Geoff Russ: The last thing Canada needs is a lecture from pro-immigration ideologues

National Post

18-06-2025

The Century Initiative has nothing to offer Canada apart from hubris, desperation and bad ideas. As the G7 Summit concludes in Alberta, a province that is key to unlocking true Canadian prosperity and dynamism, Canada cannot afford to listen to those who helped push the country into stagnation.
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Last week, Century Initiative CEO Lisa Lalande penned an op-ed in the Toronto Star that not only attacked the federal government's immigration cuts but also natural resources as a tool of economic growth.
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Instead, Lalande outlined a plan for growth that predictably began with returning to the Trudeau-era status quo on mass immigration.
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It is time that the Century Initiative takes a seat and stops pretending that its immigrationist schemes should still have any influence over Canadian policy.
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The Century Initiative got what it wanted during Justin Trudeau's government when yearly immigration numbers skyrocketed to nearly half a million people per year. From 2014 to now, the Canadian population has expanded by over five million people, which is unprecedented in the modern era.
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What did Canadians get in return? They got unaffordable housing, strained services and a tight job market that is punishing the youngest members of the workforce.
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These terrible policies fundamentally damaged the integrity, reputation and effectiveness of Canada's once-sterling immigration system. Three years ago, public servants of the useful variety warned the federal government that housing affordability was at risk if immigration numbers continued to rise. Trudeau's cabinet ignored them.
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The Aristotle Foundation released a report in March that found that the ratio between housing completions and immigration exploded from 2:1 in 2015 to 5:1 in 2023. That is not sustainable, and those who tried to say otherwise at the time were nothing more than gaslighters.
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Last week, former immigration minister Marc Miller lauded the Trudeau government's mass immigration policies by claiming that they were vital for GDP growth. That is a self-indictment, not a badge of honour.
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Canada's weak GDP growth over the past decade exposes the failure of this radical experiment. Yearly per-person GDP growth under Trudeau amounted to under 0.3 per cent, the lowest in recent history.
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Was that worth the explosion in housing prices that depressed the dreams of millions of young Canadians and the ongoing robbery of their entry into the job market? Of course not.
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Nobody apart from a few corporate head offices has enjoyed the scarce benefits of the immigration regime, but everyone else has felt the negative side effects, of which there are plenty. Young Canadians, especially university students and recent graduates, are currently strugglin g to find jobs of any kind.