In The Weekly Wrap, Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
Poilievre is betting immigration is a winning Conservative issue
On Thursday, The Hub hosted Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre for his first in-depth sit-down interview since April’s federal election. Our conversation will be available on YouTube and the various podcast platforms on Monday.
We covered a lot of topics, including the election campaign and its outcome, Canada’s position on the ongoing war in Gaza and Israel’s strike against Iran, and an emerging philosophical contest between Poilievre and Prime Minister Mark Carney on markets, capitalism, and the role of government—what I’ve come to think of as a battle for heart of Canadian political economy between Quebec Inc. and Calgary capitalism.
But the most interesting parts of the interview were on immigration, where Poilievre is clearly staking out a new policy position in favour of what he’s recently characterized as “severe limits” on population growth.
He spoke with The Hub about the need for negative population growth for some period to restore an equilibrium between the country’s population and housing, jobs, and various social services. Thereafter he called for a “hard rule” that immigration levels should be set such that the housing stock, job market, and even the supply of doctors are higher than population growth. As Poilievre put it in our interview: “We cannot overload any of those systems for our own people or for the people who come.”
Although some of these arguments and ideas aren’t quite new—Poilievre has talked about them in the past—he’s recently brought a new sharpness and urgency to his message. His case for a sustained period of negative annual population growth, for instance, is bound to be controversial.
Presumably, he’s betting that it’s worth the risk. That there’s a critical mass of Canadians—particularly in and around major cities—who will support such a message because they themselves have been closed out of the housing and job markets due in part to the country’s unprecedented population growth. Recent polling published by The Hub that shows declining public support for large-scale immigration suggests that it may be a worthwhile bet.
The Carney government will, of course, argue that it has already taken steps to reverse the excesses of its predecessor’s immigration policy. Yet while population growth is falling relative to historic highs, it’s still unprecedented outside of the past few years. Take the first quarter of this year, for instance. The 104,256 immigrants admitted in the quarter is the lowest number in four years, but it’s still huge in relative terms. Before 2022, the highest quarterly number was just 86,246.
The government, in other words, has slowed the growth of immigration but it’s still growing and that’s on top of historic increases. Poilievre is presuming that this won’t be enough for a lot of Canadians.
We haven’t had a big political fight over immigration policy for a long time. Even as the Trudeau government was carrying out its unsustainable policy, there was no real debate. It was only when the negative consequences started to manifest themselves—particularly in the housing market—that the issues garnered mainstream political attention. One gets the sense that Poilievre and the Conservatives were highly cautious. They didn’t want to be branded as anti-immigrant in a political environment where first-generation immigrants alone make up as much as 15-20 percent of eligible voters.
Something however has changed. Poilievre has clearly chosen to lean into the issue. He’s still treading carefully. His arguments are technocratic rather than normative. He’s not for instance raising questions about the cultural or social effects of high levels of immigration. But it was obvious in our interview that he intends to put immigration issues much closer to the centre of his political agenda. We’ll soon find out if it’s a good bet.
