levels significantly. And it's not just permanent immigration. so we also admitted and welcomed a large number of temporary immigrants. So that contributed to a large increase in population growth over a very short period of time. For example, Canada's population growth reached more than 3% in 2020. What happened is that that increase, sudden increase in population growth through immigration, put pressure on our system in terms of to being,

not being able to absorb that large number of immigrants and putting pressure on housing market, labor market, and on other aspects of the system to support those newcomers and also existing populations. So this is important, it was important step for the government to return to sustainable rate of immigration, a level and rates that Canada can absorb and support the existing population in addition to new commerce.

However, one thing we need to do is to be transparent. For example, when the government announced targets for permanent immigration, they have to include all streams, all initiatives, one-time initiative that they are considered to make adjustment to total population. They all should be included in the target that they are announced. Can you give me an example of some of those streams that you're talking about? For example, last year, the headline numbers was 380.30. thousand for permanent immigration in

2006 and 2007. At the same time, government announced one-time initiatives to admit more than 100,000 permanent immigrants. These individuals, they were already approved. They are eligible to become permanent immigrants. They were waiting for their time to become permanent immigrants, but these numbers

weren't included in the target. the headline target. So that's misleading and the one thing that the government needs to do to increase transparency. They have to be transparent about how many numbers we are going to admit. That's something we need for planning.

All right, Sonia, I see you're nodding your head there. You're an immigration lawyer. Help me understand here. What do you make of the reduction in PR targets? Here, we're a country that, you know, we have an ultra-low fertility rate here, so when we look into the future, we have an aging population,

what does this do for us? I think we really need to look at it historically first, right? Like we had 2015 to 2019. We had a gradual, we had a gradual, sustainable, gradual. Then the pandemic happened. And then we had a major decrease. And then we had an unprecedented increase to 2024 records, right? And all we're hearing is that.

We're hearing numbers up, down, up, down. I really see this as a recalibration era. We're recalibrating what the numbers should be. And we can't follow the trends that we did in 2015 to 2019 to say what 2026 should be because the world has changed. You know, we have different labor needs. Pandemic changed a lot of how industries operate. So we have to take that all into consideration.

And getting the pendulum right is really hard, right? This is live stuff. This isn't something you can just say it's going to be this black and white. But I think the more important question is, okay, can we get a number? But what does that number entail? Are we getting the right talent? We can't just concentrate on a number. We have labor market needs.

We have a health care system that needs workers. If we say a number and out of that number, only 2% are health care workers, we're still a problem. The numbers didn't address the needs. So I think the bigger question is, are we addressing the needs with this number? And then when we address the talent, we get the health care workers in, are they able to actually enter the market? Are we also addressing, there is twofold, threefold, right?

So it's like the government has to get in with the licensing boards and say if immigration is going to take three years to get and then another year for licensing, we're four or five years down the road. Did that really meet our needs? Got it. All right. One of the things that also took headlines for a number of years was international students. Since 2024, Canada's international student population has dropped by one third. Take us through it, Perse. The good, the bad, the ugly.

when we look at sort of the cuts there in terms of the reduction by one-third. What can we expect here? So in regards to international students, so there are some, so we are going to see some groups are going to benefit from that. Some others are going to be affected

by significant reductions. And the obvious one that, you know, in terms of that, that was the right decision to do to manage international student programs is that over time, we saw significant increase in enrollments of international students. And not all provinces and not all institutions are responsible for that. Unfortunately, there were some bad players that contributed to that spike and also provinces.

Ontario, for example, is the one that actually more responsible than other provinces for the spike in international students. And despite actually it was highest, you know, we saw a significant, spike for colleges, not necessarily universities. But one thing we saw is that all institutions got punished by mismanagement and that, you know, by the act of bad players. Instead of punishing bad players and also thinking how we can make the system more sustainable and also make adjustment to make it work better.

So, but it was a right decision we needed to do. that increase in international students, put pressure on housing and also other services and we need to provide to them. But at the same time, institutions that they saw reduction in international students are going to be affected, have been affected, but provinces need to support them in regards, for example, tuition policy. You know, what's, what happened in Ontario, what's the reason behind that? And also, instead of putting a cap, I think it's better to to look at institutions, their performance, and allow them for those that they are doing well,

because we benefit from international students. They are potential candidates for permanent residents we need, and they can contribute to our economy through their tuition, through their consumption, and their activities. We can benefit from international students, but we need to do it better, we need to select better, what type of international students we need.

