Toronto, Canada – When Diana Gallego listened to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s extensively touted speech on the World Financial Discussion board initially 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 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 strategy to immigration.
“We noticed the [prime] minister going to Davos [with] this stunning 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 attorneys to professors, rights advocates and former authorities officers – who instructed Al Jazeera that Canada is at a “troubling” crossroads in its insurance policies in direction of migrants and refugees.
As Canadians have grappled with rising financial and social pressures in recent times, 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 momentary visas and restricted access to asylum. Specialists say a “generational shift” is beneath approach.
“The overall rhetoric is, ‘We don’t need you right here’,” stated Gallego.
Inflow in momentary 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 extensively considered as a constructive factor: immigration was fuelling the nation’s financial system, staffing key job sectors and counteracting a quickly ageing inhabitants.
However over the previous few years, Canada has seen one of the crucial dramatic shifts in how the general public views immigration – and the federal government has tapped into more and more damaging sentiment to chop programmes and go new, restrictive legal guidelines.
The coverage adjustments started beneath former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal Celebration authorities had dramatically elevated momentary 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 p.c of the inhabitants, in line with official figures.
On the identical time, systemic points – from a scarcity of reasonably priced housing to excessive grocery prices and lengthy hospital wait instances – 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 indignant 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 come back to Canada will have the ability to – identical to not everybody who desires to remain in Canada will have the ability 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 hundreds 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 line with authorities figures, a 15 p.c drop from the height in October 2024.
“I don’t suppose you may blame the housing crisis in Canada on immigration, however there’s little doubt that the radically elevated numbers beneath 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 individuals it described as “pretend 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 yet 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 momentary 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 accountability for a years-long failure to correctly fund healthcare, training and different companies.
On the housing situation, as an example, 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 individuals imagine.
“Management means not merely caving into public opinion when it’s based mostly on inaccurate beliefs,” Rock instructed Al Jazeera. “We’re shopping for into, and we’re supporting, a rising worldwide pattern to tighten borders and construct partitions and validate inaccurate 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, often known as Invoice C-12, additionally restricts entry to Canada’s refugee standing willpower system in ways in which attorneys 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 predicted to face a constitutional problem in court docket – as a part of an effort to streamline a backlogged asylum system and stop “fraud”.
On the finish of final 12 months, almost 300,000 circumstances have been pending on the impartial tribunal that adjudicates refugee claims within the nation, often 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 world migration pressures intensify”.
The regulation introduces “measures to deal with challenges akin to sudden will increase in asylum claims and conditions the place present processes could also be used to bypass common immigration pathways”, the spokesperson stated in an emailed assertion.
“This implies we will present quicker safety for these in want,” they stated, including that Invoice C-12 additionally respects Canada’s obligations beneath 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 taking part in into – xenophobic rhetoric slightly 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 individuals are scamming us, they’re making the most of the system [and] there’s one thing damaged that must be mounted”, stated Julia Sande, a lawyer at Amnesty Worldwide Canada.
“Folks’s struggles are actual. Individuals are dealing with a housing disaster, inflation and unemployment, wage stagnation and widening inequality,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
“Then, as an alternative of taking accountability or making the adjustments wanted to deal with these items, governments search for a bunch in charge – and who’s higher in charge than individuals who don’t have the precise to vote and might’t vote you out?”
Carney’s ‘honeymoon’ section
Regardless of such issues 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 didn’t 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 functions, and introduced important 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 issues that delays might worsen.
“The truth that there isn’t any actual plan in place to take care of this backlog [at the IRB] then contributes to damaging opinion by the general public about refugees,” stated Maureen Silcoff, a refugee lawyer who beforehand served as a member of the tribunal.
“I believe the federal government has a accountability to proactively undo among the myths which are circulating,” Silcoff instructed Al Jazeera. “That is particularly vital in instances the place we see in different nations that there’s a surge of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric.”
Nonetheless, Carney continues to get pleasure from 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 serious 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 believe C-12 actually confirmed the federal government shouldn’t be considering listening to from communities that work with migrants and immigrants to make insurance policies which are according to a human rights framework. They only don’t need to hearken to dissent.”
‘Not immune’ to backsliding on human rights
Regardless of that, rights advocates say they are going to proceed to push again in opposition to the course Canada is heading on immigration.
“We will’t cease combating,” Luisa Ortiz-Garza, a migrant rights organiser at Parkdale Neighborhood Authorized Providers, instructed a packed gymnasium at Trinity-St Paul’s United Church in downtown Toronto in late April.
A number of dozen individuals 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 individuals in opposition to one another,” Ortiz-Garza instructed Al Jazeera in an interview at her organisation’s workplace just a few days earlier than the gathering.
“It’s residents in opposition to migrants [and] migrants in opposition to 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 attempting to have these conversations and convey individuals collectively: allies, residents, migrants … in order that we will really discuss this and remind individuals 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 might begin with migrants, however it by no means ends there.”
