For the first time since Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, the Canadian Liberal government has made, if not a U-turn, at least the beginnings of a change in its immigration policy. On January 22, the minister in charge of immigration, Marc Miller, announced the introduction of a two-year "temporary cap" on the number of new study permits granted to foreign students: around 360,000 will be issued in 2024, representing a 35% reduction compared to 2023. The Ministry said the measure was aimed in particular at "easing pressure on housing."

According to Statistics Canada, there are already over a million foreign students in Canada. But the government is no doubt also hoping, by establishing this unprecedented pause in the exponential increase of the number of immigrants invited to settle in Canada, to ease the pressure on its own policy, which is increasingly being contested.

Trudeau's talk of immigration being vital to Canada, and the objectives defended by his government – with 1.5 million new arrivals expected between 2023 and 2025, and a record 840,000 immigrants welcomed last year (including temporary residents) – had not, until now, given rise to any major national debate. Economic players saw it as a response to the chronic labor shortage in a country with an aging population; the political parties, including the Conservatives, remained in favor of the tradition of welcoming foreigners in a country built on successive waves of international workers, and were cautious about the electoral weight of certain long-established communities in their constituencies.

However, the inflation surge of the last two years, combined with a glaring lack of new housing projects, has changed the situation: a federal housing agency recently estimated that Canada would be 3.5 million homes short by the end of the decade, and financial institutions, the political opposition and public opinion have sounded the alarm. All are convinced that the federal government's migration model is "unsustainable" and is contributing significantly to the crisis experienced by thousands of Canadian families.

A study published on January 15 by the National Bank of Canada, a private banking institution, was particularly critical. Under the title "Le Canada est pris dans un piège démographique," ("Canada is caught in a demographic trap"), economists Stéfane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme explained that Canada's current demographic growth "seems extreme in relation to the economy's absorption capacity." This "absorption challenge" is particularly obvious when it comes to housing; to remedy the current supply deficit, "the country would have to more than double its construction capacity to reach around 700,000 new housing projects per year [compared with 240,000 new projects in 2023], an unattainable objective."

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