Ukraine Lifting Itself Out of Imposed Constraints

"The main point ... is forcing Russia to end the war. We really want justice for Ukraine."

"And if this plan is accepted -- and second, if it is executed -- we believe that the main goal will be reached."

"Defenders of life should have no restrictions on weapons, as long as Russia uses all kinds of its own weapons."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

"Ukraine is preparing its response [to the latest overnight attack by Russia]. Weapons of its own production."

"This once again proves that for victory, we need long-range capabilities and the lifting of restrictions on strikes on the enemy's military facilities."

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov

A Ukrainian solder stands near a monument to Vladimir Lenin in Sudzha, Russia. August 16, 2024.  Kirill Chubotin / SIPA / Scanpix / LETA

Heavily beleaguered by a neighbour, just as Israel has been by Palestinian terrorists -- leading the way for the Jewish state to realize that it can depend only so much on sympathizing nations to give it aid and encouragement, and must be prepared to stand alone for its ultimate defence, which led to Israel becoming a weapons-designer and -manufacturer second to none, not only for its own security, but aiding other countries to protect themselves from regional threats -- Ukraine has become professionally adept at producing their own weaponry to achieve their aim of national defence.

Ukrainian start-up small-weapons manufacturers have excelled in producing drones, helping their military to meet the challenge of a relentless sweep of Ukrainian territory by the Russian military. Western nations, part of NATO, have been supplying Ukraine with certain levels of weaponry but have been loathe to upgrade those supplies to more sophisticated, longer-range weapons for fear of doing so might lead to a wider war that would drag eastern European NATO members in conflict with Russia.These constraints have led to Russian advances and Ukraine's search for an antidote.

Now an announcement out of Ukraine introducing the world to its very own new long-range weapon meant to help the Ukrainian military to strike deep within Russian territory; no need to request permission from its allies. The new weapon represents a combination of missile and drone that would provide "answers" to a wave of Russian bombings according to the Ukrainian defence minister.

The creation of the "Palianytsia" is the representative result of urgent necessity struggling to respond to Russian domination of the skies since 2022. A wave of Russian missiles and drones on Monday targeted Ukraine's electrical infrastructure. President Zelenskyy confirmed the existence of the Palianytsia as "a new class" of military weaponization.

 

War-displaced people receive humanitarian aid at a Russian Red Cross distribution point in Kursk on Aug. 15, following Ukraine's offensive into Russia's western Kursk region. (AFP via Getty Images)

 

Ukraine's 33rd anniversary of independence on Saturday recognized its delinking from the former Soviet Union and was also the event that introduced the first use of the new weapon which targeted a Russian military installation in the Russian-occupied territory. The new weapon's range, according to a military video, appears to be up to 700 kilometres, similar to the US-supplied ATACMS. Russia's Savasleyka air base lies within that range.

President Zelenskyy spoke of his military's incursion into Russia taking close to 600 Russian soldiers captive, part of a larger plan to end the war in Ukraine. Ukraine's surprise and lightning-fast incursion into Russian territory has thus far seen the capture of 100 settlements, as well as the 594 Russian soldiers. About 500 square miles in Kursk is in Ukraine's hands and the advance is continuing "dealing palpable damage", said Ukrainian commander in chief Oleksandr Syrsky.

Eastern Ukraine remains the area of the most intense fighting, however, where Russia's steady advance to grasp the entire Donbas industrial region continues to move forward. The logistical hub of Pokrovsk, at the junction of two major roads is key to the battle, for which the Ukrainian military is "doing everything possible to stabilize the situation in this direction", noted Commander Syrsky.

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting by video link on situation in Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions on Aug. 22. (via Reuters)

Taking Pride on an Anti-Israel Journey of Rejection

"The focus today is to show our love, to show our solidarity and our support to a community that needs it. The message here is that everybody is welcome, everybody is included and there's so much that we can learn from each other."

"For the youth to see so many groups, so may organizations and so many people being here to support this community, it gives that sense of validation that is so important -- to make people feel they are welcome and validated."

"This community is all about love, solidarity and support."

Mr. Capital Pride 2024

 

"All of the organizations and institutions that have pulled out have done so without consultation with their workers."

"This was top bosses and employers or boards of directors making decisions without consulting the people who work there or the people they actually serve." 

