Trudeau government hints at dropping immigration over unemployment

The Trudeau government, which is widely seen as being the most pro-immigration administration of the 21st century, may choose to cut immigration as a result of the economic strain placed on the country by coronavirus.

Trudeau's Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said during a House of Commons committee that the government will be "taking a look at our levels and what is our operational capacity."

This policy "is of course going to be driven by the context," said the minister.

The context is, of course, the mass-unemployment that has plagued Canada since the coronavirus outbreak. It becomes more difficult to argue the economic benefits of immigration when millions of Canadians are left unemployed.

Making it clear that nothing gets passed the immigration minister, Mendicino said "we are in the midst of a pandemic." Before the pandemic, Trudeau had aimed for an immigration increase of about 1 percent per year.

These are the highest levels of immigration that Canada has had since 1913 where 401,000 migrants were allowed into the country.

Since Trudeau's immigration targets were unveiled, the national jobless rate has grown to 13 percent of the population. In the last month alone, Canada’s full-time workforce fell by a tenth.