WARMINGTON: Federal government advertising that door is wide open to foreign workers

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Reminiscent of former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s famous social media invitation a decade ago, Canada’s “come on in” welcome sign has again been placed in the country’s front window to entice foreign workers.

As funding for private college students’ loans in Ontario are on hold amid a financial audit and some high-profile industries lay off staff, the federal government is recruiting international labour to move to Canada.

“Are you an experienced skilled worker interested in immigrating to Canada and strengthening key sectors of our economy?” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada posted on X.

This came at a time when Canada had a 6.5% national unemployment rate and more companies were moving to the United States or saying they have to close as a result of the tariff war.

The narrative is a few weeks removed from Prime Minister Mark Carney meeting with the European Union on Canada potentially becoming an “associate member.”

Will Canadians get to vote on immigration increases?

Canadians, meanwhile, have not voted on more immigration or becoming quasi-European. The IRCC post reminds us of Trudeau’s “to those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you” post in 2017.

Many came to Canada, but not all legally.

And now with a Canadian delegation led by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, who met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of a confirmed visit to Canada on Dec. 11 and 12, and International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu in India talking about new partnerships and investments pops up a drive to seduce more immigrants to Canada.

“We’re looking to address labour shortages and support communities through the following categories: Medical doctors, researchers and senior managers with Canadian work experience, health-care and social services professionals, tradespersons, educators, professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) occupations, professionals in transport occupations, workers with French-language proficiency,” said a federal government notice.

We don’t have anyone who can do those jobs here? Of course we do. What happened to all of those Canadian university and college graduates or the millions of new Canadians who have already been brought in? None of them are qualified? Of course, they are.

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Growing Canada to 100 million residents?

After signalling Canada is reducing immigration numbers from the Trudeau era, the Carney government may also be signalling that bigger immigration goals are on the horizon.

Canada has had massive immigration numbers over the last decade and the Indian high commissioner told the CBC this week that the country needs even more immigrants over the next decade.

“You are the second largest country in the world with a 40-million population,” High Commissioner Dinesh K. Patnaik told the CBC in February. “You need at least over 100 million population. You need people to man many of your resources. We have the capacity, we have the intellect, we have the talent, we have the resources.”

‘Things will happen fast’

While many people feel he should mind his own business, he reiterated those thoughts this week on CPAC, saying “this is a new Canada and we are anticipating that things will happen fast. And Prime Minister Carney, given his background as the governor of two banks … as well as Brookfield, his experience with investment with the economy, there is a lot of trust that he will be able to deliver on a lot of the things.”

According to the Financial Post, Sidhu said Modi and Carney have also “set an ambitious target to go from $30 billion to $70 billion” in trade by 2030.

Meanwhile, the 100-million population narrative came weeks after Carney met with the European Union about Canada potentially becoming an associate EU member.

Perhaps offering insight into what the future could hold, Patnaik added that “Canada is a country of 42 million people (and) your workforce is reducing every year … Prime Minister Carney is looking at an investment of $1 trillion into the economy over the next 10 years or so,” he said, adding that means “you need to create 15 million jobs in this country in the next 10 years” to supplement a “21-million workforce that is reducing every year by 186,000 (people).”

As the Toronto Sun‘s Brian Lilley wrote this week, “in 2015, the last year of the (Stephen) Harper Conservative government, Canada brought in 271,000 new permanent residents,” which he said added up to 755,000 new arrivals with the “219,166 foreign students, 249,000 people granted temporary work permits and 16,040 asylum seekers.

By 2023 during Trudeau’s reign, Lilley reported Canada “had 471,000 permanent residents, 682,889 foreign students, 949,270 people given work permits and 144,000 asylum seekers,” which added up to 2,247,159 people coming into Canada. In 2024, it dipped to two million, while in 2025 it was 1.1 million.

Now Carney has hinted that it’s time to ramp things back up.

“There were years where the expectation would have been, for example, 700,000 and it ended up two million … These are big, big overshoots,” he told the New York Times. “Now the question starts to become: When do we resume some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada. So that will happen and we just want to make sure that we’ve got it under control.”

Canada having a population of 100 million people by 2036 will not be easy to control. No matter how many answer this new IRCC ad, imagine the hallway healthcare, people without doctors, housing problems and jobless numbers then.