Emily Quaile, Community Solidarity Ottawa

Capital Pride Parade in Ottawa, on Sunday, August 25, 2024. (Chris Tanouye/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Inclusion, love, solidarity and support? Not quite. As it happens Capital Pride organizers conferred among themselves -- without taking a poll among their members, in fact -- to reach a consensus of opinion that inclusion would mean the Palestinian community of the Ottawa region, not merely those who qualify as 2SLGBTQIA+, but they and their sympathizers in general. The very groups that have celebrated the October 7 Palestinian terrorism butchery in Israel where 1,200 mostly civilians were left dead, girls and women raped and tortured, entire families put to the torch, children, women and the elderly taken hostage into Gaza.

 

Gaza, the stronghold of the Hamas terrorist organization; considered by the government of Canada to be terrorists just as they are in most Western countries, for their unabashed and straightforward dedication to the destruction of the world's only Jewish state, in an ancestral geography, an Israel reborn for the singular purpose of offering safe haven to Jews in a hostile world that continually reverts to a state of viral antisemitism, just as we now see in Europe, North America and elsewhere, boosted by the slanderous propaganda of the Palestinian agenda to discredit and demonize Israel and Jews everywhere. 

Palestinian organizations and sympathetic groups have organized raucous, threatening rallies in cities across Europe and North America from October 8 onward, funded by foreign organizations and Islamist countries like Qatar and Iran who have also supplied organizers for these pro-Hamas protests as well as the encampments on university grounds demanding that university administrators and corporations and business leaders as well as Western governments condemn Israel for its response to the mass rape, mutilations and bloodletting by Hamas when the Israeli military embarked on a campaign to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the PLFP and Hezbollah.

The declaration of 'principles' and alliances expressed by Capital Pride prior to embarkation on its annual Capital Pride parade effectively raised the level of antisemitism in and among the LGBTQ community in favour of supporting a death cult that aims its poisoned arrows at Jews everywhere, extending its campaign in less visible but rising campaign against Western 'imperialism' inimical to Palestinian aspirations and extended Islamist jihadist goals.

"Part of the growing Islamophobic sentiment we are witnessing is fuelled by the pink-washing of the war in Gaza and racist notions that all Palestinians are homophobic and transphobic. By portraying itself as a protector of the rights of queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel seeks to draw attention away from its abhorrent human rights abuses against Palestinians. We refuse to be complicit in this violence. Indeed, to withhold our solidarity from Palestinians in the name of upholding 2SLGBTQIA+ rights betrays the promise of liberation that guides our work. We join our voice to the calls for greater protection of civilians and reject any attempts to use a devastating conflict as a pretext to advance hate."

"To breathe life into our sincere hope for an end to this war and justice for all its victims, we commit to the following actions:

• Integrating resources such as the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s boycott list in our existing review process of current and future sponsorship agreements;
• Hosting Zaffa: A Queer Arab Showcase, a Signature Event as part of the 2024 Capital Pride Festival that features discussions about ongoing issues facing LGBTQIA+ Arabs locally and abroad;
• Recognizing the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in opening remarks at 2024 Capital Pride Festival Signature Events; and
• Working with all our partners, both public and private, to push for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages, increased access to humanitarian aid, and more accessible pathways for refugees."

Capital Pride Statement in Solidarity with Palestine, August 8, 2024, Ottawa, Ontario

Replete with the slanderous calculated falsehoods of the Palestinian propaganda, the Capital Pride Statement is a document of ignorance and antisemitism combined in a lethal cauldron of pure hate. Israel is a defender of alternate gender human rights which are legally protected in Israel; its Pride Parades are open and respectful. Whereas on the other hand, in the Palestinian Territories gays risk their very lives if their sexual orientation becomes public knowledge. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as in Iran, death stalks members of the Palestinian  LGBTQ community.

There is no 'genocide' against Palestinians at the hands of Israel; there IS a military campaign to expunge the presence of lethal Islamist Palestinian attackers of Jews/Israelis from the territories. The founding charters of Fatah, Hamas and other such internationally recognized terrorist groups identify their purpose as the elimination of Israel from its ancestral soil. Deadly attacks against Jews have been the Palestinian formula since 1948 with the declaration of the State of Israel. Existential threats against Israel and world Jewry emanate from the Palestinians whom LGBTQ groups lionize.

In Ottawa, reaction to the Capital Pride position statement was clear and it was a denunciation of all that it alleges in demonizing Israel while supporting Palestinian terrorism against Israel. The city's mayor began the response of rejecting the Pride position when the City of Ottawa's Mayor Mark Sutcliffe let it be known with regret, that he would not be attending the parade. Followed by the Liberal Party of Canada, the Ontario Liberal Party the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, The Ottawa Hospital, the Montfort Hospital, Ottawa Tourism, the Bank of Canada, Giant Tiger, Loblaw, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the University of Ottawa, the U.S. Embassy, the Public Service Pride Network, Conseil des ecoles publiques de l'Est de l'Ontario, Conseil des ecoles catholiques du centre-Est, and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.

