"The rising volume of asylum claims, along with the longer duration of eligibility [under the Interim Federal Health Program] caused by extended determination times, has been an important growth driver in recent years [of steeply rising health costs in Canada]."

"[Resettled Gazans received $41 million in various benefits; the Interim Housing Assistance Program was given $400 million and $66.4 million was described as funding "temporary accommodations to asylum seekers." 

Parliamentary Budget Office report

 

"Rejected asylum claimants are now receiving better health care than many Canadians who have paid into a system their entire life."

"At a time when six million Canadians cannot find a family doctor and are waiting for care, it's unacceptable that bogus asylum seekers are receiving better health benefits than Canadians." 

MPs Dan Mazier/Michelle Rempel Garner, shadow ministers Health and Immigration 

A new report shows Ontario hospitals spent $9.2 billion on private, for-profit nursing and staffing agencies over the past decade, a figure that doubled between 2013 and 2023. Critics of private agencies urge Ontario to phase them out, calling them a ‘band-aid on a gaping wound.’ CBC

 

A new analysis by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that it will cost Canadians a record $1-billion this year to pay for health-care premiums of refugee claimants, some of whom continue receiving free health care even while their claims have been rejected. Costs are ballooning as a result of an unprecedented number of foreign nations in Canada, representing a five-fold increase from  six years earlier when the cost totalled $211 million annually.

 

 

Looking ahead to the future, the cost projection reaching into 2030 sees $6.2 billion being laid out for refugee claimants' health care. Even asylum claimants whose refugee applications have been rejected can access the benefits of the Federal Health Program. The level of care being offered to refugee claimants surpasses that given to the average Canadian citizen where, in addition to hospital and surgical care, the IFHP covers dental care, vision care, pharmacare and other services not covered by general public health plans. 

 

This, at a time when hospitals are overwhelmed by a surge in demand on their services, when wait times for surgery lead to early deaths, amidst a shortage of doctors and nurses and hospital beds. A time when six million Canadians cannot access the services of a family practitioner.

 

The surge in both immigration/refugee/migrant levels into the country amounting to about an increase of a  third of the population falls between the period of 2015 to the present, a decade altogether where two Liberal-led governments in Canada have fuelled both a stupendous increase in the population and a concomitant increase in the cost of  welfare and all manner of social services, extending even to a higher cost of living for all Canadians where housing prices have soared.

 

Figures released by the Immigration and Refugee Board indicate 299,614 foreign nationals in Canada await their refugee claim results, representing over a 1,800 percent increase from the number -- 16,048 --  in Canada when the Trudeau Liberals took office in 2015. Tens of thousands of illegal border crossers entered the U.S. on tourist visas planning to enter Canada illegally, where they then made refugee claims. Similarly foreign nationals who entered Canada on  student visas, claimed refugee status once their visas expired and they were expected to return to their home countries.

 

A refugee claimant arrives at the Roxham Road border crossing at the US-Canada border in Champlain, New York. Photo by Lars Hagberg/AFP Getty Images

 

Claimants for asylum may be given immediate access to government benefits, leading to uncontrolled surges in federal spending, and an unsustainable burden to Canadian communities trying to cope with such sudden influxes of foreigners taking advantage of Canada's reputation as an easy country to access entry to, with copious social benefits to be had. The Interim Housing Assistance Program picks up shelter costs and food for asylum claimants. It was revealed that some asylum claimants receive room and board benefits of over $200 daily.

 

Those asylum claimants who are accepted receive food and shelter to the equivalent of $84 daily for meals and $140 a day for hotel rooms. Gazans entering Canada were given exceptional additional federal payouts of some $3,000 each on entering Canada. Some 130,000 people accessed some form of benefit from the Interim Federal Health Program in 2016, a situation that has more than quadrupled to 611,000 according to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

 

Even an ineligible asylum claimant can reach for at least two years of Canadian health benefits prior to rejection of their claim, given the current 24-month backlog at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Benefits can still be accessed until the claimant, if rejected, manages to exhaust all avenues of appeal, which can take years.  

