Documents obtained through an access-to-information request show that federal public servants were warned the effects mass immigration would have on housing affordability over two years ago.
The records, obtained by the Canadian Press, revealed that the federal immigration department analyzed the negative effects high immigration would have on the economy, housing and services, before the Trudeau government prepared its newcomer targets for 2023 to 2025.
The analysis cautioned that housing construction had long since fallen behind the pace of population growth in 2022.
“In Canada, population growth has exceeded the growth in available housing units,” reads the documents.
“As the federal authority charged with managing immigration, IRCC policy-makers must understand the misalignment between population growth and housing supply, and how permanent and temporary immigration shapes population growth.”
Almost all population growth in Canada is directly attributed to immigration due to an aging population and a low birth rate.
The Trudeau government decided to raise the number of annual permanent residents in Canada to 500,000 per year, nearly doubling the targets set in 2015.
“Rapid increases put pressure on health care and affordable housing,” warned public servants. “Settlement and resettlement service providers are expressing short-term strain due to labour market conditions, increased levels and the Afghanistan and Ukraine initiatives.”
The Bank of Canada conducted its own analysis and came to a similar conclusion in December.
“Canada’s housing supply has not kept up with growth in our population, and higher rates of immigration are widening the gap,” said Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, while speaking at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel Dec. 15.
Canada’s population growth has been hitting record highs historically, largely in part due to international students and temporary foreign workers.
In the third quarter of 2023 alone, Canada’s population grew by 430,000 people, the highest quarterly growth on record since 1957.
Housing affordability is now perhaps the main problem facing Canadians today, and has dramatically hurt Trudeau’s administration across a number of public polls.
Canada’s immigration targets have even exceeded the levels that were recommended by experts with the Century Initiative, an organization which aims to have the country’s population reach 100 million by 2100, according to the Globe and Mail.
Though promoted for decades in Canada’s universities, the institutionalization of the radical Indigenous assault on Western science, aided and abetted by the Trudeau Liberal government, took a dramatic leap in July 2022 with the appointment of Myrle Ballard, an Anishinaabe woman from Lake St. Martin Indian Reserve, as first director of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) new permanent division of Indigenous Science.
This attack was reinforced Sept. 18 last year when the House of Commons’ science and research committee adopted a motion to “undertake a study of how best to integrate Indigenous Traditional Knowledge [ITK] and science into government policy development; how to resolve conflicts between the two knowledge systems.”
Terming the relation between both “knowledge systems” as “conflicts” that need resolution denies the elementary observation that the two systems are fundamentally irreconcilable because they are rooted in competing paradigms based on very different systems of knowing.
Not so, says Ballard, who claims she is using a process she calls “bridging, braiding and weaving” to unite Western and Indigenous science. Bridging means raising awareness about Indigenous science within the government, while braiding is when Western scientists work together on research with Indigenous peoples on the land.
“The weaving process will be when the government, when the department ECCC, starts weaving Indigenous and Western science for better-informed decision-making,” she said.
In her testimony before the House science committee, Ballard argued Indigenous and western science are “both sciences.”
“For example, when we develop traditional medicines, we have the traditionalists, the medicine-makers who take the medicines from the land,” she said. “They know they have to take the plant or whatever it is they’re using from as far away from human contamination as they can. They have recipes that they use as well. That’s the same as in a lab. There are recipes that have to be tested. There’s the colour and the consistency. That’s the same as western science.”
A close reading of the committee’s mandate on Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and the new Indigenous Science division in the environment department, together with their uncritical – read: “unscientific” – acceptance of the comments from witnesses suggests that the government of Canada also accepts Western science as just one version of science.
These claims about “Indigenous science” need to be closely examined. This is no easy task, not the least because there must be at least 50 different systems of “Aboriginal science” in Canada corresponding to the country’s 50 different cultural and linguistic groups.
As for the content of “Indigenous science,” Jamie Sarkonak’s National Post analysis of the committee witness testimonies shows “Indigenous science, perhaps intentionally, is a difficult concept to pin down.”