They did so in sympathy and agreement with the Ottawa Jewish community which felt excluded and isolated as a result of the Capital Pride statement and position taken on the Israel-Gaza conflict, repeating the slanderous accusation of Israel committing 'genocide' against the Palestinians. Ottawa's situation is not a unique one, as it happens, since Pride parades in Montreal, Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver have been disrupted by pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Hate-mongering against Jews resulted in over 100 synagogues, hospitals and Jewish community centres receiving bomb threats.

As for the Pride commitment to integrate the BDS boycott list into its review of sponsorship agreements, that remains to be seen. The TD Bank is Pride's major 'presenting' sponsor and right behind it as a sponsor is Loblaws, and the LCBO followed by the province of Ontario, all of which are listed on the BDS Coalition's "Boycott List of Shame". Shame, in very point of fact, has settled itself squarely on the Pride community for its unabashed antisemitism cloaked unbecomingly under the banner of anti-Zionism, anti-Israel provocations.

Members of the OCDSB carry a giant pride flag during the Capital Pride Parade in Ottawa, on Sunday, August 25, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Tanouye

Return to Israel -- Alive or Dead

"The State of Israel will continue to make every effort to return all of our hostages -- both alive and dead."

"[While acknowledging the praiseworthy recovery effort that brought six Hamas-captured Israels, killed while in captivity back to Israel] our hearts ache for the terrible loss."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The bodies of hostages Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, and Haim Perry were recovered by the IDF from the Khan Yunis area in the Gaza Strip.

(photo credit: Hostages and Missing Families Forum)

"[The Israeli army hit] a number of Hezbollah weapons storage facilities [in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley]."

"Following the strikes, secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of large amounts of weapons in the facilities struck."

Israel Defense Forces

An Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah weapons depot in northeastern Lebanon's Baalbek District, August 19, 2024. (Screenshot X)

 

There is the workmanship-like detachment of conflict brought on by the October 7 invasion of southern Israel that saw 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians slaughtered, women and girls gang-raped and tortured, children and the elderly, women and entire families taken hostage by Hamas terrorists that sees the Israel Defense Forces concentrate on their task of eliminating the terrorist hordes in the Gaza Strip, with the knowledge that in destroying terrorist infrastructure, they may inadvertently lead to the death of the hostages.

Hamas taunts Israel, claiming that Israeli hostages, confined in dank, dark corridors of underground tunnels have been killed by Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas operatives known to be ensconced in the tunnels, along with weaponry stockpiled there. In the instance of the latest recovery of the bodies of six kidnapped Israeli men, five of whom were elderly, Hamas again asserted that they died in air attacks on the tunnels they were kept prisoner within. Despite that autopsies carried out in Israel revealed the cause having been shot to death while in captivity.

That knowledge doesn't make it any more gentle to ease a sense of helplessness in attempts to recover the remaining hostages still hoped to be alive; less than one hundred by now, but it does validate the belief that the hostages have been the victims of torture of every conceivable dimension at the dedicated hands of Palestinian terrorists. An overnight operation carried out in southern Gaza brought the six home. They had been captured alive, and over the months of their confinement had suffered torment.

Six fewer Israels, dead or alive, for Hamas to plan using as pawns for the exchange of Palestinian prisoners intended to accompany an agreement for a ceasefire that would demand an Israeli withdrawal. There is no easing of the pressure felt by the Israeli government and its population to do everything humanly possible to restore the hostages remaining alive to their families. There are still children unaccounted for, there are the girls and women who are repeatedly raped, and there are concerns over the women who may be pregnant or who have delivered a child.

The remains of Chaim Perry, 80; Yoram Metzger, 80; Avraham Munder, 79; Alexander Dancyg, 76; and Yagev Buchshtav, 35, have been brought home to burial and profound sorrow. Abducted from kibbutzim, farming communities which empathized with Palestinians across the border in Gaza, and who offered employment to Gazans as agricultural workers earning salaries far in excess of anything they might find in Gaza. 

