Poilievre calls for 'very hard caps' on immigration to better integrate newcomers

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poiliever told a news conference in Ottawa on Monday that the current government is not doing enough to reduce immigration levels in Canada and that he wants “very strict caps” on the number of immigrants entering the country.

“We are currently struggling to integrate newcomers, and we need to have more people leaving Canada in the coming years than coming in to fix the situation,” he said.

“Millions of people will be expiring in the coming years, and many of them will be leaving the country,” Poiliever noted. “We need more people leaving than coming in during that time.”

He repeatedly criticized the Liberal government’s handling of immigration during the last election campaign, promising to “restore order to a broken immigration system.”

Poiliever then took a more aggressive stance, calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney to go further and move toward “negative immigration”—meaning more people leaving than coming in—rather than simply reducing immigration.

In recent speeches, including at the Calgary Stampede, he has called the Liberal government’s policies a “failed experiment with open borders,” saying, “Immigration should be controlled and in manageable numbers.”

While the previous government did not have an “open borders” policy, the number of people admitted in recent years has reached levels not seen in decades.

For example, in 2022 and 2023, Canada’s population growth rates were 2.5 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively—two to three times the average for previous years.

The population increase was largely due to the influx of non-permanent residents, such as international students and low-wage temporary workers.

The Liberal government has been cracking down on the number of international students and temporary workers amid problems including record-low vacancy rates, rising housing prices, high youth and immigrant unemployment, and limited access to healthcare.

The changes are already having an impact, with population growth at zero in the first quarter of this year and two consecutive quarters of declines in the number of non-permanent residents.

Carney has pledged to maintain these limits and reduce the number of non-permanent residents to 5 per cent of the country’s total population by the end of 2027, down from 7.5 per cent last year.

But Pierre Poiliever said the reduction was not enough and needed to be greater.

"Our immigration policy must invite the right people, in the right numbers, in a way that prioritizes Canada and the Canadian people," he added.

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