“Advocates can’t define it in any consistent way, and frequently confuse science conducted by Indigenous people (i.e., long-term observational evidence on phenomena like caribou migration patterns), with non-scientific cultural beliefs that are somehow upheld as equivalent to the scientific method,” Sarkonak wrote. “There’s often a political, anti-colonial element to ‘Indigenous science.’”
This is not to deny the fundamental importance of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, systems of practical understanding based on trial and error and careful observation that allowed Aboriginal people to cope with a harsh northern climate that restricted population survival and expansion, at least compared to many other regions of the world. Still, based on the relatively rapid population growth in Europe and elsewhere over the same 15,000-year period, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the absence of genuinely scientific farming systems limited the number of Indigenous people the land could support.
This begs the question of what is meant by the term “genuinely scientific.”
Sarkonok contends, “In reality, the scientific method is just a way of testing hypotheses about the world to determine what corresponds to reality and what does not. The truth is not dependent on ethnicity. If a plant has medical benefits, it ultimately doesn’t matter whether they were discovered in a lab or by the people who have used it for thousands of years. All that matters is that it works.”
But there is much more to scientific investigation than this. Scientific laws are not culturally limited; they are universal in scope. Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion which he discovered in 1666 are just as valid in Canada as they are in Croatia. And they are just as correct in 2024 as they were in 1666 because they have never been disproven.
Sarkonok’s claim that “All that matters is that it works” is a practical issue, not a scientific one. And it is far less scientifically critical than knowing exactly why something works: what is it about some plants that Indigenous specialists employ in healing that gives them their medical benefits? Science continually asks and often succeeds in answering questions like this using the tools of modern chemistry and other techniques.
Still, employing the scientific method using observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses cannot prove theories to be true, including old ones like those of Newton; it can only show them to be false.
None of these requirements are met by ITK, a system of practical knowledge and supporting mythology based on everyday experience, buttressed by appeals to the teachings of Indigenous authorities and the power of supernatural forces. It is also a way to understand and explain reality that varies dramatically between Aboriginal cultural groups. And it is subject to constant change, variation, and disappearance because it is transmitted orally by competing knowledge keepers: “Indigenous science” in 2024 and “Indigenous science” in 1024 could never be identical.
What all this means is “Indigenous science,” a term used liberally in the HCSCSR’s hearings, is a logical and empirical oxymoron because privileging common sense visual understandings by labelling them scientific to score political or sectarian points makes a mockery of a foundational concept – science – no amount of “bridging, braiding and weaving” could ever displace.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba.
The recent arrest of Rebel News journalist David Menzies by a police bodyguard for Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was one of many assaults on press freedom by the Liberals, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says.
Menzies himself asked Poilievre to lay out what he’d do differently from the Liberal government on media regulations at a Winnipeg press conference Friday morning.
Poilievre pledged to rescind Bill C-11 and fight back against other censorship plans being imposed by the Liberal government.
According to Poilievre, this legislation enables the selective promotion and demotion of information, as well as outright censorship — a practice he argues is absent in other democratic nations.
“We’re going to stop arresting journalists.”
Pierre Poilievre slams the Trudeau government for its treatment of journalist David Menzies who was arrested earlier this week for asking questions to Chrystia Freeland. pic.twitter.com/bqYtVysHCn
Poilievre emphasized the gravity of the situation, stating that even non-conservatives like renowned author Margaret Atwood recognize the danger, labelling the recent events as “creeping totalitarianism.”
“This is Margaret Atwood, not a conservative, obviously not a conservative, but she is an artist, a true artist who believes that freedom of expression and freedom of the press is necessary,” said Poilievre.
“We’re going to stop arresting journalists. It’s outrageous for the Prime Minister, and his government to have journalists arrested merely for asking questions of ministers and public officials. And we’re going to make sure that the government does not give us tax dollars to leverage news coverage in its favour.”
Poilievre also alleged that the Liberal government’s actions were undermining Canadians’ confidence in the media.
The incident in question occurred during a memorial service dedicated to the victims of Flight PS752, where Menzies was apprehended by law enforcement officers while attempting to question Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on a public street. Although the arresting officer claimed Menzies had assaulted a police officer, Menzies was subsequently released without charges.
