Research Tool
Close Reading
Click a comment to load its sentiment categories, AI rationale, and reply thread.
Comments
Page 1 of 1
· filtered
| Published | Reply likes | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-02-11 | 3 |
As a Canada who speaks both French and English and who follows politics quite closely, I have to say that the headline and some of the reporting here is quite misleading.
A reduction in immigration has broad support across Canada. I wouldn't say that notion is dividing the country in any significant way.
You do have certain industry groups that disagree, but among the population these reductions have broad support.
This is a historic change in public opinion in Canada, but it has been driven by the unprecedented increase in immigration under the last term of the Trudeau government. To put this in context, non-permanent residents in Canada numbered around 1.5 million on Q3 2023, but by Q3 2025, that number sat a just over 3 million. The previous government increased immigration targets by 3 or 4 times over what they had been for years, which caused a number of economic issues. Essentially, the volume was simply too high for the economy and society to support. This was unfair to both Canadians and new comers, many of which could not find employment or afford a decent place to live.
The changes being suggested are largely bringing Canada back to what the targets were for over a decade before, though a bit lower to account for the sudden surge. Canada remains one of the most pro-immigration countries in the world.
However, and this is where I think DW's reporting is misleading, there is a distinction to be made between policies at the federal level and policies at the provincial level.
Immigration, per our constitution, is a federal matter, however, Quebec in particular is distinct from other provinces. I don't mean only culturally and linguistically, but also in the powers that have been devolved to it by the federal government.
On the question of immigration, Quebec has more powers and more ability to set its immigration targets and programs than any of the other 9 provinces.
The particular program discussed here, the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ), is a particular immigration stream that only existed in Quebec. So what is happening with that program cannot be labeled as a whole-of-Canada thing.
Where the changes to the PEQ are controversial, unlike the general changes at the federal level, is that people who immigrated under that specific program were promised certain things. There was a multi-year time line to Permanent Residency and then Citizenship. Many of those people have been in Quebec for 5-8 years already. However, the changes made to the program were done in such a way where people who many years into the program, had gotten an education, started a career, had children, ect. are now being told they can't continue and must leave Canada.
There are even stories of people who married Canadians, now have children, and the one parent who was under this program now faces the possibility of having to leave Canada and be separated from their family. All through no fault of their own.
That is what many people see as unfair, and I agree, however limiting future applications under the program, to bring in less people, that is not controversial.
Canada has no responsibility to bring in people who are not already in Canada, but Canada does have some responsibility towards people who uprooted their lives to move to Canada and built new lives here based on promises and representations made to them by the Canadian and Quebecois governments. We should no simply kick those people out of the country.
|
| 2025-11-17 | 0 |
Trudeau has made such a mess of our country single handedly all by himself
|
| 2024-09-08 | 0 |
The only thing I would say cause you seem to be very young. Is that brampton actually in the 70's and to early 2000's used to be mostly a white and black community and then other cultures. I am born in Toronto I have a cousin born in Toronto who currently lives in brampton she owns a house in brampton for about 25 years. And is going through a lot mentally with the slamming. We got of people from India mostly in the last 2 years, but it's been going on slowly over 10 years and she's not doing well with the overwhelment of Indians and we're of black Jamaican heritage. So just so you know, brampton used to actually be white and then black was actually the second largest population and everybody else was after that. And then in the last 10 years they started coming but it wasn't in hundreds of thousands and then in the last 2 years it blew up insanely. As that man described is like an invasion. I now live on the West Coast of Canada and the same thing has happened here. And it's been a lot for me Canadian born. I've always grew up with every culture. I've lived and worked around the Indians that used to come here were literally not even on the radar. I mean you see them, but you just they just blended in because most of them had assimilated and were doing their lives. The breed that has come over specifically in the last 2 years is what is making it even worse cause if they acted like the ones who came before 10 -20 -30 years ago. They probably wouldn't stand out, but then again when you bring in almost a million, into all of Canada, they would stand out, but maybe people wouldn't be so agitated, if they had tried to assimilate and be respectful to the other cultures here and that is the number one complaint I hear anytime, I see interviews. Is people saying they don't assimilate? They're very rude to anybody who is not them. They are just interacting with the environment. The way they do at home, Canadians are more quiet and try to be respectful of other cultures. We like to just have their own space and our own peace when they're moving throughout this space and a lot of people describe the energy of the Indians coming in almost evasive into your space and then not really carrying anything about invading ur