Toronto, Canada – When Diana Gallego listened to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s broadly touted speech on the World Financial Discussion board at first of this 12 months, she couldn’t assist however really feel a disconnect.
Carney had made an impassioned plea to the world’s “center powers” to interrupt with a United States-led worldwide order that he stated was now not working, and his phrases discovered receptive audiences world wide.
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However for Gallego, co-executive director of FCJ Refugee Centre, an organisation that helps refugees and asylum seekers in Canada’s largest metropolis, the prime minister’s statements rang hole amid his authorities’s hardening method to immigration.
“We noticed the [prime] minister going to Davos [with] this lovely discourse, saying we must always not copy our neighbours … However internally, the insurance policies are telling us one other story,” Gallego instructed Al Jazeera. “Canada is closing the doorways now.”
Gallego is amongst greater than a dozen consultants – from legal professionals to professors, rights advocates and former authorities officers – who instructed Al Jazeera that Canada is at a “troubling” crossroads in its insurance policies in the direction of migrants and refugees.
As Canadians have grappled with rising financial and social pressures lately, a decades-old consensus on the advantages of immigration has frayed.
Hostile rhetoric blaming newcomers for Canada’s ills has intensified, and Carney’s authorities has slashed non permanent visas and restricted access to asylum. Consultants say a “generational shift” is below method.
“The final rhetoric is, ‘We don’t need you right here’,” stated Gallego.
Inflow in non permanent migration
A settler-colonial state, Canada has inspired successive waves of immigration all through its historical past, from largely European settlement within the early to mid-1900s to specialised programmes that introduced refugees and high- and low-skilled workers to Canadian shores.
For many years, that inflow of newcomers was broadly seen as a constructive factor: immigration was fuelling the nation’s economic system, staffing key job sectors and counteracting a quickly ageing inhabitants.
However over the previous few years, Canada has seen one of the vital dramatic shifts in how the general public views immigration – and the federal government has tapped into more and more unfavourable sentiment to chop programmes and cross new, restrictive legal guidelines.
The coverage adjustments started below former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal Celebration authorities had dramatically elevated non permanent immigration throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to fill labour market gaps.
The figures shot up quickly and, by October 2024, there have been almost 3.15 million non-permanent residents in Canada, accounting for roughly 8 % of the inhabitants, in keeping with official figures.
On the identical time, systemic points – from a scarcity of inexpensive housing to excessive grocery prices and lengthy hospital wait occasions – have been placing the squeeze on many Canadian households.
Public attitudes rapidly hardened, and a 2024 ballot (PDF) discovered a majority of Canadians saying for the primary time in a long time that there was “an excessive amount of immigration”.
Since then, a number of incidents of xenophobic violence have been reported, together with in a few of Canada’s largest cities, the place the inflow of migrants has been among the many most seen.
Below strain as offended discourse soared, the Trudeau authorities promised in 2024 to get immigration back to “sustainable” levels, and the cuts started, together with most notably to worldwide scholar visas.
“The truth is that not everybody who desires to return to Canada will be capable to – identical to not everybody who desires to remain in Canada will be capable to,” Marc Miller, Canada’s former immigration minister, stated in September that 12 months.
‘Misguided beliefs’
The numbers of arrivals dropped rapidly as scholar and work visas have been cancelled, forcing 1000’s of individuals to go away Canada or stay with out authorized standing. By the beginning of this 12 months, non-permanent residents totalled about 2.67 million, in keeping with authorities figures, a 15 % drop from the height in October 2024.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be able to blame the housing crisis in Canada on immigration, however there’s little question that the radically elevated numbers below Justin Trudeau’s regime had a political impact,” Allan Rock, a former Canadian justice minister and Liberal lawmaker, instructed Al Jazeera.
The federal government, Rock defined, has been “studying the room and sensing that Canadians have been connecting native financial and monetary difficulties with migration”.
On the identical time, right-wing politicians have seized on these public attitudes, with the opposition Conservative Celebration earlier this 12 months pushing the governing Liberals to chop healthcare for folks it described as “faux refugees”.
The Conservatives, additionally, have echoed US President Donald Trump in advocating for adjustments to “birthright citizenship”, claiming that the “outdated rule” that grants citizenship to anybody born in Canada “presents one more pressure on our immigration system that Canada can’t deal with”.
“With over 7 per cent of Canada’s inhabitants right here on non permanent standing – and arrivals massively outpacing the capability of our housing, healthcare and jobs markets – one thing wants to alter,” the party said.
Rights advocates have denounced that rhetoric whereas accusing policymakers of falsely linking migrants and refugees to social issues to absolve themselves of duty for a years-long failure to correctly fund healthcare, schooling and different providers.
On the housing subject, as an illustration, consultants have discovered (PDF) that, whereas immigration will increase demand for housing inventory, its impact on costs is way much less vital than public discourse would have folks consider.
“Management means not merely caving into public opinion when it’s primarily based on misguided beliefs,” Rock instructed Al Jazeera. “We’re shopping for into, and we’re supporting, a rising worldwide development to tighten borders and construct partitions and validate misguided beliefs about refugees and migrants.”
“It’s a betrayal of values that this nation has all the time stood for, and I discover it troubling.”
