Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Aug. 28.PATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he would set Canada’s immigration targets based on housing, jobs and health care data if his party forms government after the next election, accusing the Liberals of bringing in more immigrants than the country can absorb.
Mr. Poilievre spoke with reporters outside Parliament’s West Block Thursday, where he criticized what he described as an expensive cabinet retreat in Halifax this week and called on NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to pull his support for the minority Liberal government and trigger a federal election.
Liberal ministers announced this week that the government will reverse its expansion of the low-wage temporary foreign worker program and is considering whether to reduce the number of permanent residents that Canada accepts annually.
Mr. Poilievre said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has “destroyed” Canada’s immigration system and vowed to return to the consensus he said existed between previous Liberal and Conservative governments before the Trudeau government increased its annual targets.
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The Conservative Leader said he would ensure that population growth will be below the rate of growth in jobs, housing and health care.
“If you want an idea of how I would run the immigration system overall, it’s the way it was run for the 30 years prior to Trudeau being Prime Minister.
“We had a common sense consensus between Liberals and Conservatives for three decades that screened people to make sure they were safe, only brought in the numbers that we could absorb into our housing, health care and job market, and blocked temporary foreign workers where they were taking jobs from Canadians.”
Canada’s population climbed by more than 1.27 million people last year and that growth was almost entirely from international migration. Canada accepted 471,771 permanent immigrants and 804,901 non-permanent residents, according to Statistics Canada data released in March.
Canada’s current immigration levels plan for the acceptance of 485,000 permanent residents in 2024 and 500,000 in both 2025 and 2026.
These are the highest planned levels of admissions in recent Canadian history and almost double the targets established a decade ago, says a Library of Parliament research paper released this week.
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Mr. Poilievre did not specify which housing, health and job statistics he would rely on or how they would be used.
Canadian housing starts are currently at an annualized pace of 279,509 units as of July, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Total employment rose by 430,000 in 2023.
In a letter posted on X, Mr. Poilievre also called for Mr. Singh to pull his party’s support and trigger an election this fall.
“No one voted for you to keep Trudeau in power. You do not have a mandate to drag out his government another year,” he states in the letter.
Mr. Poilievre wrote that Mr. Singh’s support of the Liberals has coincided with increasing affordability challenges for Canadians.
“You claim to represent the workers, but you abandoned them to keep Trudeau in power,” he wrote.
In 2022, the Liberals and NDP reached a supply-and-confidence agreement with the government in exchange for policy concessions on such issues as anti-scab legislation, dental care and pharmacare. The deal runs through to the next election in 2025.
Throughout his letter, Mr. Poilievre refers to the agreement as a “coalition” and a “costly coalition.” However, the agreement between the Liberals and the NDP is not a formal governing coalition because it does not involve any NDP MPs sitting in cabinet.
NDP House Leader Peter Julian said in a statement that Mr. Poilievre is trying to ensure that Parliament does not approve pharmacare legislation before the next election. Bill C-64, which is currently before the Senate, would authorize the federal government to cover a limited pharmacare program focused on contraception and diabetes medications under certain conditions.
Mr. Poilievre declined to say Thursday whether he would maintain such a system if his party formed the government.
Mr. Julian also said it is possible that the NDP brings an end to its agreement with the Liberals.
“Leaving the deal is always on the table for Jagmeet Singh,” he said. “The NDP believes in the Canadian value of taking care of our neighbours. That’s what we’ve always done and what guides us before and after an election.”