After almost three months of summer holidays, MPs will finally be returning to the House of Commons, but what will be the main talking points and issues going into this fall session?.The most obvious change will be the return of Conservative leader, Pierre Pollievre, to the House of Commons after his by-election victory in Battle River-Crowfoot this summer. This will be the first time that Pollievre and Prime Minister Mark Carney will face off since the 2025 Leaders Debate in April. .Recently Pollievre has made the issue of immigration and the abuse of the Temporary Foreign Worker, or TFW program, his main talking point against the Federal government. .The Conservative leader has taken aim at the program among a larger, changing discussion on immigration. Pollievre alleges that the program pushes out young Canadians from getting jobs and replaces them with "temporary foreign workers from poor countries who are ultimately being exploited.".This comes in the wake of a poll released earlier this week by Nanos Research, which showed that almost three-quarters of Canadians support a reduction in immigration..This change in attitude can, in large part, be attributed to the large influx of TFWs and international students, which are seen as contributing factors to Canada's ongoing housing crisis and unemployment woes. .Canada's population grew by almost one million people every year for the last three years, the highest per capita growth of any G7 country. .In light of this change in attitude by the Canadian public and the criticism by the Leader of the Opposition, there are growing calls for reform from within the government itself. This includes former Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, who has admitted that the TFW program "needs to be fixed" and that Canadian businesses have become "addicted to temporary work". .Despite these calls, there has still been very little done to reform the TFW program by the government. .Another issue that the government will have to answer for is the lack of pipeline expansion in the recently announced "Projects of National Interest" list released on Thursday. .The list included nothing about an expansion of pipelines, which would better connect Alberta oil and gas to ports in British Columbia and Eastern Canada. .After the federal election this past spring, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith sent a letter to the Prime Minister, which said that the continued lack of investment in pipeline infrastructure will, "...perpetuate the current investment uncertainty and send a sobering signal to Albertans concerned about Ottawa's commitment to national unity..."..Despite these earlier comments, Premier Smith says she remains optimistic that the funding and deregulation necessary for pipeline expansion will come soon enough, after what she and Prime Minister Carney said were "positive" talks. .Unsurprisingly, the Conservatives will still be taking the government to task over this. Tory MP Garnett Genuis says, "If the Liberals were serious about allowing pipelines to move forward, then they would remove the policy barriers that they have put in place.".More broadly, issues surrounding Trump and tariffs seem to be in the rearview mirror for many Canadians. A recent poll by Abacus Data shows that 61% of Canadians say the federal government is too focused on Trump and not enough on domestic issues. .This will likely see a return to more debate surrounding the cost of living and housing crisis, issues that Canadians still see as the most important. .In Parliament, the minority Carney government will have to seek out support from other parties in order to get anything done, and with a heavily depleted NDP and Bloc Québécois, that support might have to come from across the aisle in the form of the Conservatives..Back in May, Pollievre said that he was open to working with Carney in getting a trade deal with the United States. It remains to be seen if this attitude still persists among the blue side of the house. .As immigration policy changes, the cost of living increases, and pipelines, yet again, become a political hot potato, this fall session has the potential to be one of the most consequential in Canadian history.
