Making immigration controversial will be one of Trudeau’s greatest legacies
Immigration has finally become a topic of genuine debate in Canada, and that is a remarkable and sorely needed development in our discourse. This follows decades of it being an issue that political parties could only support while being permitted to argue about the nuances, lest they be accused of bigotry and xenophobia.
Amidst a brutal affordability crisis, three-quarters of Canadians want immigration levels lowered until that situation is at-least partially alleviated. Given the dismal number of housing starts in Canada, that will mean drastic reductions.
This is far from the only reason Canadians have become sceptical about immigration.
No policy issue should ever be above debate, least of all immigration and its economic benefits, as well as its social changes.
Under the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal party has held power since 2015, the number of immigrants coming into Canada has exploded. What was sold to Canadians as a noble, hopeful policy that would only be good for the economy has become an utter disaster.
Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, has pledged to lower immigration to the point that the annual growth of Canada’s housing stock outpaces the number of newcomers. If that sounds like an obvious policy any reasonable government should have already implemented, that’s because it is.
It is no surprise that, as the loudest voice opposing just about everything the Liberals stand for, Poilievre and the Conservatives are surging in the polls and projected to win a supermajority in the 2025 election. He is not on track to do so because he is an anti-immigrant demagogue, but because he is promising a return to sanity on immigration and a host of other policy issues.
The problem is that the Liberal government is not level-headed or pragmatic. Since forming a government nearly a decade ago, Trudeau and his ministers have ambitiously swung for the fences on as many issues as possible to bake left-wing ideas into Canada’s culture and economy.
During his successful election campaign in 2015, Trudeau promised Canadians ‘real change’, and he was not lying. One of those changes was dramatically expanding immigration, and another was pushing a post-nationalist agenda.
For those who do not know, post-nationalism in Canada means the country has no established mainstream culture or identity, which is how Trudeau himself described it in 2015. It was an ideology espoused by Life of Pi author Yann Martel, who labelled Canada as ‘the greatest hotel on Earth’.
Canada is not akin to a hotel, and it never has been. It is a country with an Anglo-American culture, distinguished by a unique history and its own set of beloved peculiarities. Even if Canada were a hotel, it would be terribly overbooked, as insulting as Martel’s comparison is.
Between January 1 and August 31, 2023, 692,760 temporary work permits were issued, compared to 274,690 in the same time period in 2022. Canada’s population now grows at a rate of over 3 per cent annually, rather than 1 per cent as it was for decades.
International student permits jumped from 354,784 in 2018 to 550,187 in 2022. In 2023, there were over a million such students present in Canada, mostly concentrated in the larger cities. Bear in mind, Canada is a country of less than 40 million people.
For international students, Canada offers the possibility of converting their student visas to work visas, with the hope of then converting those work visas into permanent residency permits.
A diploma mill boom industry emerged, with predatory entrepreneurs starting up ‘career colleges’, often located in rundown storefronts in shopping plazas and offering little more than a promise of eventual permanent residency. This was especially acute in the province of Ontario, which has very loose regulations on starting up educational institutions.
Meanwhile, established post-secondary schools with good reputations like Conestoga College in Toronto or Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia have seen the vast majority of their enrolments become international students. In Ontario’s case, the nominally centre-right provincial government froze university tuition fees in 2019, and many institutions opted to soak themselves on hefty international student fees.
There have been tremendous consequences for this open-door policy, which has become rampant with fraud as newcomers try to game the system for permanent resident permits.
The effects of such a policy of mass immigration have included an exacerbation of Canada’s housing crisis, which the federal government was warned about when they began ballooning Canada’s population.
For a government that pretends to follow the ‘evidence’, they shelved the warnings of their own public servants in favour of taking marching orders from the Century Initiative. The Century Initiative is a lobby group formed by ex-McKinsey employees and has petitioned the Canadian government to try and increase its population to 100 million by 2100.
One question that many Canadians are asking is, why? Why should Canada strive for such an arbitrary target? The evidence that it would be a good thing does not speak for itself.
One of the great myths pushed about mass immigration is that it is always good for economic growth, but Canada’s GDP per capita on the whole has declined for six years in a row. In 2023, GDP per capita in the United States was 43 per cent higher than in Canada, and now in 2024, economist Trevor Tombe estimates that gap could widen to 50 per cent.
In 2015, Canada’s standard of living was ranked ninth on the UN Human Development Index (HDI). By 2022, Canada’s ranking in the UN HDI had plummeted to 18th.
Housing is an economic issue that has gone off the rails due to the massive influx of newcomers, straining the already thin housing supply in both Canada’s major cities and smaller urban centres.