All right, so now I'm gonna get you in here. When it comes to international, just to be clear, they do fall under the umbrella of temporary immigration. Received a lot of flack in terms of how the programs were rolled out. Talk about sort of the bad actors here. But Prissa had mentioned also housing. Like, you know, the pressures there. Help me understand a little bit some of the good, the bad, the ugly

when it comes to these numbers. I think, like, she hit the nail there. The sustainability of the program wasn't there, right? We're affecting infrastructure. We're affecting public services. And to me, like the most, important thing is the integrity of our education sector. We have to play on a global level, right? We cannot have our education sector being tarnished like that. So it's not even about the

numbers. Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it too much? Is it too less? Are we getting the right students here? We need these students, like she said, to go to school, enter the labor market that we need. So if we have schools that are shutting down programs, I'm going to go back to health care. There's open seats for health care professionals. And, or or they're shutting down programs because they don't have enough enrollment. Well, that's where we have to say, how do we attract the right students to fit this empty seat to then roll out to our long-term labor needs? And I think that's what the concentration should be on. All right.

I want to pivot a little bit over to the Ontario Immigrant Nominy Program, one of the many streams here. This is run by the province, but ultimately is approved by the federal government. At the end of the day, regardless of where you start sort of your district, journey in this country, all roads tend to lead to Ontario. It is a popular destination for a lot of people. And so I am curious, what is the actual point of the program? People are already lining up to move to those problems. Absolutely. So Ontario basically doesn't need a program if the goal is to attract more immigrants and support, for example, demographic challenges other provinces are facing. So Ontario doesn't have that problem. Actually, Ontario has a different problem because now being

a major destination, so it means that more, you know, when it be increasing immigration numbers, Ontario get the most of those numbers. So it means that it's going to put more pressure on its system. So it's not, it shouldn't be about that. And the objective, if Ontario wants to select, it's basically, it's about having more control over the type of immigrants, Ontario wants to select. Precision. Exactly. However, based on past experiences, based on the programs that we saw, and even the overhaul of the program, the question is that whether the province is making

the right decision and selecting the right immigrants. So when we look at the aggregate level, in general, all provinces, they have programs that they select their own immigrants. When we look at the performance of immigrants selected by provinces, relative to immigrants that federal, you know, they are selected under federal programs in terms of their earnings post-immigration. Immigrants selected by provinces, they do poorly when it comes to earnings, the outcome, post-immigration.

That shows that actually provinces are not doing a good job in terms of the selection. And even in terms of the program, for example, Ontario and now focuses on addressing labor shortages. I understand that we need to address labor needs, you know, and immigration can support that. However, I can argue that, first of all, in terms of the shortages, we shouldn't focus on shortages in low-pay, low-skilled jobs,

and the reason is that it can affect wage increases, it can affect working conditions. You know, we are actually, we are not encouraging workers to address some of those challenges, and we don't allow the labor market to adjust. We have to wait and see, for example, we should see if there are labor shortages. We should see some wage increases. We should see some improvements in working condition. We should see some investment, you know, and investment in regards to capital and also existing workforce.

But what we saw recently is that employees are trying to address all labor needs through immigration, and so they are not taking other types of effort. So that's the issue. So Ontario needs to, if they want to select immigrants, they have to focus on long-term benefits of immigration, and how our economy and productivity is a big issue. We need to see how immigration can support productivity and economic growth in the economy. province. Sorry, I'm just going to jump in there. I have a completely different opinion on that. Just because we have a draw to our province, it's really within the GTA.

Ontario is much more than the GTA. And we have hubs that are developing outside of the GTA. We have industries that don't operate in the GTA but outside. They are neat. And we need this provincial nomination program to drive those areas. So what Ontario really should be concentrating on, and they did it last year, and they did it at the beginning of this year, is location-based invites, you know, not only occupation-based, but occupation-plus location. But even within the GTA, we, if you, and I say this from practice, we have, you know, companies that have foreign national employees. They can't fill a labor shortage.

These employees are expiring. And if they're not competitive for the express entry, the federal program, these individuals are going to lose their jobs and positions, but the employer is still. doesn't have someone to fill it. So it's still an issue in the GTA as well, right? Particular employees, particular industries. But the P&P programs are needed because a province isn't just one hub. When we talk about those municipal labor markets, what are we doing?

