Geoff Russ: On immigration, do not let the Liberals breathe

Only public opinion is holding the immigration lobbyists and their allies at bay.

(Mark Carney and Narendra Modi before their meeting in New Delhi on March 2, 2026, wherein Carney highlighted “a new era of partnership” between Canada and India that will offer “generational opportunities to workers.”)

Voters do not steer Canadian immigration policy. Instead, it is steered by pressure, and voters are the brake.

As of today, there are 591 immigration lobbyists currently listed as active in Ottawa, the largest such category in the official registrar.

Standing alongside this lobbying army are sympathetic labour congresses, big education, and the housing industry. All are aligned in their desire to keep the doors open to mass immigration. Only public opinion stops Ottawa from indulging them.

The Liberal government did not change their immigration policy due to any great revelation about their mistakes. Those in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet who are veterans of the Trudeau government have shown they have little or no real regret about their handling of the file.

It was public opinion polls, not a true change of heart, that compelled them to draw back from an intake that saw 3.1 million people come to Canada in just three years. The sheer weight of Canadian discontent and anger after seeing their country flooded with cheap, unskilled labour made the Liberals realise their electoral viability was at stake.

Canada is still hosting more than 500,000 people here illegally on expired permits or otherwise. Among legal residents, there are 400,000 international students from India alone. For context, there were a total of 260,000 international students in Canada in July 2013.

Even if the Carney government’s changed posture on immigration is more calculation than conviction, this has satisfied many Canadians. Abacus Data’s latest public data has found that 42 percent of respondents now think that Canada is on the right path, compared to 45 percent who think the opposite. This is a marked improvement over recent years, and the change in direction on immigration, real or staged, is part of that.

Canadian opinions on immigration have turned firmly sour, with one poll from last October finding that 56 percent believe the country takes in too many newcomers. Another survey from last December found that 65 percent believed there were too many immigrants, and nearly half were open to the possibility of mass deportations. This data was not produced by fringe polling firms, but by Focus Canada and Leger, two of the most reputable in the field of public research.

There is tangible evidence that even modest reductions in temporary foreign workers (TFWs) and international students, as well as those in the International Mobility Program (IMP), have eased pressure on the Canadian quality of life.

In fact, for all the focus on international students and TFWs, the real numerical culprit is the IMP, mainly composed of former international students on graduate work permits.

Data on asking rents shows that landlords now want $2,057 per month on average from tenants, a 31-month low. Critically, rents have declined for the sixteenth consecutive month in Vancouver and Toronto. That is not proof of a single cause, but it is a warning flare for the interests that profit from permanent scarcity.

That sort of relief is exactly what the professional immigration apparatus fears. It exposes the great lies that sustained their business model over the last decade. They thought of a hundred different ways to twist data to try and browbeat honest Canadians about the impacts of mass intake.

They urged people to not blame a program of human quantitative easing for the rise in housing prices and the shortage of jobs. They said supply and demand was not real, and that employers at the local fast-food eatery would never opt for cheap, vulnerable foreign workers instead of the neighbourhood kids.

Canada was turned into an economic experiment, without the consent of Canadians. Only now is the nation clawing back any semblance of control over their destiny.

However, the ideological supply chain that powered the mass immigration experiment is still strong.

An examination of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a major London think tank, is a good start. It produces regular policy commentary that scolds European voters for objecting to mass migration and the millions of refugees who have entered the country.

For Chatham House and their donors, strong border controls are a moral failing that allegedly “undermine” the core principles of the European Union. In March 2024, Mark Carney was appointed a president of Chatham House, suggesting broad agreement with the think tank’s principles and outlook.

Two of the top donors to Chatham House are Global Affairs Canada and the Open Society Foundations. In their own words, Open Society is a global grant-making network that pushes the unsurprising agenda of “open societies,” free borders, and the erosion of national sovereignty. Its 2024 expenditures amounted to $1.2 billion, and it has spent over $24.5 billion over the past three decades.

From 2020 to 2024, Open Society gave $4.5 million in disclosed funding to Chatham House, including $1.2 million and $1.1 million in 2023 alone. That is not to suggest that some shadowy figure is secretly pulling the strings. It does reveal the strength and depth of the ideology pushing for mass immigration as the default position of national governments.