A house on the American side of Niagara Falls goes for $145,000 USD, while on the Canadian side it is $513,110 USD. Few, save for the wealthy, those who come from well-off families, or foreign investors, can afford to purchase property, to say nothing of monthly rental costs.
The monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto jumped 40 per cent between 2021 and 2023, now amounting to about $1,860 USD. Newly common are ramshackle houses hosting illegal numbers of international students per room, as slumlords make the most of their rare, valuable properties.
Canada’s housing supply has not kept up with the massive influx of immigration as a result of the sheer numbers and layers of regulations that stifle new builds. Whatever evidence the Liberals used to justify their immigration policy did not include supply and demand when it came to housing.
Unlike American states like Texas, which have few housing regulations, cities in provinces like BC still have some of the most onerous homebuilding fees in Canada.
In infamously unaffordable Vancouver, for example, extra fees paid to the municipal government account for 30 per cent of the costs of building a new home, which go for an average of $881,507 USD in a city where the average yearly salary is $45,816 USD. Unaffordability has dampened the spirit of young people, just half of whom believe they will ever own property and get the security that comes with it.
All of this has been accompanied by the spread of post-nationalism under the guise of ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’, which has amounted to little else than scrubbing away anything reminiscent of Canada’s colonial past. Canada is a British-style Westminster democracy with King Charles III as head of state, Common Law, and a nominally liberal economy, yet post-nationalists would have all reminders of that erased.
One of the first moves Trudeau made after becoming Prime Minister was to remove portraits of Queen Elizabeth II from government buildings in Ottawa.
The Fort Calgary historic site was renamed The Confluence in an effort to ‘decolonise’ it, which, as one Canadian writer lamented, made the birthplace of the city of Calgary sound like a condominium development.
Likewise, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia retired the crest it held since 1886, resplendent with lions and the Crown. What replaced it in the name of ‘decolonisation’ was a bland, corporate-style logo consisting of three shades of blue and little else.
There are calls for provincial flags to be ripped up and replaced because they feature a Union Jack, while Victoria Day, named in honour of the former Queen, is scarcely acknowledged by the Prime Minister or left-wing provincial premiers.
It is little more than Anglophobia stitched up as ‘inclusion’. Canadians are not actually on board with this desecration of the national memory and have opposed the statue topplings and ‘decolonial’ efforts, though the progressive government has not done anything about it.
Another prong of post-nationalism, made possible by boosting immigration to a country whose government tells them contains no identity or history worth integrating into, has been Canada’s transformation into a stage for the old world’s blood feuds.
Jewish institutions have come under attack from anti-Israel activists, including coordinated bomb threats, shots fired at Jewish girls’ schools, and near-daily harassment of the community with calls to ‘globalise the Intifada’. Other conflicts are present too, such as pro-Hong Kong independence activists being violently harassed by pro-Beijing actors in the streets of cities like Vancouver.
An April poll suggested that two-thirds of Canadians believe immigrants should only be allowed to enter the country if they adopt its values, and those do not include brawling in the streets or making bomb threats over conflicts thousands of miles away. The poll also revealed that Canadians are almost evenly split between those who endorse a multicultural mosaic as the model for society, and those who prefer a melting pot where immigrants assimilate.
This is Canada as the ‘hotel of the world’. It is nothing more than a packed state devoid of a unique culture or history it is allowed to take pride in, where ethnic tensions drive the culture. Post-national Canada is also a future in which nobody can afford a home, in part due to an overcharged immigration system that is riddled with fraud, in a further blow to national dignity.
Still, it would be a mistake to say that Canadians have become an anti-immigrant society; they simply want a return to policies similar to the previous Conservative government that tailored immigration to Canada’s economic needs, such as addressing the lack of highly skilled workers.
The Conservative government’s immigration policy was not solely a cold economic calculation either, as there were also generous allowances under the Conservatives for spousal reunification and the admission of genuine refugees. By balancing selective, skills-based immigration with compassionate admissions, Canada had an economically-sound and family-oriented immigration system that looks like the gold standard in hindsight.
Under Trudeau’s mismanagement, however, immigration is nothing short of an embarrassment. Immigration is also now a topic that people in Canada are finally discussing comfortably, including its economic merits and what levels of integration should be demanded of newcomers.
That is a remarkable achievement in itself.
Even if Trudeau never intended it, making immigration controversial will be among the most important pieces of his legacy. Perhaps that is something we can all thank him for, though he will blush to hear it.
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Why so many students hate Israel
Oct. 7 marks the anniversary of the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, an action that resulted in the deaths of some 1,200 Israelis and provoked a ferocious Israeli response that has produced thousands of casualties in Gaza.
