Opposition party leader Pierre Poilievre’s call for the immediate cancellation of the Temporary Foreign Workers program is just as irresponsible as Prime Minister Carney’s defense of the program. Mr. Carney is wrong: the TFW program needs a radical overhaul. Mr. Poilievre is even more out to lunch: canceling the program would force healthcare workers out of Canada and close many Canadian businesses.

Between Mr. Poilievre’s populism and Mr. Carney’s comfortable elitism is a road ahead: a reformed immigration program that recognizes how and why the original program was broken and addresses those problems with clarity.

It was never supposed to be this way. The TFW program, created in 1973, complemented an agricultural worker program from 1966, and targeted highly skilled workers. Many came to Canada year after year, worked hard, and retired home. Some workers were treated badly, some Canadians advocated for TFW rights, some politicians raised concerns over why the Canadian government was bringing in people so businesses could pay them less than Canadians. But the program added other pathways and until recently, around 2020, Canada’s immigration system, including the TFW program, was reasonably well-managed. 

Until this year, only permanent immigration targets had to be tabled in parliament, with international student and TFW programs the only pathways for politicians to interfere in the system. So, just as COVID gripped the country, interfere the Liberals did. The government came down with immigration fever and ripped the guardrails off the TFW and international student programs. Numbers exploded, the program broke, and the country’s immigration consensus cracked.

From 2020 to June 2025, Canada’s total population increased by 9% - that’s 3.5 million in five years. The number of international students increased from 630,000 in 2022 to 881,000 in 2025, with forty percent coming from one country, India, also the only country with more than 10% of the student population. Many were connected to diploma mills and shady education consultants who manipulate students, businesses, and politicians without shame and for profit. I spent years working in countries where these people and companies made coin off the dreams of students both deserving and undeserving – Canada’s fever made us oblivious to the countless but predictable cases of abuse now emerging.

And the TFW program? Most of those students and their spouses had work permits or the right to work off-campus for up to 30 hours a week. Many graduates get to stay on a three-year open permit. While the government has now changed the rules to tighten access to these permits, almost all the 900,000 students currently in Canada are eligible to apply under the old rules. Current and past students make up almost half of all temporary workers in Canada and that proportion will only increase, despite changes made by the Carney government.

This was a government decision, so responsibility is 100% on the Trudeau Liberals, not the young people looking for a better life. Suddenly just about every job is open to temporary workers and Canada’s labour (and especially retail) landscape was changed overnight. The labour shortage was a problem before the pandemic took hold but now, even in the smallest towns, new arrivals were the faces at Tim Hortons, driving transport trucks, and in offices and worksites across the country.

With no apparent plan or public debate, the Liberals laid a high-voltage wire across our politics - then ran a million volts through it. This mutated TFW program was poorly monitored, often appeared to benefit people connected to the Liberals, and its shadow obscured those workers who work in our hospitals, care for our parents, and work in our fields during our brief summers.

So why is this a problem? We had jobs going unfilled, our country was already multicultural, and in many provinces only immigrants can slow the decline of the native-born population who are older and having fewer children than ever before.

First, too many employers are hiring TFWs over Canadian young people: the unemployment rate for returning students is now around 16.9% while the overall unemployment is 7.1%. That is causing growing resentment against, and a rejection of, immigration in general, despite the need for new Canadians. In smaller communities the belated arrival of multiculturalism is now linked to unemployed local young people. Not the best advertisement the promoters of a more diverse Canada could have chosen.