space. They act like, so what's the big deal if I'm in your space and that has been the number one issue is just the rudeness. Not assimilating and imposing their culture, speaking their language, not attempting to integrate with other cultures showing actually a lot of racism to some of the other cultures. And that has been the biggest problem. So just so you know, cause I can tell you're young. I'm North 40 years old and I can tell you. The demographic change has been so intense everywhere in Canada especially in the last 2 years. That I have even seen podcast with Indian people who have been here 10 -20-30 years, saying the government needs to figure out a way and get a good swath of these people gone because they are. Staining them with a negative brush. Cause I can tell you. It's only in the last 5 years. That I notice Indians. I've grown up around every culture. And I just don't notice individual cultures in that way. Until in 2022, Trudeau took the guard railsl off the foreign worker program and the student Visa working program. And just said Hey, anybody want to come bum rush the door now? And India is known for having middlemen in India that work with Fake Diploma Mills scholls with brampton having over 80 of them that the middlemen work scamming Indians by telling them if they pay anywhere from $5000 all the way up to $50,000 even higher to get fake school acceptance letters, so they can come here to get the word permit and work full-time or with companies that provide fake LMIA job offers on the black market, which is illegal under the I.R.C.C, but that is a thing that they had prior to 2022. And when Trudeau took the guards rails off when it comes the requirements and basically. Made it a free-for-all and as India already had the scamming infrastructure in place that kept their population moderate and it just allowed th scammers to go nuts, so that's why we got mostly Indians. Other cultures do it too, but it's so tiny. It's not noticeable. The Indians already had the infrastructure in place that when they took off the guard rails, it was easy for them to switch and start selling these opportunities to go to these fake schools was over 80 of them in brampton t such a lightening speed. Hence why we got slammed so hard-and-fast with that specific community.That just really we're coming here to work and send money home and that is also why a lot of our banks are now struggling with cash reserved because they're sending money home. So just thought I'd give you that angle. I understand you're doing it from your culture's perspective mostly but you're missing a whole bunch of information. So I thought I'd fill you in actually, brampton used to be a white and black city for a long time, and recent flooded in the last 2 and why it happened from that community so quickly in 2022
|
| 2024-08-04 | 0 |
There are now quite a few news stories in Canada of immigrants leaving the country - some back home and others to the USA and other places. Many just get a Canadian passport and then leave. There are public health care and pensions, so it can be an asset and also a convenient travel document to have. A lot of Canadian university graduates have a very hard time finding work in their fields and a lot of them look to the US for a better future. Both immigration and unemployment in Canada are much higher that in the US - so more people are chasing fewer jobs that often pay less and are taxed more than in the USA. Opportunities are generally a lot fewer in Canada than the US, and the business environment is not as favourable, and taxes significantly higher. You would be getting some of the entrepreneurs from Canada moving to the US for more favourable conditions as well to launch a business and also now a lot more rich investor types, so-called high net worth individuals wanting to relocate, because they just raised the capital gains tax in Canada. Capital gains is also triggered on inheritance in Canada with a deemed sale of property and assets, so rich people would prefer the American system and want to be residents there for tax purposes and have their assets grow in value in the US compared to Canada. There are very large numbers of foreign students and other categories of immigrants which may have as their goal going to the US after getting a temporary visa to Canada which is easy to get - maybe something like half a million to a million people in those categories depending on the year, plus around another half million regular immigrants and refugees now. The Trudeau administration has increased immigration to record numbers. It has been steadily going up over the years for several decades since 1990. Because of family re-unification it can have a snowball effect and could significantly exceed 1 million per year. A lot of the sending countries have much larger populations than Canada, so there are a lot more that can be potentially sent to Canada in the future. About 1/4 of the population of Canada has been added in the past few decades. Add to that visitors and temporary visas - that is a lot of people potentially moving to the US. Before the 1990s Canadians visiting the US were not required to have a passport and a drivers' license or birth certificate was adequate. Now a passport is required. It is impossible to effectively control the long Canada-US border, so there could be some unified policies in that area agreed on between Canada and the USA on immigration and refugees. Canada currently has a very open immigration policy with the government actively seeking out more immigration beyond its current processing capacity and trying to take rejected immigrants from other countries. The Canadian government, especially in recent years under Trudeau is immigration hungry. It might be the only country in the world doing that. What some news reports are now saying is that some immigrants are actually leaving, since they find it so difficult in Canada and some are worse off than they were in the countries they came from, which were considered to be less developed than Canada.
