Trudeau Government is ‘Scapegoating’ Immigrants Amid Growing Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in Canada, Experts Say

Experts and advocates are pushing back against the Trudeau government’s plans to cut immigration targets over the next year.

In an announcement last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller revealed a plan to reduce the number of permanent residents in the country in an effort to “freeze population growth.”

According to a release, the plan will “improve housing affordability and lower the unemployment rate.”

However, political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ricardo Tranjan says “scapegoating immigrants” will not result in more affordable housing like the government is claiming.

“It’s unfortunate that the government is putting forward this misleading notion that reducing immigration targets will have a direct and immediate impact on housing costs, especially for renters, because I doubt that renters will notice any difference over the next couple of years,” Tranjan told PressProgress.

Tranjan adds that the announcement fails to address structural reasons why the housing market is the way that it is, including a lack of rental regulations.

“There’s no regulation that puts a cap on how much rent can go up between one tenant and another. Instead of  putting in place rent regulations that would make rent more affordable for all renters, we are scapegoating certain population groups and saying it’s because of them that rents are going up,” Tranjan said.

Another issue across the country is a lack of housing supply of the right “type,” and the financialization of housing.

“We need an alternative. We need to invest in social housing, we need to invest in non-market housing. We sometimes treat that argument as an innovative idea that deserves consideration. Additional supply alone doesn’t increase affordability,” Tranjan said.

“When you look at the housing in the 2024 federal budget, it contains ten times more funding for private developers than for non-market housing and that has been the pattern with the national housing strategy since 2017.”

Despite Tranjan’s observations, public opinion research in Canada shows that Canadians are concerned about the impacts of immigrants on housing and other services.

Public opinion research published by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada in January 2024  demonstrated that Canadians’ support for immigration levels decreased substantially during 2023.

“This is the most concern about the rate of immigration to Canada that we have seen in nearly 20 years, and appears to be tied to increased concerns about immigration’s impact on housing and public services in Canada,” a statement from IRCC reads.

Syed Hussan, Executive Director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change says that the announcement by the Trudeau government is a direct response to a rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric in Canada.

“The Trudeau government is scapegoating migrants, blaming them incorrectly for the housing affordability crisis to recover from its own declining polls,” Hussan told PressProgress.

“With the Conservatives ahead, they are simply trying to create Conservative-like immigration policies and therefore their pandering to a racist surging right wing politics that is creating harm against migrants.”

Hussan adds that immigrants are facing the blame for “every ailment in society,” by right-wing premiers across the country. 

“This is while premiers are privatizing these services, have been cutting funding for them and have been handing over housing to their developer friends. No one is holding them accountable, but instead its migrants who are being blamed,” Hussan said.

“We’re not seeing any positive action on climate change or on housing or any of these other issues because the working people in this country are being convinced that the sole cause of all their struggles are migrants.”

Hussan says that the anti-immigrant rhetoric and scapegoating is a global phenomenon that is ultimately working to “divide and distract” the working class.

“The anti-immigrant scapegoating works to divide working people and distract them and make working people blame immigrants instead of the billionaires and their political friends.”