 

An RCMP officer looks on as asylum seekers cross the Canada-U.S. border at Roxham Road . (Charles Contant/CBC)

 

Canada's Surging Illegal Migrant Population

"I'm not going to sugar-coat it, we believe there's 500,000 illegal immigrants currently spread across Canada and these individuals are benefiting from taxpayer-funded services."

"The federal government is choosing to disregard this number and that's a real problem."

"These illegal migrants must be taken into account, as every province is feeling the pressure of Ottawa's mismanagement of the immigration system."

Alberta Immigration Minister Joseph Schow 

Illegal migrants claiming refugee status   True North

 

Illegal immigration in Canada is not taken seriously by the federal government and Alberta's Immigration Minister urges the imperative that Ottawa stop ignoring the problem that has wide repercussions across the country in drawing social support resources from the Canadian taxpaying public to those present in Canada illegally in numbers large enough to have a truly disturbing effect in finite services. From medical care to social housing and the growing  use of food banks, to growing unemployment among young Canadians, the presence of too many new immigrants, refugees and illegal migrants is producing a deleterious economic and human resources impact.

 

Infrastructure and public services, points out MPP Schow, are under great strain across the country. Federal officials, he urges, must account for the estimated number of undocumented migrants in Canada in view of the need to set immigration targets for the coming year. Recently, federal officials themselves acknowledged a need to mitigate problems associated with too many people arriving in too short time-spans, drawing on the country's social systems and creating shortages in housing while over-burdening an already-strained medical/health system. Millions of new arrivals were welcomed in the past several years. 

 

Ottawa projects a 19 percent reduction in temporary arrivals, and eight percent drop in permanent resident admissions in the next three years, through a bolstered immigration level plan. The government has moved to cap non-permanent resident numbers in Canada below five percent of the population. A skeptical Schow feels such efforts are likely to fall short of a sufficient adjustment to make a difference. "If they're leaving out this huge chunk of data (the issue of illegal immigration) how can they set real targets?"

A screengrab from an RCMP video shows people crossing the Manitoba border into Canada. Photograph: Jason Franson/AP

 

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada disclosed in a briefing note a year ago that the number of undocumented migrants could be as high as 500,000, while at the same time admitting that the exact number is unknown. About 114,373 irregular border crossers petitioned to remain in Canada, according o the federal government, between February 2017 and June of 2025. Lack of reliably hard figures on illegal immigration all the more reason for Ottawa to diminish its intake of migrants.

 

58 percent of Canadians, according to a recent poll, feel that mass deportations have become a necessity to curb the number of people now living illegally in Canada. The province of Alberta has led the country in inter-provincial migration and overall population growth in recent years, Immigration Minister Schow pointed out, with the province's population having swelled by some 200,000 last year and continuing on through 2025. A situation that has gone well beyond hampering individuals in Alberta achieving upward mobility. 

 

"The fact that [the federal government is unaware of the precise number of undocumented migrants] they don't have an exact, or close to exact, number just shows again how badly they've lost control of the system." 

"People around the world rightly see us as a beacon of hope and opportunity ... and for that exact reason, we have to be mindful that we're growing our population in a way that's strategic." 

Alberta Minister of Immigration and Jobs, Economy and Trade   

 

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)

Migrant Crisis in New York City

"If you're going to leave your country, go somewhere else."  

"We have to let the word out that when you come to New York, you’re not going to have more hotel rooms.We don’t have capacity, so we have to also message properly." 

"The smarter thing is to apply for asylum before you leave your country."

"[It was never meant to ensure] an unlimited, universal right or obligation on the city to have to house literally the entire world."

"[Places like New York] really are at capacity. We have large hearts. You want to be generous and supportive to people who are experiencing humanitarian crisis, but there is a limit to what we can do."

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul

Anti-migrant protesters demonstrate outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on Friday. (Barry Williams for NY Daily News via Getty Images)

"This is a crisis of their own making [Democratic lawmakers]."

"It's very similar to cashless bail. When you create a sanctuary city policy that invites migrants to come regardless of their status, you are going to get a lot of people coming, and now they can't handle the influx."

Republican Representative Mike Lawler

"The No.1 thing I learned as an Army officer: When in charge, take charge."

