Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Sunday that they will reduce the number of immigrants coming into the country over the next three years, admitting that "mistakes" were made.
"In the last two years, our population grew really fast -- baby boom fast. Increasingly, bad actors like fake colleges and big-chain corporations have been exploiting our immigration system for their own interests. So we're doing something major. We're reducing the numbers of immigrants who will come to Canada for the next three years."
"We made some mistakes and that's why we are taking this big turn," he said.
"After the pandemic... We wanted more workers fast. So we brought in more workers... Our economy grew. Restaurants and stores reopened, businesses kept running, but most importantly, in spite of lots of economists’ predictions, we avoided the worst-case scenario -- a recession," he said. "Unfortunately, some saw that as an opportunity to profit, to game the system."
"We have seen way too many large corporations doing this... Far too many colleges and universities used international students to raise their bottom line... because they could charge these students tens of thousands of dollars more for the same degree," Trudeau said.
"The goal is to help stabilize population growth while housing stocks catch up, and then to consider gradually increasing immigration rates once again," he said. "Immigration is primarily a federal job. We have the levers to rein it in -- so we are."
"And give our economy and our communities the chance to catch up with things -- like our plan to build more homes."