Poilievre spoke out about the arrest as videos of the incident were circulating on X by decrying the state of freedom of the press in Canada in 2024 after eight years of Trudeau’s leadership.
Even X CEO Elon Musk joined the chorus of voices defending Menzies, illustrating the widespread concern over the incident.
Rebel News founder Ezra Levant announced the media organization’s intention to file a lawsuit against those involved, citing false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and assault as grounds for legal action.
The department of family medicine at Hamilton’s McMaster University is apologizing for “inadvertently” mentioning that Jan. 11 was Sir John A. Macdonald’s birthday in its “multicultural calendar.”
“We would like to sincerely apologize for the mistake we made in the DFM Digest’s multicultural calendar yesterday,” said an email sent to members of McMaster’s family medicine program obtained by Quillette journalist Jonathan Kay.
“We inadvertently included the mention of Sir John A Macdonald day (sic), which is a day that commemorates a person who was responsible for the genocide and oppression of Indigenous peoples in Canada.”
The university says including Macdonald’s birthday was “a grave oversight on our part” and that it “regrets any hurt or offense this caused to anyone.”
The email also reaffirmed McMaster’s commitment to “diversity, equity and inclusion” ideology.
“We are committed to creating a culture of diversity, inclusion, and respect in our department, and we recognize that our calendar should reflect the values and identities of our members and the communities we serve.”
The apology was not well received by some users on X (formerly Twitter), who accused the university of being woke.
“Any culture but our own! Disgusting situation in this country. I distantly remember signing up to serve this country, believing it was the greatest in the world, and today I can’t even recognize it. Just sad,” wrote one X User.
“The next historical person to be cancelled by McMaster will be William McMaster himself. After all, he was a white Christian man and a founding director of CIBC,” wrote another.
McMaster University did not return True North’s request for comment.
Over the weekend, a video of a Toronto police constable delivering coffee to anti-Israel protesters blocking a bridge went viral, with the Chief of Police eventually issuing an apology over the situation. Criminal lawyer Ari Goldkind joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss the perceived double standard in the treatment of certain types of protests.
A panel of Canada’s top economists gathered in Toronto to discuss the laundry list of economic problems the country is dealing with as a result of the government’s current immigration policy on Thursday.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to dramatically increase immigration, making it among the most open countries in the world, has created an onslaught of issues.
As people arrive in historically record numbers, they do not have the proper support they need, leading to weak productivity and higher inflation, according to several chief economists at some of Canada’s largest banks.
There was a packed audience at the Economic Club of Canada event on Thursday, many looking for answers to the difficulties brought on by Canada’s current economic state.
“Frankly I’m surprised we screwed it up because we sit in such a privileged position in Canada,” said Beata Caranci, chief economist at Toronto Dominion Bank.
Caranci noted that unlike the U.S. and other countries, Canada has not been faced with an overflow of migrants due to uncontrolled borders, but instead held the advantage of being able to think about the implications of its policies beforehand.
“We designed our own policy, we put it in place, we implemented it, and we still screwed it up,” said Caranci.
From Jan. to Oct. 1 of last year, Canada accepted about 455,000 new permanent residents and another 800,000 non-permanent residents, like international students, temporary foreign workers and refugees.
Canada now has a growth rate of 3.2%, giving it a faster growth rate than India, China, or any other G-7 nation, according to BNN Bloomberg.
While Canada does have an annual target for permanent residents, there is no cap in place for international-student permits.
Additionally, the Trudeau government has made it easier for employers to hire temporary foreign workers.
“I’ll put it bluntly: We’ve fallen into the population trap,” said Stéfane Marion, chief economist at National Bank of Canada.
According to Marion, the standard of living can no longer increase because “you don’t have enough savings to stabilize your capital to labor ratio.”
The Trudeau government has made attempts to incentivize the construction of rental housing to alleviate the housing shortage however, “the numbers just don’t add up,” said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets.
“I’m a bit surprised that the government is moving fairly slowly on this. I think there’s some urgency to bring these numbers of students and temporary workers into better balance with the arithmetic of our homebuilding strategy, because the two are working at cross-purposes.”