"We are in a crisis, the president is in charge, and he and his team need to take charge."

Democratic Representative Pat Ryan

"Everybody understands this is a potential liability [the migrant crisis in view of an upcoming general election]."

"I know there's been a lot of finger-pointing and kerfuffles, but there's also pretty good evidence the mayor and the governor are trying to figure out how to solve this."

Democratic consultant Tim Persico

Migrants are pictured outside the Roosevelt Hotel, currently being used as a shelter, in New York City. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

In fact, New York felt so desperately overwhelmed by the ongoing flood of seemingly unstoppable arrivals who accepted the challenge from the Texas border with Mexico to travel on to sympathetic Democratic cities like New York, with its sympathetic credentials, they even bused them there. And New York in turn convinced new arrivals they'd be better off continuing their journey and to cross the New York border in Canada at Quebec, to which purpose they too bused unwanted migrants to the border where taxis were only too eager to bring them to Roxham Road where they could foot it into Quebec.

There, thousands of migrants, making their way to illegal crossings, ignoring the legitimate crossings where they would be questioned and when declaring themselves 'refugees' would be returned to the American side, reflective of a 'safe first border' agreement between the two countries where migrants were to be returned to their first country of entrance. In bypassing the legitimate border crossing and declaring themselves refugees, the RCMP escort them to an official Border crossing where they fill out applications for refugee status.

And then their accommodation and humanitarian social services become the headache of whichever Canadian community they wander into, where their numbers have created problems so great that many are forced to sleep out on the streets of cities like Toronto, unable to support and house any more migrants, and where their presence and humanitarian needs compete with Canadian families in dire need of supported housing and other public social measures.

 

The camping migrants didn’t want to move out of fear they would lose their spot in line CNN

 

During the current election season in the United States drawing ever closer, migrants and the need to give them haven, despite efforts to restrain them from crossing the border from Mexico, has become a conflicting political issue moving to impact the 2024 U.S. election. With Republicans increasingly critical of the Democrats' inability to stem the flow of migrants, hoping to use the issue and the rising tide of voters' anger at the disruptions to give them the political leverage they need to secure the House majority.

New York has seen a rapid arrival of over 100,000 asylum-seekers, wreaking havoc on government budgets, and turning Democrats against one another in their hapless efforts to stem the tide. Republicans whose election status seemed less than assured in a half-dozen districts now view the volatile issue as a lifeline. Where they point the electorate toward the picture of a Democratic party incapable of governing adequately and coping with the dilemma.

For their part, Democratic candidates have clashed with their Republican counterparts, but also with their own party leaders, President Biden included. The lone front-line Democrat who survived the Republican suburban victories in the 2022 midterm elections has made peace with two Republicans, the trio demanding that Biden declare a state of emergency. Paul Ryan broke with his party in support of a bill to discourage schools from sheltering migrants.

Another Democrat trying to take a neighbouring district spoke of the "offensive" aloofness of the Democratic president, on the pressing refugee issue. He was joined by a former Democratic congressman mounting a comeback attempt of his own, warning of "consequences at the polls" should his party not step up to a solution. The issue that drives them, where almost three thousand migrants arrive in a week has shifted battle lines.

 

Migrants accept apples as they camp outside the Roosevelt Hotel.  CNN

 

The irony is that New York while a city acknowledged as a bastion for immigrants has seen a challenge to its political system. It is currently housing approximately 59,000 asylum-seekers nightly, reflecting a unique right-to-shelter mandate dating back decades, while preparing to enroll some 19,000 migrant children this fall in public schools. Temporary shelters in hotels, parks, on public land have prompted harsh protests.

While New York City Mayor Eric Adams repeatedly warns of budget cuts caused by the cost of caring for the newcomers which keep rising into billions of dollars of taxpayer money that could otherwise be used to help New Yorkers themselves, as the Republicans helpfully point out. A recent poll found 82 percent of registered voters consider the migrant influx a "serious problem", with a majority stating that their state had "already done enough" for asylum seekers and should focus on curtailing their arrivals.

"Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to — I don’t see an ending to this."

"This issue will destroy New York City."

Mayor Eric Adams

Migrants line up along 45th Street.  CNN