Is Canada reducing foreign workers and students? 'It's about math, not immigration', leader says

Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s leader, vows to reform immigration and address housing crisis if elected, citing mismatch between housing and population growth.

Canada opposition leader Pierre Poilievre said that if his party wins the next federal election, it will address the housing crisis asserting that the country's immigration system needs reform to achieve this. Pierre Poilievre said, “It’s not about immigration, it’s about math. It’s not a question of whether you support immigration or not; it’s about basic mathematics.”

Canada's Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario. Pierre Poilievre promises to address Canada's housing crisis through immigration reform, citing a housing supply shortfall amid rising population. (Reuters)

The leader pointed to the imbalance between the number of homes being built and the rate at which the population is growing, saying, “We’re only building about 240,000 homes per year, which is a 1.4% increase in housing supply. But we’re growing the population by almost 3% under Trudeau and the NDP. No wonder we’re running out of homes.”

He emphasised the urgency of aligning population growth with housing availability, saying, “We can’t grow the population faster than we’re building homes; otherwise, we’ll see even worse shortages.”

Pierre Poilievre signalled that his government would scale back the international student programme which he thinks has spiralled out of control.

He said, “We’re going to return to the system we had before Justin Trudeau. A modest number of highly promising young people who excelled could come here, study, and if they followed the rules, they could stay.”

He said, "We added 96,400 people to the working-age population last month alone, but we didn’t create enough jobs for them. We lost 44,000 full-time jobs in that same period and saw 60,000 more people added to the unemployment rolls."

Pierre Poilievre also talked about immigration enforcement saying that while Canada should welcome those who contribute positively but those who break the law should be deported.

"If you follow the rules, pay taxes, and learn one of our official languages, you should stay. But if you’re breaking laws and defrauding the system, then you have to go," he said.