 

That among those who had entered southern Israel on October 7, were some of these Palestinian workers who had complete familiarity with the lay-out of the farming villages, their families with whom they shared meals in communal dining rooms, and which buildings housed the kibbutz security personnel, valuable information shared with the terrorists underscored the capacity for betrayal of the trust of ordinary Israelis who paid dearly for that all-too-human judgemental failure. 

 

In the instance of 79-year-old Avraham Munder where some 80 residents of his kibbutz were taken hostage, the word was that he had died "after enduring months of physical and mental torture". The rescue of those tormented and murdered Israelis came about as the result of the tunnel network where they were secreted being raided by the IDF. Of the 110 hostages who still remain, captured in the October 7 invasion, authorities in Israel estimate that some third of the total are now dead.

While mourning their loss and imprisonment under dire existential conditions, Israel through its defense forces carries on its determination to wipe out Hamas infrastructure and its operatives, as well as its entire leadership. That has been complicated by the orders given by the Islamic Republic of Iran to its proxy militias in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has entered the conflict, opening a second front in essence, along with militias in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis in Yemen threatening and opposing Israel's response in Gaza.

(Photo credit: Israeli army)

Dismal Canadian Failure to Put Out the Fire of Antisemitism

"[The threats were made to] a number of institutions, including synagogues and hospitals, across Canada."

"Law enforcement is also engaging with faith-based leaders to ensure they have the information and support they need."

RCMP

 

"It is absolutely chilling to hear of more than 100 Jewish institutions across the country being threatened earlier this morning."

"For many, many months, Canada's Jewish community has raised alarm bells about the escalation of rampant Jew-hatred, as incitement and hateful rhetoric have become normalized online, on our city streets and on our university and college campuses."

"Repeated calls for violence against Jews and Jewish institutions are a stark reminder that extremism and radicalization are thriving in Canada and must be confronted before it's too late."

"The time of our leaders to step up is now." 

Michael Levitt, CEO, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

"[There was no] imminent threat [the emails appear to be] nuisance emails designed to disrupt lives."

"Jewish Canadians will not be intimidated -- we will continue to take part in Canadian society and Jewish life."

"We will stay vigilant, but we will never be intimidated."

Eta Yudin, Quebec vice-president, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

A police vehicle sits outside Yeshiva Gedola of Montreal, a Jewish school that was hit by gunshots for the second time in three days, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. Photo by Christinne Muschi /The Canadian Press

Jews in Canada are indeed on alert; more than that, they are profoundly perplexed and disappointed that their prime minister, their provincial premiers, non-Jewish faith leaders, corporate heads, government departments, human rights groups and civil society at all levels, from school boards to municipal offices, have not made an effort to stand behind their Jewish neighbours. Canadian unions in particular, academia as well, have added fuel to the fire of condemning Israel for protecting its people in the wake of the October 7 Palestinian terrorist attack on Jewish civilians in southern Israel, leaving 1,200 dead and hundreds taken hostage by Hamas.

The constant 'pro-Palestinian' and growing pro-Hamas demonstrations taking place across Canada, at university campuses, in front of Jewish hospitals, Israeli legations, synagogues, Jewish neighbourhoods, shopping centers and municipal offices exude hatred for Jews in Canada, issuing threats well known to Jews but evidently beyond the threat-literacy of the federal government. The display of Hamas flags alongside those of the Palestinian Authority, while chants of 'from the river to the sea', the 'triangle-cum-swastika signalling death to Jews, 'final solution', and 'go back to Poland' blatant in their rancid hate.

In the absence of any vestige of a crackdown on the illegal marches, the harassment of Jews, the implied threats, public expressions of antisemitism have become increasingly and startlingly terrifying for Jews in a country they were born in and to which they have been proud of representing. The great yawning gap of disinterest by authorities in meeting this chaotic disorder threatening a minority population has served to satisfy the organizers of the rallies that they can continue to threaten and intimidate, slander and alarm, with no enforcement of the law forthcoming, enabling the organizers to become more blatantly antisemitic with each passing week.

 

Toronto firefighters are shown here at the scene of a fire at North York business. (CBC)

In the matter of a series of emails reaching synagogues, Jewish groups and medical personnel who are Jewish and considered fair game for Jew-haters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police assured the Jewish public that they are collaborating with local law enforcement to make certain that Jewish establishments wherever they are located remain safe. The source of the threats is being investigated by the Federal Policing National Security Program which, if it did its analyzing well, would conclude that foreign financial support has been key in the organization of these hate rallies.