Shenfield also noted that provinces which have restrictions on funding to post-secondary institutions, will often make up for lost revenue by bringing in international students.
This practice leads to community colleges having “branch plants” that are mostly international students in Toronto office buildings, said Shenfield.
“It’s just really a tuition-making machine.”
All of the economists agreed that the government should be more deliberate about matching the inflow of people to what Canada can actually manage, before adopting a more restrictive immigration policy.
Chief economist at Bank of Nova Scotia Jean-Francois Perrault mentioned that Canada has traditionally relied on immigration to aid businesses who complain about difficulties with hiring staff, however,“in a way we made it too easy for businesses to hire,” said Perrault.
He suggested looking into how the U.S., which has stricter policies on immigration, is able to have higher productivity.
“Immigration policy made it cheaper to bring people in rather than investing,” said Perrtault.
Bank of Montreal’s chief economist, Douglas Porter, said Canada’s terribly poor productivity and housing affordability are the two biggest issues in the Canadian economy that need to be urgently dealt with, and high population growth is a major contributing factor to both.
Close to 100,000 British Columbia students were absent from public schools on the day of a nationwide parental rights protest last year.
Plus, “Misinformation and disinformation” are the number one threat facing the world in the short-term, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 global risk index.
And former and current Jewish students have joined a class action lawsuit alleging that six Canadian universities fomented a climate of antisemitism on campus.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Isaac Lamoureux!
Doctors are sounding the alarm about a crisis of overflowing emergency rooms.
The Canadian Medical Association said in a statement Thursday that overcrowding of hospitals is so bad that patients aren’t being seen in a timely manner.
“Many emergency rooms across the country are overflowing and patients across Canada are waiting far too long to receive necessary care,” said Canadian Medical Association president Kathleen Ross. “The scene is not new but unless we make major systemic changes, it will continue to repeat itself. Despite the tireless efforts of physicians, nurses and other health providers, testimonies from around the country illustrate that patients in some jurisdictions are waiting as long as 20 hours or longer to receive care.”
Overflowing emergency rooms are not a new problem. The Quebec government issued a public notice last week advising residents to avoid ERs at all costs unless absolutely necessary, as several of its hospitals had reached over 200% of capacity.
“Staff shortages and hospital overcrowding combined with poor access to high-quality team-based primary care are leaving hospital emergency departments woefully under-resourced for the avalanche of patients with influenza, COVID-19 or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) at this time of year,” said Ross.
The Canadian Medical Association is calling for team-based primary care as a potential solution to the issue and have asked for parliamentarians to address the possibility.
Team-based primary care would allow healthcare professionals to work in tandem as an interdisciplinary team, so that they could focus on their specialties and be able to refer patients to one another based on each patient’s medical needs.
“The Canadian Medical Association believes it is well past time to transform and rebuild the health care system, including investing upstream in team-based primary care,” read the statement from the organization.
Patients who receive team-based primary care have lower rates of ER visits than those who receive non-team-based care, according to a 2022 study from the University of Manitoba.
Team-based care currently exists in parts of Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec but has yet to be implemented on a grand scale.
The Canadian Medical Association called for team-based care last summer, recommending that governments establish care teams to serve 50% of Canadians within the next five years, and 80% within ten years.
”No one wants to spend 20 hours waiting for the care they or their loved ones need. Solutions to ease the pain points for patients and providers are crucial. For instance, ERs shouldn’t be substitutes for walk-in clinics or primary care. We are facing a primary care crisis in this country, and we urgently need to find solutions,” reads the statement.
“The Canadian Medical Association believes it is well past time to transform and rebuild the health care system, including investing upstream in team-based primary care.”
The Liberal government is politicizing the Canadian Armed Forces and pushing an agenda to embed critical race theory onto servicemembers, a group of veterans warned in a recent episode of the Andrew Lawton Show.
Veterans 4 Freedom president Drew MacGillivray and member Tom Marazzo reacted to an exclusive report by True North revealing that a vast majority of the latest issue of the Canadian Military Journal was devoted to disparaging “whiteness” and claiming that the Canadian Armed Forces was founded on racism.
