Trudeau puts 'pause’ on immigration, says Canada will slash levels to 21 percent by 2025

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Thursday that Canada plans to reduce overall immigration levels to 21 percent by 2025. Trudeau said the goal of the plan is to put “a pause” on population growth in the country. It’s part of a major series of changes to immigration targets that Trudeau says aims to freeze population growth.

“We’re announcing that we will reduce the number of immigrants we bring in over the next three years, which will result in a pause in the population growth over the next two years,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa Thursday.

The Trudeau government had intended to keep immigration at their current levels of 500,000 until at least 2026. But now the number will be reduced to 395,000 in 2025, which will also see 40 percent of new residents taken from the pool of temporary residents who are already in Canada. This ceiling could be lowered to to 380,000 by 2026 and 365,000 by 2027.

At a news conference Thursday, Trudeau said it was “time to catch up, time to make the necessary investments in health care, in housing, in social services to accommodate more people in the future. Our immigration system has always been responsible and it has always been flexible. So we are acting today because in the tumultuous times, as we emerged from the pandemic between addressing labor needs and maintaining population growth, we didn't get the balance quite right. But with the plan we're announcing today along with previously announced measures, we're making our immigration system work better.”

Trudeau made the announcement just one day after he tried to quell a revolt within his Liberal caucus, where 24 MPs signed a petition asking Trudeau to resign. They gave him until Oct. 28 to consider that demand – and apparently Trudeau took about 24 hours to do so and is definitely staying on.

When asked Thursday if he plans to remain as leader, Trudeau responded, “Yes,” while he dismissed the escalating demands from his own MPs to leave as “robust conversations” about election strategy to defeat the Conservative Party of Canada under its leader Pierre Poilievre. “We’re going to continue to have great conversations about what is the best way to take on Pierre Poilievre in the next election, but that will happen with me as leader,” Trudeau said.

MP Wayne Long (L-Saint John-Rothesay), one of only three dissident MPs who has publicly acknowledged that they signed the petition and want Trudeau out, told the Toronto Star on Thursday that he was disappointed the prime minister did not consider his response for a longer period of time. Dissident MPs have also warned of “consequences” if Trudeau does not leave now.

Discontent from caucus MPs began escalating since the Liberals’ byelection loss this summer to Conservatives in the once-safe seat of Toronto-St.Paul. Anger accelerated when Trudeau lost two more byelections in Winnipeg and Montreal, including another supposedly secure seat in Montreal vacated by the retiring David Lametti, a former justice minister who strongly supported Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy protest in February 2022.