Like Northern, Northern, like Ontario, you know, there's southwestern Ontario. There's, you know, we have central Ontario, eastern Ontario. You know, there's invites for central Ontario, but for the GTA, right? We still have a good population outside of the Toronto area, right? So these programs are needed and the province really does have to ramp it up and say, hey, outside of the GTA and outside of Toronto even, what are the needs, what are the industries that need to be addressed? Well, with that, let's get some recommendations on the table, whether it's for the Federal Minister of Immigration, Lena Dieb, or Ontario's new Minister of Labor, Immigration Training and Skills Development, Trevor Jones. We have one recommendation from each. So for the federal government, my recommendation is to make the system transparent, predictable,

and also look at the objectives that matters for Canada. You know, for example, long-term outcomes of immigrants and their contribution to our economy and raising standards of living for all Canadians. So it means improving selection system and moving away from category-based selection. So we can select top candidates. And for for province, for Ontario, my recommendation is that look at both immigration and also international student stream and pathways, looking at how the system is doing in terms of selecting of immigrants, looking at the outcomes.

It's really important to use the data and to look at the outcome of immigrants when we are designing the system. So when it comes to international students, looking at institutions, you know, the performance. So we need to revisit the list of institutions admitting international students. And in regards to regional immigration, I recommend looking at retention rate. That's something that I believe regional immigration policy is not able to address immigrants in those regions because immigrants can move to another, you know, we can force them to stay in one region. We need to make those regions attractive to all immigrants.

inside Canadians. All right. Sonia, get the last one. I mean, with the provincial government, entrepreneur stream, we need an entrepreneurial stream. We're a big province that drives a lot, and we have a lot of talent here that we're not capitalizing on. Right?

So that is my biggest recommendation to the province. To the federal government, the best way I put it, like someone like me, say, you know, but for being born in Canada, everything is the same for me. I'm not competitive for immigration on a federal level. that's a problem, right? So look into that, right?

We need to look into the group of people we're missing and drive that in. All right. Well, we are going to have to leave it there. I really appreciate your insights. Sonia, Prisa, thank you so much. Thank you for having us. Look, there is a bigger question here about how Canada ended up in this position in the first place. Globe and Mail columnist Tony Keller has been tracking Canada's immigration system for years.

And he argues some of its problems go much deeper than simply how many people Canada lets in. Tony, great to have you in our studios. How are you doing? Very good to be here with you. Thanks. I want to start on a positive note. We'll require a bit of a brief history lesson here, but you say Canada got immigration right for a very long time. Why do you think that? So Canada was a very impressive country in that we had a fairly high rate of immigration, and immigration was popular. It was uncontroversial. I say in my book that it was kind of like functioning plumbing. Nobody thought about it. Nobody thought about it. it, nobody worried about it, it just happened, and it worked. And so that is a remarkable thing,

because most of the rest of the developed world, immigration was and is quite controversial, creates all kinds of political backlash, creates all kinds of political tensions. That wasn't happening in Canada. And I think to explain why, you have to look at how, you know, both luck and good policy. Luck, we have three oceans surrounding us, and we border the United States, which has tended to attract people as opposed to exporting them. And good policy, we tended to pick immigrants, we tended to select immigrants as opposed to having people just show up unannounced.

And we tended to do a pretty good job of selecting and focusing on economic immigrants. The consequence of all that was Canada had a fairly high immigration rate. Nobody worried that much about immigration. Nobody was deeply opposed to it. What are we talking about in terms of a time period here when we did it right? 1960s all the way up to 2015. And in particular, the early 1990s up to 2015.

So in the early 90s, through the Kretchen government and the Harper government, immigration rates are stable. The immigration system is run along similar lines. And things just become stable, boring, uncontroversial. But they work. It's uncontroversial because it's actually working pretty well. Okay. Fast word of 2026.

You say immigration, it's not boring. It's quite contentious. What changed? So the Trudeau government changed a lot of things about the system. And first of all, numbers went way up. Canada had these stable numbers from the Kretchen era through the Harper era. Numbers went way up. The second thing is the manner in which people were coming completely changed.

So we moved from a system that was overwhelmingly focused on permanent immigration, with the core of the system being economic immigrants, chosen through the point system, high-skilled, high-education people mostly, to a system very focused on temporary immigration, especially through the student stream. And those temporary immigrants tended to be chosen, in fact, because they were qualified for low-wage jobs, low-entry positions. And they were not, in the case of students, generally going to high-quality institutions, but especially to low-quality institutions. So we kind of turned the system upside down, and we dramatically increased the number of people coming. Really, really big change to the system that existed. And I think that's a big

part of the reason that Canadian attitudes towards immigration changed. Any reason attitude changing with what was happening south of the border? So this is an interesting question because at the same time in the U.S., immigration was also really changing. During the Biden administration, immigration numbers went way up. It was primarily about people crossing the border from Mexico and asking for political asylum. Huge numbers, unprecedented in American history. The Canadian numbers were quite a bit higher. The difference is in Canada, everyone who came to Canada was invited.