Over the past year, some Americans have sought to celebrate this atrocity. We’ve seen numerous demonstrations demonizing Israel and demanding the destruction of both Israel and the United States. One extraordinary element of these demonstrations is that they have been joined by thousands of American college students who have no connection to the Middle East and know little or nothing about the region.
These students are entitled to their opinions. The problem is that their opinions are usually not based on knowledge. When it came to those students shouting “from the river to the sea,” for example, more than half could name neither the river nor the sea when asked to identify those locations in 2023. The particular foolishness of college groups, such as “Queers for Palestine,” a place where LGBTQ persons likely would be murdered by the locals, hardly needs discussion.
We shouldn’t be surprised by the naivete of our college students. American students are taught little about the history of their own country, much less the history of far-away places. In many of America’s public schools, history is poorly taught, and many U.S. colleges do not require a foundational course in history or government. In the classes they do take, most college students are asked to think critically and analytically. But, as every professor can attest, the average student’s capacity to think critically is hampered by a lack of knowledge. One colleague told me that his students hardly know anything about World War I or World War II other than which came first because they’re numbered.
Absent facts, students rely upon their feelings. This decoupling of opinion from knowledge is sometimes said to be characteristic of our contemporary “post-truth” polity, in which many citizens are no longer concerned with objective facts but simply accept what they believe or feel as true. A feeling requires no evidentiary foundation but, rather, creates its own reality.
What are the feelings students learn in America’s schools?
A recent report issued by the American Historical Association helps provide some answers to this question. Based upon a survey of 3,000 middle and high school teachers in nine states, the report found that curricular materials from left-liberal organizations were widely used in the nation’s classrooms. Forty-two percent of the respondents had used materials from “Learning for Justice,” produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center. About 25% had used materials from the Zinn Education Project, an organization that valorizes leftist activism, and 17% used materials provided by the 1619 Project (see below). Only a small percentage reported ever having used materials from two of the more prominent conservative sources, the Ashbrook Center and Hillsdale College. The AHA report warned that some left-leaning school districts exhibited a trend of offering “moralistic cues … that seemed to direct students toward viewing American history in an emotional manner, as a string of injustices.”
About 4,500 school systems have adopted the “1619 Project Curriculum,” material adapted from a series of New York Times Magazine essays designed to replace the conventional American historical narrative with one that places slavery at the center of the American story. According to this new history, the true date of America’s founding is 1619, when slavery was introduced in Virginia, rather than 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was written. Crafted mainly to justify demands for the payment of reparations to the descendants of enslaved persons, the 1619 essays properly call attention to the role of slavery in American history. An untutored reader, however, namely a young student, might reach the rather erroneous conclusion that slavery was the actual centerpiece and driving force of American political and institutional development.
Such an interpretation, of course, delegitimates the U.S. as a nation. It transforms America from “the land of opportunity” into the “state of slavery.” The more widespread this belief, the more disruptive it is to Americans’ sense of identification with their nation.
“In extinguishing a kingdom of men,” observed 19th century Chinese poet Gong Zizhen, “the first step is to remove its history.”
It appears that at least some teachers view their mission as removing America’s history by presenting students, under the rubric of critical thinking, with an unfavorable view of their nation, its history, and its policies. Many of the same educators teach their students to equate Zionism with bigotry and racism. Negative feelings about Israel and the U.S. often go hand in hand precisely because they emanate from the same set of educational institutions.
In the interest of promoting a more knowledgeable discussion of the events that transpired on Oct. 7, 2023, I offer a few facts that might serve as counterweights to hostile feelings toward Israel:
Feeling 1: Israel is an ‘ethnostate’ in which the Jews monopolize political power
Fact: For better or worse, most of the world’s states, including all the Muslim states of the Middle East, are ethnostates. In most Muslim states, non-Muslims, if tolerated at all, face numerous handicaps. Israel, the so-called “Jewish state,” is quite multiethnic and multicultural. Israeli society includes Christians, Druze, Arabs, and others. Israel’s Muslim political party wields power in the parliament. Members of the Druze, an ancient Mideastern sect, hold prominent positions in the Israeli military and, as a result, exercise considerable influence over Israeli security policy.
Feeling 2: Israel is an illegitimate product of ‘settler colonialism’
Fact: The concept of settler colonialism has no real significance because it cannot distinguish one state from another. All states are products of settler colonialism. Every square inch of territory on the face of the earth previously belonged to someone else. When Europeans arrived in North America, they settled on land belonging to Native American nations that previously had seized the land from other Native American nations. Many of today’s Europeans are descendants of tribes that conquered pieces of Roman territory that the Romans, themselves, had stolen from the Etruscans, Dacians, Illyrians, and others. At worst, the Israelis are no different from anyone else.
