(Bloomberg) -- Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, currently the favorite to win the next Canadian election, says the country needs to slow its soaring population growth to better align with the growth in housing, jobs and health care.
“We have to have smaller population growth, there’s no question about it,” Poilievre told reporters Thursday. He said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been adding new residents at “three times the rate of the housing stock.”
“We need to have a growth rate that is below the growth in housing, health care and employment,” Poilievre said, though he did not say exactly how that would translate into an annual immigration target.
A surge in temporary residents to Canada has helped push its population growth rate to 3.2%, one of the world’s fastest and above any other developed country. That’s quickly pushed the country’s population to 41 million, straining housing markets and the social safety net.
Poilievre did not say how many immigrants he would welcome per year. But in July, the number of jobs rose by 1.7% from the year before, with the number of health care workers excluding managers up 3.5%. The total number of housing starts in the second quarter was up 2.6% from the previous year.
Keeping the population growth rate below the lowest of those figures — 1.7% — would represent a halving of the current rate.
Poilievre added that he would run the immigration system the way it was done in the 30 years before Trudeau came to power in 2015. While the Conservative leader also did not cite a specific number in that statement, the population growth rate averaged 1.1% annually from 1984 to 2014.
Trudeau’s government is currently targeting about half a million new permanent residents a year. That’s significantly up from the rate of about 300,000 annually when Trudeau was first elected in 2015.
Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller have already announced a plan to scale back the pace in non-permanent immigration, with the goal of reducing the number by about 20% over the next three years. The government aims to decrease the temporary resident population to about 5% of Canada’s total — down from the current share of 6.8%.
Miller has also said the government is now looking at reducing the growth in permanent residents.
In an interview with CTV News this week, Miller said he intends to look at Canada’s permanent immigration target “and put real options on the table for the prime minister and for other cabinet ministers to look at, and not cosmetic changes simply to deal with public opinion,” he said. “Real significant change.”
Trudeau told reporters on Monday the government is “looking at the various streams to make sure that as we move forward, Canada remains a place that is positive in its support for immigration, but also responsible in the way we integrate and make sure there’s pathways to success for everyone who comes to Canada.”
--With assistance from Jay Zhao-Murray.
(Corrects date range in chart and paragraph seven.)
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