Threats of death and physical violence were included in the emails, which indicated the goal of the perpetrator was to cause 'terror'. Really? after months of promulgating hate fests after hate fests,that is the investigative conclusion? Our policing and intelligence agencies are really doing us proud! Since the October 7 Hamas attack last fall on Israeli civilians the lunacy of antisemitism has gone unchecked and has ballooned, threatening the well-being of the entire community. In Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, police have been responding to threats. Toronto police revealed they evacuated a building in the West End of the city to "investigate for a bomb threat".

"We are continuing to address the possible impact in Toronto", assured the Toronto Police Service media relations officer. One would hope so, considering the multiple incidents of violence targeting Jewish institutions in the last year. Where fire-bombings of synagogues and community centres in Montreal and Vancouver have taken place, even as the same in Toronto have occurred with businesses have been vandalized, and shots fired at Jewish schools, as ongoing investigations so far yield few clues as to those responsible, though Jews know very well who they are collectively.

The Adath Israel Poale Zedek Anshei Ozeroff Synagogue in Hampstead, Que., was one of more than 100 Jewish institutions across Canada to receive a bomb threat by email Wednesday morning. (François Sauvé/CBC)

PUTIN: UKRAINE TRYING TO 'DESTABILIZE' RUSSIA

"As a result of targeted shelling with the use of rocket and artillery weapons against residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in the Karyzh village ... a third bridge over the Seym River was damaged."

Russia's Investigative Committee

 

"We have now achieved an extremely important ideological shift: the naive and illusory concept of so-called ‘red lines’ regarding Russia that dominated the assessments of the war by some of our partners has crumbled these days somewhere near Sudzha [seized Russian town, by Ukraine forces]."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a destroyed bridge across the Seim River at the Russian town of Glushkovo, in the Kursk region, on Saturday. (Planet Labs PBC/The Associated Press)

Russian President Vladmir Putin, assessing the Kremlin's war against Ukraine, condemns Kyiv for its 'terrorism' and its hostile intentions toward Russia leading to 'destabilization'. 

 

Russia's commitment to its 'special military operation' that really began in 2014 when it 'destabilized' its neighbour by annexing Crimea and most of the Donbas, since then destroying Ukraine's energy systems, shelling civilian infrastructure, claiming them to be military bases when its artillery aims for hospitals, schools, shopping centres, and in its unabated attacks that are truly war crimes killing thousands while forcing millions of Ukrainians to become refugees, is affronted when Ukraine responds.

Ukrainian forces have opened a new front in Russia's Kursk region, and have now succeeded in destroying three of the bridges crossing the Seym River in Western Russia. Kyiv's Kursk invasion has raised the morale of the population in Ukraine, sick of this war against their nation, raging over Russia's appropriation of Ukrainian geography. 

 

While Ukraine celebrates its incursion into Russian territory, eastern Ukraine is experiencing the real potential to lose the large and important city of Pokrovsk.

If the Kursk incursion was a well-planned and -executed scheme to provoke the Kremlin to ease  up around Pokrovsk and dispatch Russian troops to the Kursk area for a defensive action, that result appears not to have occurred. Not yet. 

 

Russian tacticians may yet rethink their refusal to detract from their push toward Pokrovsk, to secure the entire Donbas region. However, given the reality of those damaged/destroyed bridges having the potential to trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance and the Ukrainian border, a mind-changing response may yet occur.

 

The situation does appear to be impeding Russia's response to the incursion of Kursk, launched on August 6. Two videos of bridges over the Seym being hit were posted by Ukraine's Air Force commander over the weekend. While Planet Labs PBC published satellite photos of the bridges, The Associated Press confirmed the destruction of a bridge in the town of Glushkovo.

As well, it was confirmed on Monday by a Russian military investigator that Ukraine had "totally destroyed" one bridge and damaged another two in the area, even as the full extent of the damage remained unclear. A later analytic investigation confirmed that the 'damage' is no longer 'unclear', the bridges are destroyed.

Moreover, the Ukrainian army since its incursion into the Kursk region has captured 1,250 square kilometres and along with that, 92 Russian settlements. In a turnabout, resulting in tens of thousands of Russians fleeing the encroaching Ukrainian military, finding themselves experiencing the kind of dislocation that Ukrainians have been subjected to for several years. 

President Zelenskyy spoke of the operation's aim as that of a buffer zone being created, one meant to prevent future attacks on his country from across the border. Russian state news agency TASS, reported 17 people were killed,140 wounded during the incursion by the Ukraine military. That too bespeaks, to a much smaller degree, mirroring in part what Ukrainians have been forced to go through by Russia's territorial invasion.