The archeological record, moreover, suggests the Jews have a powerful historical claim to the land. The Temple of Solomon may have been built as long ago as the 10th century B.C., and the Second Temple was built in the 6th century B.C. Jews worshiped there continuously for the next 500 years. Muhammad was not born until 500 years after the destruction of the Second Temple. The Jews’ claim to what became modern-day Israel was recognized by the League of Nations and, later, the United Nations. In fact, modern Israel was not created by conquest but by the U.N.
Feeling 3: Israel is guilty of brutality and oppression
Fact: Every government is capable of brutal and repressive conduct. Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century nihilist philosopher and social critic, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, had Zarathustra call the state “the coldest of all cold monsters.” Yet, if we were to rank states on the dimension of cruelty, Israel would rank well behind nearly all the states in the Middle East, including Iran, Syria, and the Taliban’s Afghanistan, where women are again being deprived of all rights.
By failing to teach history and political affairs in our schools, we have turned our children into what the Soviets used to call “polezniye durakie,” meaning useful idiots, unwitting stooges used by political activists to further their causes.
This is why American students can be trained to chant their demands for the destruction of not only Israel but the U.S. as well. The fault is not that of the credulous students. We are to blame for allowing this to happen.
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Harris’ Economic Plan Would Increase Federal Stranglehold on Economy
Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech last week to accompany the release of her 82-page economic planning document. While her words were intended to evoke optimism, the implications of the plan are troubling for America’s future.
To begin with, the plan must be placed in context.
The Biden-Harris administration has overseen the federal government since January 2021. President Joe Biden has faced broad public disapproval of his handling of the economy for most of that time, and Americans still view high prices and inflation as leading concerns.
Rather than breaking from the Biden-Harris record, the Harris economic plan wholeheartedly embraces it.
Harris’ plan praises a series of legislative packages passed in 2021 and 2022 that fueled inflationary deficit spending. Some of the bills even required tiebreaking votes by Harris herself in the role of presiding officer in the Senate as vice president.
Reading the economic plan makes it clear that Harris is proud of the Biden-Harris administration’s economic legacy.
In worrisome fashion, the plan would tighten Washington’s grip on the economy even further.
Rather than relying on businesses to create jobs with smart investments, the Harris vision involves the federal government using a combination of spending and tax credits to subsidize preferred industries.
Meanwhile, she proposes to raise taxes on businesses broadly, claiming they aren’t paying their “fair share.” With tax credits in one hand and tax hikes in the other, Harris would pick winners and losers across the entire economy.
The dismal track record of the Biden-Harris administration’s “investments” is plain to see. Billions of dollars in subsidies for electric vehicle charging infrastructure has yielded only a handful of stations, and a massive new broadband internet program has also had pitiful results.
There are good reasons for these failures.
The Biden-Harris administration loads federal programs with requirements for “equity,” “environmental justice,” and other left-wing ideological fads. That ensures that federal spending produces even less economic value than usual.
Another claim—that a Harris administration would “cut red tape”—is downright laughable.
Not only has the Biden-Harris administration made federal programs even more bureaucratic and complicated, but it has also unleashed a torrent of regulations that impose thousands of dollars in costs for every family.
Unless and until Harris is willing to repudiate that regulatory record, any “cut red tape” claims will be hard to take seriously.
Speaking of families, the Harris plan takes the same approach for households as it does for businesses; namely, subsidies and tax credits for some, higher taxes for others.
A prominent example is Harris calling for $25,000 in down payment support to offset the rising cost of housing. Yet this would lead to a massive increase in demand for houses, causing prices to rise even faster.
On the jobs front, the plan calls for both broad and targeted increases to the federal minimum wage. That would destroy jobs by reducing hiring and artificially accelerating automation, while also raising prices for consumers (which is to say, everyone).
In addition, reversing many (or all) of the tax cuts passed in 2017 under then-President Donald Trump would stifle job-creating private investment.
The Harris economic document also embraces the Biden-Harris administration’s many attempts to write off student loan debt. That’s not “forgiveness” as much as it is a transferal, since the burden is shifted from university attendees to taxpayers—who already have $35 trillion in federal debt to shoulder.
In sum, the Harris plan would make Washington the center of U.S. economic life, ensuring fewer jobs, less economic growth, and higher prices.
Rather than a “new way forward for the middle class,” the document is a recipe for economic stagnation and national decline. Harris’ plan would only create an “opportunity economy” for bureaucrats and her political allies.
