CALGARY — Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has said that “a corporate elite” has driven down Canadians’ wages and driven up rent through mass immigration.During the Tory leader’s trip to Great Britain on Thursday — his first overseas venture as leader of the official opposition — Poilievre appeared on the Triggernometry podcast hosted by stand-up comedians and political commentators Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster.In the interview, Foster noted that Canada’s immigration levels appear to have dramatically changed in recent years and are unusually high — a pattern he said has also appeared in other Western countries.“Immigration rates in Canada, it’s staggering, just as it is in the UK, just as it is in Germany and other countries,” Foster said..Poilievre agreed, arguing that similar immigration dynamics are playing out in multiple countries across the Western world.He said large inflows of temporary foreign workers and international students have increased competition for jobs and housing while benefiting major corporations.“A corporate elite was able to drive down wages and drive up rent,” Poilievre told the hosts.“They brought in low-wage temporary foreign workers and enormous numbers of so-called students.”Poilievre said many of them are not primarily in Canada for education but instead function as a source of low-wage labour that has “created a major demand for a fixed supply of housing.”He added that multinational corporations were the primary beneficiaries of this arrangement.According to Poilievre, the result has been a concentration of wealth and economic power in the hands of elites, while working-class Canadians face rising costs and reduced job security.He also linked immigration levels to a broader set of policies that he argued were contributing to economic frustration among voters, including government regulations affecting residential construction, high taxes and what he described as “dirigiste economics,” or an economic system where the government plays a strong role in guiding the economy even though markets still exist.Poilievre said these trends help explain the growing anger among working-class voters across Western democracies..OLDCORN: RETURN TO SENDER — 60 million more Indian immigrants? India’s dream is Canada’s nightmare.“All of it has concentrated wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, and that is why our working-class people are understandably and legitimately upset with the state of things,” he said.“We have to provide them with a hopeful path forward that includes the opportunity to own homes, have affordable energy and food, start families, raise kids and live their lives.“That’s the hopeful vision I’m trying to bring to Canadians.”Immigration has become an increasingly major issue in Canadian politics as record population growth in recent years has coincided with a housing shortage and rising living costs in many cities, as well as an exacerbation of essential services in areas such as healthcare.Poilievre and the Conservatives have argued that the federal government should align immigration levels more closely with housing construction and infrastructure capacity..A July 8, 2025 study by the Fraser Institute, authored by senior fellows Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman, found that from 2000 to 2015 the total number of immigrants coming to Canada increased at an average annual rate of about four per cent, compared with 15% between 2016 and 2024.The Liberal government has previously argued immigration is an essential part of Canada’s economic growth and labour market needs, but announced measures earlier this year to slow the growth of temporary resident programs, including new limits on international students.Under its 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, Ottawa announced it would seek to sharply reduce immigration levels after years of record-high intake.In total, the plan for 2026 is for Canada to take in just over 821,000 admissions across permanent and temporary streams, targets critics have argued are still too high given the current socio-economic situation in the country.