Second, and predictably, many of the young people who have unexpectedly found a way to Canada don’t want to leave. Even though temporary resident numbers declined slightly in 2025 (to 3 million from 3.2 million at the 2024 peak), the number of asylum seekers on work permits continues to increase, with an estimated 313,000 of 470,000 current asylum seekers on work permits. In 2022 the total asylum seeker population was only 167,000. Not surprising, given numerous unethical immigration consultants have been documented advising students to apply. The number of asylum seekers will further increase: clearing the backlog means more resources and Immigration and Refugee Canada, like all departments, have been ordered by Prime Minister Carney to cut their budget. Once most of these claims are eventually rejected there will be deportations, protests against deportations, protests by businesses that they cannot find workers, immigration will be further weaponized by those who want to destabilize Canada on the left and right, and our country will have to decide how to deal with those who chose to break the law and stay illegally, living underground. These consequences are now unavoidable. They are what 2026 is going to bring us. Where is the plan to protect our immigration system and our social cohesion? Mr. Carney? Mr. Poilievre? Hello?

Third, because those on student and TFW visas aren’t supposed to be in Canada for a long time, they did not have to pass the reasonably strict vetting processes immigrants must endure. Even worse, temporary residents are ineligible for most of the settlement services meant to teach immigrants about Canada and help with their integration. So, again no surprise, we are seeing the radicalization that is undermining the democratic world reflected in those here to work and study. Adding a security threat to an immigration crisis in the middle of a tariff war with our neighbour and an emerging global war was an odd policy decision.

Fourth and finally, the Liberals broke the TFW program so spectacularly that pressure to cancel it altogether is growing because its politically popular. Now that very bad idea has been embraced by Pierre Poilievre, who has nothing else if not a nose for fetid populism. Let me be clear: any politician suggesting any change that could see qualified healthcare or care workers deported, or our crops go unharvested during a time of growing global instability, is deeply irresponsible. Reform yes. Destruction no. End of story.

I imagine most members of the Canadian Future Party share something close to my perspective on immigration – human beings share a fundamental commonality, and both individuals and cultures are capable of transformation when citizens actively pursue change. However, even without deliberate effort, shifts will inevitably occur due to demographic trends and other external pressures. Look, I don’t care where people come from, their colour, who they love, or what god or gods they worship if any at all. I do care that we live in a country where we subscribe to a broad set of ideas that reflect who we are and where we want to go, as a country.

The Canadian Future Party’s 2025 election platform suggested numerous changes to the immigration system. Cap annual new temporary worker and student permits at 200,000. Work with the provinces to develop provincial targets. No single country should be able to make up more than 20% of annual entrants. Those accepted must fill real labour gaps like skilled trades and healthcare. Canada’s post-graduate work permit system needs to include limits on the one million students currently here and reserves working rights for high demand occupations and PhDs. These changes would improve services for Canadians, jumpstart our economy, and relieve pressure on our institutions.

It's also astonishing that while the Trump administration is sabotaging its world-dominating economy, with a focus on the science and research fields, that Canada hasn’t created special visas for Americans in the trades, health, defence and research fields. We are missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There’s no reason Canada shouldn’t benefit from the folly of our neighbour. Better us than China.

I suspect the reason Mr. Carney and Mr. Poilievre haven’t embraced the above idea is the fear I mentioned earlier: immigration is ripping European democracies apart, not because of immigrants’ failure to integrate but because the democracies have lost any sense of what their countries stand for.

And that’s the hardest issue to confront. When Canada opened its doors to multiculturalism it was clear that immigrants were being welcomed to a country that was, for good or ill, based on British and French political precedents and laws. As the former majority shrank both in size and political confidence it wasn’t replaced with a renewed national identity but with an empty space, where now a thousand radicals from Islamists to communists to MAGA enthusiasts pick up the megaphone of social media and contest for dominance.

Our leaders sit by, not understanding this is no passing populist storm but political climate change: transformative and irreversible. Until we Canadians can reunite around a set of values that define us and use our immigration system to reinforce those beliefs by attracting those who share them from around the world, our system will never return to working order. That’s the reality, and reality is always the best place to start the hard work of making things better.

Dominic Cardy has spent his career fighting for better government, real accountability and a democracy that works for Canadians - not just politicians. Whether in government, opposition or working directly in his community, he’s consistently pushed for fairness, transparency and policies that deliver real results. Most importantly, he’s never shied away from tough decisions. Especially the ones that impact people’s daily lives