Within Canada, labour organisations already talk like borderless NGOs.

The Canadian Labour Congress has argued that Canada is burdened with a moral obligation to grant permanent residency to low-wage workers, while framing anti-migrant sentiment as bigoted scapegoating. Activist networks have popularised the slogan “good enough to work, good enough to stay” for temporary workers. Local union leadership has even shown up in solidarity at protests to demand pathways to permanent residency for foreign workers.

If “good enough to stay” becomes policy, the whole scheme of temporary foreign labour becomes meaningless.

Canada’s weak labour market and abundant temporary inflows flatten the futures of young Canadians who cannot find work. It invites embarrassing corporate behaviour in a country that claims to put citizens first. The once-beloved Tim Hortons chain has been pressing Ottawa to loosen caps on foreign labour and speed up permit renewals.

The profiteers of young Canadian misery are determined to maintain the bottom line. However, their corporate hardship is not a tragedy.

Some post-secondary institutions are lamenting that the loss of international students is gutting their revenue. Real estate investors and builders who created lucrative portfolios on the demand from foreign students are warning that “if there is no demand, we can’t operate.”

Their sympathies are irrelevant, for market discipline is thankfully being imposed on profiteers who treated immigration policy as a revenue stream. Canada does not exist so that it can be strip-mined by shady colleges, avaricious franchisors, and landlords.

Nor is Canada a pressure valve for foreign governments that must manage their own demographics. The business press of India has been very explicit about the need for “labour mobility” strategies that involve boosting remittances by sending young people abroad for work in countries like Canada, and turning them into geopolitical-economic instruments.

Internal migration pressures are already intensifying within India, and the country must create eight to 10 million jobs per year to absorb its young working-age population. Countries like Russia use conscription so that hundreds of thousands of military-aged men do not cause trouble. India chooses to export people abroad to relieve that same pressure.

Canada is not obligated to be their partner in that regard, but Mark Carney’s recent visit to India shows he is keen to accommodate the Indian government. No doubt, a trade deal with India would bring enormous economic benefits for Canada, but it is not worth the cost of selling out our youth.

The past few years have shown that becoming the holding pen for young, foreign low-skill and professional workers comes at the expense of Canadians who need a job.

Those born and raised right here have seen their wages suppressed, and once reliable places to find their first job or enter the white-collar sectors have dried up. Their families have noticed, with more young people in their twenties moving back in with their parents to manage the cost of living. This is the deliberate cheapening of life and the choking of the country’s future.

Fiery public opinion is the only thing that stands between Canada and a relapse into the old intake binge, and that opinion was power. It forced members of Parliament and premiers to admit that immigration was “unsustainable,” and forced a reduction in intake.

Credit where credit is due as well. The Conservative opposition dragged the immigration issue into open debate and pushed for hard caps and reform, but that will not be enough going forward. The lobbyists do not sleep, and the NGOs do not stop receiving cheques from their patrons like Open Society.

If Canadians truly want ethical, responsible, sovereign, and self-respecting immigration policies, they have to keep making noise. They have to give the Liberals no room to breathe and keep a boot on their neck. Without sustained pressure, the government will find ways to return to the old status quo. Right now, the machine is only paused, not stopped.

Canadians have to form their own NGOs and associations that push back against the importation of competition in employment. Shame on those unions that sell out Canadian workers by signing onto this elite program of cheap labour, laundered as “good enough to work, good enough to stay.”

The same platoon of business interests, ideologues, and international pressure players will creep back in at every opportunity, one “pathway”, temporary extension, or “pilot” program at a time. Without loud, disruptive, and sustained resistance and pushback, we will all wake up to find that the decisions about our country's future have already been made for us.

Refuse the moral blackmail. A sovereign country can be decent, and still say “no.” A self-respecting nation does not apologise for protecting its young.

Geoff Russ is the Editor-at-Large of Without Diminishment. He is a contributor to a number of publications, including the National Post, Modern Age, and The Australian Financial Review.