\nWashington currently has more immigration controls and administrative competencies than Ottawa, so US pressure and influence is a faster way to get reforms into the system than waiting for local politicians to do anything, which is unlikely. Canada is seen by some as a backdoor into the US. Biden's immigration policies could be seen as very conservative in Canada compared to Trudeau's. It used to be in the news about how refugees were trying to get to Canada and walking across the border in Quebec and out west from the US earlier, but now there are more news stories of immigrants leaving Canada trying to go the other way, probably due to high costs and unemployment because the government took in more people than it could absorb into the economy. They have the idea that immigration drives GDP growth so that they can borrow and spend more, expand the civil service, etc. without making any cutbacks or efficiencies, supposedly without the Debt to GDP ratio getting worse, just by bringing in more people as if that would drive the economy. A lot depends on who you bring in as well. Are they going to go on welfare, are they going to increase crime, will they somehow contribute to society, are they a net tax benefit or cost in terms of government services, will they invest money, will they start a business and create jobs for others ? Those issues do not factor into government decision making in Canada for the most part. Ontario Premier Doug Ford did say there were too many foreign students. It is bad planning not to consider those factors since there are other costs that grow with those policies as well, and infrastructure has to be expanded. I think that the real immigration numbers to Canada are not transparent or made public, nor are the costs involved, if anyone even knows what they are. Nor is the impact on crime. You can guess from what the reports are in other countries. The Fraser Institute has made some estimates on the net costs of immigration to the government budget a few years ago, which were very high and which by now have increased - the cost equivalent of several new aircraft carriers each year. They are big numbers which are not publicized, but it amounts to the fact that immigration is subsidized by the taxpayers in Canada and it is not paying for our pensions as an ageing society as has been claimed. There is less money for education, health care and pensions per person, and those social benefits will probably have to be reduced over time. Social programs can only be delivered to the extent that the government has money. The bigger social system a county has, the more such immigration policies are going to cost. Trudeau has been expanding various social programs as well, so higher taxes and debt are likely with that approach. Then more productive people and companies will want to leave Canada and go to the US. Probably the government does not know what the actual numbers and costs are and doesn't actively keep track of that information beyond what is required. Probably nobody knows what the true immigration figures and their associated costs are in Canada, and hardly anyone has even studied those issues. If they can just walk across the US border and get papers so easily making an asylum claim, it is not surprising, since it would take them longer to get a regular visa and work permit if they did it legally. You could call that a loophole in the US immigration system which is being exploited. The US is better governed in general and has a better system in many ways, but I am not sure if it is the same on that. People have arrived on boats and have not been sent back. At least in the US you have more open information about those issues. In Canada it is hard to find out anything about it. Deportations from Canada are very few.
\nOn other issues in Canada when voting in federal elections you have to show a government issued photo ID like a drivers' license or passport to vote and bring a card that was mailed out to eligible voters that gets updated addresses when a person files their taxes. I have never heard of mail-in ballots in Canada, but there are remote areas of the country in the far north who may have special system for voting. It is easier to get a Canadian citizenship than US and many more citizenships are handed out in Canada each year in proportion to the population than in the US. Canadian might be one of the easiest citizenships to get in the world. The official line now is that it is a country of immigrants. Based on current trends, will very little opposition to it in the parliament and most MPs supporting it, future immigration to Canada could increase to several million per year because of the rapid growth of population in the world, and the momentum already growing of immigration to Canada, so it may change significantly in the future. Historically around the world you can see many examples that country names, borders, flags and languages change over time with population changes, so it might not be called Canada anymore in 50-100 years. For example, Bulgaria used to be called Thrace which had been a powerful kingdom in antiquity and had a different language which is barely known about anymore. Over the past 2,000 years it has gone through a number of changes and had various regimes governing it, has been independent and also part of several different empires. Canada has only been a country for a short time in comparison and has been been going through significant changes. Trudeau has said that Canada is a post-national country. Canada is also going through a period of critical self-examination and deconstruction-revisionism. A lot of what had been viewed as positive from its history now is seen more critically, with re-naming and removing historical figures now seen as negative.\nDiscussing immigration policy critically is considered by many to be taboo in Canada, unless a person is saying good things about it in general. You can hear people say that the government isn't processing enough people, for example, but not often that there are too many or that it costs a lot of money. The trend of migration from Canada to the US would only increase much more in the future as it is going currently, and its role as a stepping stone to migration to the US could increase. The way this would be seen by many in Canada is that they are losing valuable people to the USA whom they consider assets, since a lot of officials have been trying to bring in more people into the country, but not everyone wants to stay in Canada nowadays because of a lack of jobs and opportunities. Canada is quite laissez-faire about migration, with Toronto being a sanctuary city as well.