Carney doubles down
But, since taking workplace in April 2025, Carney – the prime minister – has continued the place his predecessor Trudeau left off on immigration.
In late March, Carney’s Liberal government handed a sweeping new regulation that grants Ottawa the ability to cancel visas en masse, together with for everlasting residents, if it deems it within the “public curiosity” to take action.
The regulation, generally known as Invoice C-12, additionally restricts entry to Canada’s refugee standing willpower system in ways in which legal professionals instructed Al Jazeera are “arbitrary” and sure run counter to the nation’s structure, the Canadian Constitution of Rights and Freedoms.
The federal government has justified the measure – which is anticipated to face a constitutional problem in courtroom – as a part of an effort to streamline a backlogged asylum system and forestall “fraud”.
On the finish of final 12 months, almost 300,000 circumstances have been pending on the unbiased tribunal that adjudicates refugee claims within the nation, generally known as the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB).
A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration division, instructed Al Jazeera that it had launched Invoice C-12 “as international migration pressures intensify”.
The regulation introduces “measures to deal with challenges corresponding to sudden will increase in asylum claims and conditions the place current processes could also be used to bypass common immigration pathways”, the spokesperson stated in an emailed assertion.
“This implies we will present sooner safety for these in want,” they stated, including that Invoice C-12 additionally respects Canada’s obligations below the United Nations Refugee Conference in addition to the Canadian Constitution of Rights and Freedoms.
However consultants say the regulation will do little to deal with the backlog on the IRB. They’ve additionally accused lawmakers of failing to dispel – and even of enjoying into – xenophobic rhetoric moderately than addressing the real concerns of Canadians or structural issues within the asylum system.
The federal government is “creating this sense within the public that persons are scamming us, they’re profiting from the system [and] there’s one thing damaged that must be fastened”, stated Julia Sande, a lawyer at Amnesty Worldwide Canada.
“Folks’s struggles are actual. Persons are dealing with a housing disaster, inflation and unemployment, wage stagnation and widening inequality,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
“Then, as a substitute of taking duty or making the adjustments wanted to deal with these items, governments search for a bunch responsible – and who’s higher responsible than individuals who don’t have the best to vote and may’t vote you out?”
Carney’s ‘honeymoon’ part
Regardless of such considerations raised by rights advocates, Canada’s altering immigration insurance policies don’t seem to have drawn a lot consideration – or pushback – from the broader public.
A large-reaching effort by civil society teams earlier this 12 months to get the federal government to make amendments to Invoice C-12 did not safe any significant adjustments.
Along with that regulation, the Carney authorities additionally has rolled back a healthcare programme for refugees, prolonged a freeze on refugee resettlement purposes, and introduced vital funding cuts to a number of ministries, together with the immigration division.
Deliberate cuts on the IRB – the board that adjudicates refugee claims – have also been reported, fuelling considerations that delays could worsen.
“The truth that there isn’t any actual plan in place to take care of this backlog [at the IRB] then contributes to unfavourable opinion by the general public about refugees,” stated Maureen Silcoff, a refugee lawyer who beforehand served as a member of the tribunal.
“I feel the federal government has a duty to proactively undo among the myths which can be circulating,” Silcoff instructed Al Jazeera. “That is particularly vital in occasions the place we see in different international locations that there’s a surge of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric.”
However, Carney continues to take pleasure in excessive approval rankings as he has justified authorities insurance policies throughout his first 12 months in workplace as a part of an “elbows up” response to pressure from the Trump administration.
“The Carney authorities nonetheless appears to be [enjoying] a honeymoon of kinds,” stated John Carlaw, an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan College who specialises in Canadian politics and immigration.
“We’re seeing a significant withdrawal of social spending after which an funding in militarism and border enforcement,” Carlaw instructed Al Jazeera, describing it as a “troubling interval” in Canada.
“I feel C-12 actually confirmed the federal government isn’t serious about listening to from communities that work with migrants and immigrants to make insurance policies which can be according to a human rights framework. They simply don’t need to hearken to dissent.”
‘Not immune’ to backsliding on human rights
Regardless of that, rights advocates say they’ll proceed to push again towards the route Canada is heading on immigration.
“We are able to’t cease combating,” Luisa Ortiz-Garza, a migrant rights organiser at Parkdale Group Authorized Companies, instructed a packed gymnasium at Trinity-St Paul’s United Church in downtown Toronto in late April.
A number of dozen folks joined the occasion, dubbed “No Extra Divide and Rule”, to denounce xenophobia and urge the federal government to grant legal immigration status for all migrants and refugees in Canada.
“What [the government is] doing is definitely simply placing folks towards one another,” Ortiz-Garza instructed Al Jazeera in an interview at her organisation’s workplace a number of days earlier than the gathering.
“It’s residents towards migrants [and] migrants towards migrants as a result of there’s this concept that some migrants did issues proper and different migrants simply jumped the queue or abused the system,” she stated.
“We’re making an attempt to have these conversations and convey folks collectively: allies, residents, migrants … in order that we will truly speak about this and remind folks about unity.”
That was echoed by Sande at Amnesty Worldwide, who warned that Canada is “not immune” to a backsliding on human rights. “Issues will simply proceed to worsen till governments really feel they’re held to account,” she stated. “Sure, scapegoating could begin with migrants, but it surely by no means ends there.”