Everyone who came to Canada came legally. Everyone had a recognized visa. So I think that that was different and beneficial. But at the same time, the numbers are so big that ultimately had an effect on Canadians. And I think a lot of Canadians started to say, what's going on here? What's the benefit of this? What's in it for me? why are we doing this?

Okay, too much too fast. Now, one of the arguments we hear over and over again when this conversation comes up is that we're in favor for more immigrants here in Canada because of falling birth rates. How much weight does that argument hold? I don't put a lot of weight on that because ultimately, so the argument for that

is that we will have labor shortages, generalized across the economy labor shortages. And that, in fact, is what drove the big run-up in immigration after 2015 was businesses and certain lobby groups saying Canada's going to have a population shortage, you've got to boost immigration. Canada currently has not enough workers. The idea of not enough workers generalized across the economy doesn't make a lot of sense because we can see unemployment rate isn't zero. You can have specific shortages, especially for highly skilled people, and we should worry

about that, and we should use the immigration system to target that. But the idea that there just aren't enough people in Canada. Therefore, we need higher immigration rates. Not a lot of basis to believe that. There might be some people who are listening, communities in northern Ontario who might say, well, actually, Tony, we do have a shortage. We do need people up there.

What do you say to that? So one of the challenges with that argument is in Canada, we have labor mobility. So you can say to someone, hey, we're going to help you or give you a special benefit if you immigrate to a certain small town or a certain area, but you can move.

people have been leaving those areas precisely because there are economic opportunities elsewhere. They are drawn to those economic opportunities. That's a good thing. So it is challenging to use the immigration system specifically to try to bulk up local communities in areas that are losing people. They're losing people for a reason.

So it's hard to use immigration because you can't compel anybody to stay anywhere. Okay. Talk about the early days. We talk about the 60s. we talked about the 90s here. How many understand what is the recipe here for a successful immigration system here in Canada?

So I think a successful immigration system for Canada has relatively high immigration, but not too high. And reasonable people can debate what that level is. Focuses on skilled people and educated people, as opposed to focusing on unskilled people for the lowest, least attractive jobs. I think that's really the key. Have a deal.

level of border control, which Canada has always had, to make sure that people don't just arrive, that they're invited. I think if you get back to the system the way it was and continue to refine and improve it, you're going to see Canadians be quite comfortable with immigration. You're going to see immigration be popular. Above all, you're going to see immigration be uncontroversial. Political parties won't fight over immigration. Canadians won't fight over immigration. It will just go back to working like functioning plumbing. Well, you talk about that. It's interesting. I am curious about what advice you would have or do have for the federal immigration minister, Lena Dieppe, as you talk about something

quiet, just kind of doing things behind the scenes and getting the numbers stabilized. Any advice there? Are they on the right track? I think they have taken some steps in the right direction. I think there's more they've got to do. They've got to bring the numbers down, I would say, a little bit more, back to where the levels were. So the levels that we were at in the 90s, the early 2000s up to 2015, were about 0.7 to 0.8

of the percent of the total population. So we're looking, talking around, for the current population, around 300,000 a year. So bring the numbers down a bit more. Bring the skill level up higher. Don't focus on low-wage work, focus on high-education people who in the long run will contribute to Canada.

And I would get rid of entirely the temporary foreign worker program because the temporary foreign worker program has focused recently on a lot of low-wage work. And I would focus our student visas on universities, high-end universities, good-quality programs, the kind of people we want to attract to Canada, the kind of people we'd actually have to compete

to get them to stay in Canada, as opposed to the kind of people who are paying tuition for the purpose of remaining in Canada. The tuition is simply to get in the door. In the case of people going to a high-end university doing a high-end program, they could leave and go back to their country. We're trying to attract them. That's who we want, people who were competing for.

Tony, we were going to leave it there. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Do you think the government has found the right balance on immigration, or have the cuts gone too far? Let us know in the comments or send us an email at rundown at TVO.org. If you're enjoying this series, please consider supporting TVO with a donation to make more insightful and thought-provoking podcast possible. TVO is a registered charity, and you will receive a tax receipt for your gift.

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