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Democracy demands choice, not the appearance of choice
Senator Ralph Babet
Most Australians think we have a real choice when it comes to the government we elect, but many of us know that is not true. Unless of course you consider being given the opportunity to vote for socialism or socialism-lite a choice!
Imagine going to the ballot box and believing that the choice of authoritarianism on one hand and gentle authoritarianism on the other, meant you had real options.
Spare me.
The idea of a two-party political system is pure disinformation. Speaking of which, if you want proof that the two-party system is really a one-party system cleverly disguised as democracy, look no further than the Labor Party’s Misinformation and Disinformation Bill. The Bill now proposed by Prime Minister Albanese and his Communications Minister Michelle Rowlands is the same bill first proposed by Scott Morrison and his Communications Minister Paul Fletcher. Fancy that!
In the same way that cockroaches survive nuclear wars, globalist ideas survive federal elections and changes of government.
You need to understand that most government ministers are not especially smart or capable. Most MPs, if they had to find actual jobs in the actual economy, would be hard-pressed to find work as low-level middle managers. Think regional managers overseeing half a dozen 7-11 stores.
Actually, no. More like – and I’m stretching here – deputy assistant to the assistant night manager of a solitary, underperforming store in a rural town no one ever heard of. Yes, that’s your average high-ranking Labor minister had they not been voted into Parliament.
So the people sitting at the big desk in the ministerial office are not the brightest. They are good at talking, schmoozing, and politicking. But that is about it. The real smarts are to be found in the bureaucracy – the nameless, faceless, public servants who are more likely to be serving the globalist elites than the public who pay their wages.
These bureaucrats attend globalist functions where they enthuse over how idyllic the world could be if only the public could be massaged and moulded into the right kind of public. They then return to Canberra where they convince the deputy assistant to the assistant night manager of a poorly performing 7-11 – who by some fluke of the electoral system somehow end up as Australia’s Communicators Minister – that it is vitally important to censor the free thinking of free citizens online.
The Communications Minister – more suited to making a Slurpee than running a national portfolio let alone protecting civil rights – is quickly convinced by the bureaucrat’s fine-sounding words and high-minded ideals. The next thing you know, your Facebook posts are being suppressed and your X (Twitter) account has been suspended.
Labor and the Liberals exist only to echo one another. Liberal or Labor, Scomo or Albo – it’s all the same. Only the colour of the corflute changes. I can give you example after example to prove the point. Consider Australia’s self-sabotaging commitment to Net Zero emissions. Right now, Net Zero is considered a Chris Bowen fetish. But we should never forget that it was former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard who signed Australia up to the Kyoto Protocol that required us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as if human activity was the main cause of climate.
Today the Labor Party insists on wind turbines and solar panels while the Liberal Party insists on nuclear power plants. But both parties are in lock-step agreement that there is a climate catastrophe that can only be avoided by completely overhauling our energy policy.
Or what about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament? Prime Minister Albanese wanted it in the Australian Constitution; Mr Dutton wanted it legislated. Our major parties only disagreed on the instrument, not on the desirability to divide Australians by race.
Should we talk about Digital ID? It’s a Liberal Party idea that never quite got up. Labor succeeded where the Liberals failed and all Australians lost.
Think about the commitment to globalist entities who continually undermine our national sovereignty. Whether it’s the World Health Organisation, the United Nations, or the World Economic Forum – both major parties are beholden to them.
The WEF serves unelected corporate elites by giving them access to politicians worldwide, and subsequently, access to public money. Australia’s politicians and bureaucrats should be nowhere near any of it.
Both major parties love big government and big bureaucracy. No matter what they say before taking office, neither party ever reduces the size of government or repeals legislation. Both parties have put the nation into serious debt. And both parties have raised taxes and levies.
There was perhaps no more appalling proof that we actually live in a the one party state than during Covid when both Liberal and Labor politicians cheered the trashing of civil rights. Both parties – to their eternal shame – supported mandatory vaccinations, lockdowns, mask-wearing and school closures.
Democracy demands a choice, not just the illusion or appearance of choice. At present, we don’t have that. Slowly, Australians are starting to realise it, but we must all play a part and wake more people up.
The UAP exists outside of the two-party system because a real democracy demands that voters are given a real choice – a choice about where we are heading as a nation and about the kind of country we want to be.
When you support the United Australia Party you are doing more than supporting sensible policy positions, you are giving Australia the chance to exercise real choice and in so doing, strengthening democracy.
I am ever so grateful for your continued support.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/democracy-demands-choice-not-the-appearance-of-choice/
**************************************************My main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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