Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says for the next couple of years “we need more people leaving than coming” into Canada.
On Monday, Poilievre was asked by Global News to clarify his June comments calling for “severe limits on population growth.”
“In order to fix the problem we’ve got to put very hard caps on immigration levels. We need more people leaving than coming for the next couple of years,” said Poilievre at a news conference in Ottawa. “So our country can actually catch up.”
Poilievre said this move could help housing, health care and jobs “catch up,” but he did not elaborate on how he would ensure more people leave the country.
“We’ve had population growth of roughly a million a year under the Liberals while we barely built 200,000 homes. Our job market is stalled and yet we are adding more people to the workforce,” said Poilievre.
“Our young people are facing generational highs in unemployment because the jobs are, multinational corporations are giving jobs to low wage temporary foreign workers.”
A Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) report from last month said between 430,000 and 480,000 housing units are needed annually to restore housing affordability.
Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
While the latest data from Statistics Canada shows Canada’s unemployment rate fell by 0.1 per cent to 6.9 per cent last month, the youth unemployment rate held steady at 14.2 per cent and remained well above pre-pandemic levels.
There was a significant boost in immigration to Canada between 2021-2024. According to Statistics Canada, nearly 500,000 immigrants came to Canada in 2021-2022, but that has slightly decreased in the following years. This drop in immigration coincides with the Justin Trudeau government’s pivot on immigration where they promised to cap the number of temporary residents admitted into Canada.
The Statistics Canada data also reveals emigration from Canada has been increasing since 2020-2021, reaching 104,565 in 2023-2024.
— with files from Mackenzie Gray and Alex Boutilier
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.