|
| 2024-05-13 | 0 |
How are non citizens able to protest in our country!! Trudeau has made such a mess in Canada!!
|
| 2024-04-12 | 0 |
I grew up in Malton (borders Brampton) in the 1980's and it was all Western European and Canadian folks and it was great. Such a sense of community and everyone knew everyone. Us kids would stay out until the street lights came on and played in Parks. It was really safe. We moved away in 2006 because the area had gone such down hill by 1999 and the crime was horrible. Stolen cars, alcohol and drug abusing Punjabi folks and the domestic partner violence of the Indian men beating the crap out of their wives was insane. (I had a friend that was a Peel Region Police officer who ended up leaving because she couldn't take seeing it any longer). I have nothing against Immigration, because my dad was an immigrant, but I do have a problem with the amount of any one country we let in, and the types of people that we let in that contribute to crime and area degradation. It's so sad the slums that have become in Brampton and Malton since we left. I'm glad we got the heck out of there when we did. I feel sorry for all those that are stuck there still. Furthermore with such an influx of immigrants into one area it has driven the house prices and rent through the roof because the pace of immigration was nowhere near the housing starts, and cities think that everyone needs to be packed in like sardines and when you have that many people living in close proximity and you have such expensive living costs it's a disaster waiting to happen and it brings along with it tons of crime and drugs. The Trudeau government really messed up this country and the GTA Cities like Brampton are a shining example of that. It's sick that we pay as much as we do for government at all levels that are this idiotic. It's time we protested in the street and made the government at all levels fear the public again or it's never going to change.
|
| 2024-03-04 | 0 |
I am shocked to learn that people coming on Tourist visa (from developing countries) to Canada can apply for Job here and once hired can change visa status while in Canada. Never have I ever heard about this while staying in UK on work permit for 4 years that UKBA /Home Office has ever approved such low quality visa that Trudeau is flexible about. Neither Harper's/Kenney's administration (under which I immigrated to Canada back in 2014) has ever approved such cockamamie change of visa status. This is unfair to those who paid all legal fees/been working hard and never relied on the benefits proposed by the Canadian..yikes!Turdo has made Canada into a 3rd world dump...
|
| 2022-09-15 | 0 |
I was born and raised in Canada and still live here (my roots are in Jamaica and Tobago). The last 5-10 years has made me so sad to see what’s happened to what was once such a great country. Rent and housing costs are out of control… car prices… food… utility bills… this government (led by Trudeau) has almost completely eliminated the middle class. Now there’s only the rich and the poor. And let’s not even talk about the issues with forced vaccination and stripping citizens of their charter rights… I never experienced any real racism and have never thought of Canada as a racist country. I still don’t. It’s just this woke agenda that is being pushed recently that is dividing everyone. Also very sad to see. I used to think that I would retire here but now I’m not so sure…
|
| 2018-07-31 | 0 |
As a Canadian screw Trudeau . I'm ashamed to call him my prime minister. At least his dad gave us the bill of rights and freedoms which is a historic document... His son aka Justin is literally ruining Canada .\n\nSo far he's put us in a tonne of debt , has no economic knowledge/political experience, is a hypocrite, went back on his promise for electoral reform (as the old system made him win lol) , is an Islamic extremist apologist , literally gave millions of tax $ to a terrorist because he was detained in Guantanamo aka Omar Khadar -_- etc ... The list goes on.\n\nWasting my tax dollars on people who not only are breaking the law but it's a joke - They just literally walk on over. Many have no skills or anything to actually bring to Canada either. They're not asylum seekers. They're economic migrants who broke the law by coming to the states illiegaly. Now because you actually have a president with balls to kick them out to where they came from they're coming to Canada where they know our PM can't even admit there's such a thing as an extremist Muslim. \nHe keeps using the excuse that Canada was built on immigrants. Yes. True. Legal ones. Or legitimate refugees fleeing war or persecution. Not bloody Donald Trump and a pretty developed / stable country aka the US. Smh. \n\nThe only good thing he's done is legalize weed and even then he's managed to screw it up by making it a government monopoly vs a free market the many US states have where entrepreneurs can thrive.
|
Showing 1–9 of 9
Prev
Next