Both Marazzo and MacGillivray have a history of service in the military, holding the ranks of captain and lieutenant (Navy), respectively.
“I find it completely offensive, to be perfectly honest,” said Marazzo.
“Much of the discourse that is currently prevalent appears detached from the true essence of military service, emphasizing political agendas rather than the defence of Canada, ultimately attempting to sway certain segments of the population towards a Liberal vote.”
MacGillivray said that he looks back on his 12-year career in the military questioning why he served an institution which seems to have betrayed its principles.
“I look back on my 12-year career, and I say, you know, why did I do this? This isn’t the institution or the country I signed up to defend and ultimately was willing to risk my life for. It’s completely disrespectful to the troops and soldiers still in there,” said MacGillivray.
Veterans 4 Freedom was created in response to government Covid-19 mandates imposed on the Canadian Armed Forces. Marazzo was also a prominent figure in the Freedom Convoy movement.
The latest summer edition of the journal featured articles with titles such as “‘I’m Not Your Typical White Soldier’: Interrogating Whiteness and Power in the Canadian Armed Forces” and “Supporting Military Families: Challenging or Reinforcing Patriarchy?”
Most of the issue’s authors were academics who argued that the solution to perceived problems of racism and “whiteness” in the military was a program of re-education based on woke principles and ideas.
MacGillivray said that current trends concerned him, as they seemed to reflect a similar culture of party control of the military evident in communist China.
“In the military, the focus is not on the colour of one’s skin or gender but on intellectual capabilities. The concern arises with the current developments in academia, fueled by government funding. There’s a disconcerting parallel emerging between the situation in China, where the military is subservient to the CCP rather than the state, and the trend in Canada,” said MacGillivray.
According to Mazarro, the chief concern is that the military is losing its respectability around the world, increasingly seen as unserious by allies and enemies alike.
“The focus then was strictly on the business of war, not the current trend of social engineering. While these changes have been slowly infiltrating over the years, the impact has been particularly pronounced under the current Liberal government. They’ve essentially transformed the Canadian Armed Forces into something less serious,” said Mazarro.
The Israeli Olympic Committee is accusing the International Ice Hockey Federation of antisemitism after the hockey organization barred Israeli national teams from competing, citing security concerns.
In a Wednesday statement, the IIHF said it “has decided to restrict the Israeli National Team from participating in IIHF Championships until the safety and well-being of all participants (including Israeli participants) can be assured.”
The organization’s governing council said the decision was reached after careful consideration, including a risk assessment, discussions with participating countries, and discussions with the hosts.
Following Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, the IIHF used similar language around safety and security when it decided to suspend Russia and Belarus from its competitions last year.
In response, the Israeli Ice Hockey Association, backed by the Israeli Olympic Committee, have launched a legal challenge against the ban.
Shortly after the IIHF’s announcement, the Israeli Ice Hockey Association, with the support of the Israeli Olympic Committee, announced that they were filing a claim with the Court of Arbitration for Sport over Israel’s barring.
According to internal sources in communication with the Israeli Olympic Committee, the IIHF’s decision, influenced by Chairman Luc Tardif, was reportedly swayed by external political factors, including pressure from Russian entities.
In a Hebrew post to X, Knesset Sports Committee chair Simon Davidson said that the decision was outrageous and should not be allowed. He explained his intention to fight it with all means possible.
“It is the exclusion of a country as a whole, which, according to the International Olympic Committee, is illegal,” he said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
“Imagine that there’s a Soccer World Championship, and FIFA announces that Israel cannot participate. This is a smaller sector, so it’s not echoing as loudly, but it’s an Olympic sport nevertheless.”
Yael Arad, chairwoman of the Israeli Olympic Committee, condemned the decision as precedent-setting and a “dangerous decision that stinks of antisemitism under the guise of safety for the athletes.”
“In personal conversations I had with the chairman of the International Federation, I witnessed a disappointing lack of transparency and opacity driven by a hidden agenda that has no place in world sports.”