Over the past 24 hours, according to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, over 500 people had been forced to abandon areas in the Kursk region; a total of 122,00 Russians have been resettled elsewhere since the Ukrainian attack. As well, a gigantic fire burned for a third consecutive day following a Ukrainian drone hit of an oil depot in the town of Proletarsk, burning across an area of a hectare.

Ukrainian push into Russia is 'catastrophic' for Putin's plans  Still from video/CBC

Canada's Immigration Out of Whack With Reality

"Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive spike in temporary immigration, whether it’s temporary foreign workers or whether it’s international students, in particular, that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb."

"Increasingly, more and more businesses are relying on temporary foreign workers in a way that is driving down wages in some sectors."

"We want to get those numbers down."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau  

New Canadians wave the national flag during a citizenship ceremony in Toronto. Steve Russell/Toronto Star/Getty Images

Previous government administrations in Canada spoke of accelerated intake of immigrants totalling around 350,000 yearly. In and of itself an enormous number of newcomers to be welcomed and integrated into Canadian societies. For the most part, Canadians are welcoming people, and themselves mostly of immigrant stock in this relatively young nation, felt compelled to agree that Canada benefited hugely from its reliance on immigration to boost its population numbers along with the economy.

Since the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau from 2015 to the present, immigration numbers, temporary workers, foreign students, refugees and illegal migrants have swelled those yearly numbers beyond a million people annually. The most immediate problems to have surfaced is the strain on social services. Housing is another problem; there simply is not enough. A dearth of houses and priced out of a middle-class market. Canada's ailing universal health care system is stumbling along troubled by surgical wait times, mobbed hospital emergency departments and a lack of family physicians.

And while temporary foreign workers are brought into the country to take jobs that most Canadians themselves won't touch, the unemployment rate among migrants, and those on student visas as well as Canadian youth is much higher than among the general population. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made public admissions of immigration number impacts on the economy, on quality of life, on strained social services, but it has been his policies that have created the situation.

Canada's immigration intake was once a reasonable number, not the impossible influx it has become under Mr. Trudeau. The system of selecting prime immigrants by judging how they would benefit Canada was a point system that took into account education level, age, professional background, for choices that enhanced immigrants' ability to make maximum use of skills and experience and the drive to maximize both to Canada's credit while providing a promising future for successful candidates.

Responsible immigration selection protocols have gone out the window of opportunity by the Liberal government. The points system is now largely ignored. Government speaks of labour shortages and the need to increase immigration intake to fill that gap. Yet bringing in  unskilled workers with no experience and no incentive to upgrade their educational and employment opportunities benefits neither the workers nor the country.

 

Canada's Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced plans to reduce the share of temporary residents living in Canada from 6.2 to five per cent of the population. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Add to that the untamed issue of allowing migrants to flood the social security system, welfare, emergency housing, at a time of growing homelessness in the Canadian population at large, and you have a burgeoning dysfunctional situation difficult to control and to cope with. Those who now enter Canada illegally have as much opportunity to achieve permanent resident status under this government as do temporary foreign workers whose goal is to achieve permanent residency in Canada.

In 2023 according to Statistics Canada a total of 1.3 million new entrants swelled Canadian population numbers.Permanent immigrants represented 500,000; less than half of the total entrants while 800,000 were non-permanent residents comprised of temporary foreign workers and international students. Public opinion polls now reflect the perception that immigration is an issue of high concern for a sizeable number of Canadians, and rising. 

Spurred by falling GDP per capita, declining consumer spending, inadequate housing growth, and dwindling labour markets. Little wonder that a sizeable (44%) proportion of Canadians feel that immigration is responsible now for affecting the country negatively, and a wider percentage now believe immigration volumes should be decreased. 

 

Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a new route for uneducated applicants for permanent residency: "The initiative would support the modernization of the economic immigration system by expanding the selection of permanent residents to candidates with a more diverse range of skills and experience". Unskilled foreign workers will likely be absorbed by the 'initiative', who have overstayed their visas.

At the same time a foreign student 'cap' announced by the Immigration Minister remains so high the maximum number of new students admitted in 2025 will rank 70 percent higher than the entire international student body of 2015. These outcomes are a reflection of nine years of the Trudeau government handling the affairs of the nation.

As part of its plan to shrink the number of temporary residents in Canada by 2027, Ottawa is cutting the number of temporary foreign workers that companies can hire in most sectors from 30 per cent to 20 per cent of their workforces. (Jane Robertson/CBC)