New Data Vindicates Critics of Canada’s High Immigration Levels

Commentary

Almost exactly one year ago, the federal government caved to rising opposition towards high immigration and announced a plan to hit the brakes and temporarily “pause population growth.” New data is now revealing that the Canadian public is reaping economic dividends from this immigration cut, confirming what opponents of high immigration have said all along.

The Trudeau government’s October 2024 immigration pivot reduced annual permanent resident admissions from a planned 500,000 to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026, and 365,000 in 2027. Equally importantly, the government announced its intention to reduce the proportion of Canada’s population made up of temporary residents (mostly international students and foreign workers) from 7 percent to 5 percent.

The plan worked as intended. In the first quarter of 2025, Statistics Canada reported a +0.0 percent growth rate. In the second quarter, the rate rose very slightly to +0.1 percent. For context, just two years ago in 2023, Canada’s population grew by an astonishing +3.2 percent (97.6 percent of which was from immigration).

On Oct. 28 of this year, two reports came out analyzing the effects of Canada’s reduced population growth. Both show that lower immigration levels are significantly and tangibly improving the Canadian living standard.

A TD report titled “Is the Dial-Back of Immigration Having the Intended Impact in Canada?” found that “rapidly decelerating population growth” appears to be “easing pressure on the social and economic infrastructure” in the country.

According to the report, one major area where the immigration cuts are impacting daily life is rent. The report projects that “drastically slower immigration inflows” are contributing to softer rent growth, which the authors expect to drop to half of 2024’s growth rate by next year.

The authors run a hypothetical scenario in which immigration rates had not been slashed, and find that rent growth would have been two percentage points higher—translating to “an additional $1,100 per year to rent a one-bedroom apartment by 2027.”

To put it less academically, the October 2024 immigration cut will effectively prevent an extra $1,100 from leaving the pockets of the average Canadian renting a small apartment.

The effects go beyond softened rent growth, extending to the labour market. The authors run another hypothetical scenario in which there was no immigration cut and Canada’s labour force continued to swell rapidly, concluding that “today’s unemployment rate could have breached 8%” in that situation.

Canada’s current unemployment rate is 7.1 percent. If these TD Bank calculations are right, cutting immigration has saved Canada from adding nearly a full additional point to our unemployment rate. At a time when our economy can use all the help it can get, that is significant.

The second report, released on Oct. 28, analyzing the effects of the 2024 immigration cuts, was an analysis by Rentals.ca on how Canada’s crackdown on international student numbers is influencing the domestic student housing market.

The report explains that, after Canada saw soaring international student numbers from 2020–2023, stricter requirements for post-graduation work permits in 2024, followed by an outright cap on foreign students in 2025, have led to a nosedive in the number of new students. The combined effect of these restrictions has fuelled a 69 percent decline in new international student arrivals in Canada, according to the report.

Rentals.ca examined the effect of this dramatic drop by measuring the number of unique individuals answering rental ads, which it calls “lead volume.” In the first seven months of 2025, lead volume across Canada fell by 28 percent from the same period in 2023; in areas near post-secondary campuses, it collapsed by 39 percent.

The effect of this crash in demand for student housing should be obvious, but the report spells it out anyway: “The reduced intake of international students has led to falling demand and lower rents in many student areas, resulting in greater choice for student rentals, and in many cases, more affordable options.”

Lower rent growth, reduced unemployment, and more housing availability for Canadian students mean the immigration cut has turned out to be a boon for living standards.

All of this is good news, and it is exactly what critics of high immigration have long said would happen if we cut our annual intake. After all, the effects of immigration can be simply understood in terms of the law of supply and demand.

When you add more workers from abroad without adding more jobs domestically, the labour pool spills over and unemployment rises. When you add more renters from abroad beyond the rate at which Canada constructs rental housing, rent growth rapidly rises. When you add more people without building more hospitals, the health-care system buckles.

As the benefits of immigration cuts stack up before our eyes, it is no wonder that public opinion has swung firmly behind immigration restriction. Most recently, a September poll by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies found that 60 percent of Canadians say the country does not need any new immigrants right now.

The 60 percent figure in that poll includes nearly half of foreign-born Canadians, revealing a broad consensus that cuts across backgrounds. This is no great wonder. Who doesn’t want cheaper rent and lower unemployment?

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.