All Canadian political parties want to reduce immigration except for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party. Members of Parliament on Monday voted 173 to 150 in favour of a non-binding motion to revise immigration quotas within 100 days, Blacklock’s Reporter reported. The Trudeau government has set annual immigration quotas at 500,000, in addition to 227,000 annual permits for temporary foreign workers, and 983,000 foreign students — a total of 1,710,000 people coming into Canada each year. The motion, tabled by the Bloc Québécois, was supported by members of every party, but the Liberals refused to acknowledge the immigration problem in Canada. “Now it is a Canada-wide issue, ” Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet told the House of Commons. “Everyone is being crushed by health care costs, education costs and other costs…this is the most obvious example of the government’s heartless failure.”The motion asked that the Trudeau government meet with premiers “to consult them on their respective integration capacities” and “table in the House within 100 days a plan for revising federal immigration targets in 2024 based on the integration capacity.”“Canadians basically strongly disagree with the immigration policies of what is left of this government,” said Blanchet, lambasting the Liberals, who “could not have cared less” about costs resulting from record-breaking quotas.“This used to be a Québec thing,” said Blanchet. “People used to say Québeckers were against immigration because they were racists. Now people in Toronto are saying they are having problems managing the volume of immigrants.”“Other major Canadian cities are facing similar challenges so the problem is no longer that Québeckers are xenophobic,” said Blanchet. “Now it is a Canada-wide issue.”We are so focused on numbers and so keen to open everything up that people who came here as asylum seekers are sleeping in the streets of Montréal without housing.”However, Immigration Minister Marc Miller claimed Canada had no choice but to maintain current immigration quotas. “We need them,” Miller insisted before the House. “Canada has accepted a substantial number of permanent residents,” Miller told the Commons. “The main reason is we need newcomers as much as they need us. Immigration is crucial to expand our labour force, to ensure our economy prospers and to guarantee the quality of the social services Canadians depend on. Faced with an aging population, we need qualified and talented newcomers to ensure our future economic prosperity.”Conservative MP Tom Kmiec pointed out Miller’s self-contradictory reasoning by citing a statement he made on January 22 announcing a 35% cut in foreign study permits nationwide.“It is hard to take him seriously,” said Kmiec. “We know the immigration system is broken.”“We know it is not working with what the government is doing,” he said. “How can we believe the minister now?”
