Beds in toilets and inflation: How immigration in a country considered an 'immigrant's paradise' led to the resignation of the Prime Minister
Celia Hatton
Post, BBC News
January, 08, 2025
Immigration has been a divisive issue in Western countries, but it has been largely ignored by Canada, but not anymore.
For some, the housing shortage and rising rents, along with protests and pressure from various pressure groups, forced Justin Trudeau to resign, but could the arrival of Donald Trump be even more divisive?
At first glance, the price of a room in Brampton, Ontario, might seem reasonable. It’s true that space is tight, but unlike the capital Toronto, where the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat is C$2,261, this is certainly a reasonable offer.
However, if you look closely, a small bathroom has been converted into additional sleeping quarters. The mattress has to be connected to the sink, and the toilet is also nearby.
The room ad, posted on Facebook Marketplace, has drawn hundreds of comments. “Disappointing,” wrote one user on the social media platform Read It. Another wrote: “You 20-year-olds, you’re looking at your future.”
However, such ads do exist. A picture of a room for rent in Brampton shows a bed placed next to the stairs in what appears to be a laundry area. In Scarborough, Ontario, a double bed can be seen lying in a corner of the kitchen.
While Canada has plenty of space, it has a shortage of homes, and according to property consultancy Urbanization, rents across the country have risen 20 per cent in the past three years.
A government watchdog report published in December found that 2.4 million Canadian families are forced to live in homes that are either too small, in dire need of repair or have high rents.
The housing problems come at a time when Canadians are worried about inflation and immigration is becoming a hot topic in the country.
For the first time, a majority of Canadians, who have long welcomed newcomers to the country, are now asking how their cities will cope with their arrival.
Politics in Western countries has long revolved around debates on divisive issues such as immigration, but Canada has until recently largely ignored the issue, perhaps due to its geography. However, attitudes are now changing.
According to a survey by data and research firm Environix, in 2022, 27% of Canadians believed that there were too many foreign immigrants coming to the country. In 2024, that number rose to 58%.
Protests have also begun in this regard, opposing immigration in other parts of the country, including Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary.
“It was an issue that no one was willing to talk about, but now the ice has melted quickly,” says software engineer Peter Kreitzer, who is also the founder of the protest group Cost of Living Canada, which was formed in 2024.
Stories like the Brampton bathroom rental scandal have fueled the debate. “People can say it’s all hearsay,” says Peter, “but you see it over and over again. You see it over and over again.”
“People have concerns about how the immigration system is being managed, and we think this is the first time people are really thinking about the management of the system,” says Keith Newman, executive director of Environix.
Justin Trudeau, once considered the “golden boy” of Canadian politics, was forced to resign in an election year at a time when there is discontent over immigration statistics.
Before his resignation, his approval rating had fallen to 22 percent, down from 65 percent in his first year in office.
Although immigration is not the main reason for the decline in these figures and his resignation, according to him he had to fight “internal battles”, but he is accused of reacting too late to the growing anxiety about inflation and housing, both of which are partly due to immigration.
Professor Jonathan Rose, head of the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, says that “immigration may not have been the immediate reason for his resignation, but it certainly influenced the decision.”
“Under the Trudeau administration, the Canadian government planned to increase the population in the country after the global pandemic. They believed that the increase in the number of foreign students, temporary workers, skilled people would drive the country’s economy.”
The country’s population, which was 35 million 10 years ago, has now reached 40 million. Immigration is the main reason for this increase. According to Statistics Canada, 90% of the population growth in 2024 was due to immigration.
The overall figure has also increased in the number of refugees. In 2013, the number of people applying for asylum in Canada was 10,365, but by 2023, this number had increased to 143,770.
Voter dissatisfaction with the government’s immigration policies was “more a symptom than a cause” of Trudeau’s resignation, according to Professor Rose.
“It shows his failure to understand the public opinion.”
It is not yet clear who will replace him from his own Liberal Party, but opinion polls in the run-up to the upcoming election show the Conservatives, whose leader Pierre Poillore believes that the number of new immigrants to the country should be lower than the number of homes built here.
Since Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election in November, Poillore has been “talking a lot about immigration. To the point where it is now etched in the minds of voters,” according to Professor Rose.
Trump’s second term in office will certainly add fuel to the fire on this issue in Canada, whoever the new prime minister is.
Trump's victory was partly due to his promise to deport undocumented immigrants, and since his victory he has said he will use the military to enforce that promise by declaring a national emergency.
He also announced plans to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian goods if Canada does not tighten border security.
Drone cameras and border security
Canada and the United States share the world's longest unmanned border. The nearly 9,000-kilometer border is mostly forested.
Unlike the southern border of the United States, this border has not been fenced. This has long been seen as a sign of closeness between Canada and the United States.
When Trump first became president in 2017, Canada saw a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers, forcing thousands to make the journey on foot.
According to Canadian government figures, the number of asylum applications rose from 24,000 in 2016 to 56,000 in 2018. Almost all of the people entered through New York state into the Canadian province of Quebec.
In 2023, Canada and the United States agreed to a border agreement that limited the movement of refugees between the two countries.
Under the agreement, anyone who reports to authorities within 14 days of crossing the border will be able to apply for asylum in the country they first entered. The agreement was also intended to emphasize that both countries are considered safe for refugees.
This time, Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), says it has taken steps to prevent more people from entering Canada before Trump’s inauguration.
New technology is being deployed, including drones, night-vision goggles and hidden surveillance cameras in the woods.
“The worst-case scenario is that people are coming in from all over the border,” RCMP spokesman Charles Poirier warned in November. “For example, if the first 100 people are coming in, it will be difficult because our officers will have to travel a long distance to make arrests.”
The government has now allocated an additional $1.3 billion to the border security plan.
‘We want our future back’
Not everyone is blaming the recent surge in immigration for the housing crisis. “It took us 30 years to get to where we are,” says Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, “because politicians failed to build affordable housing.”
The country has a long history of welcoming newcomers. “50 per cent of Canada’s population is first- or second-generation immigrants,” says Newman. “That means they either came here from another country or one or both of their parents came from another country. In Toronto and Vancouver, the figure is more than 80 per cent.”
“That makes Canada very different from a country where the majority of the population is indigenous,” he says.
He has been overseeing a survey that examines attitudes toward newcomers.
"If you ask Canadians what is the most important and different thing about Canada or what makes this country unique? Their first answer will be that there are people from different cultures here or that the population here is diverse," he says.
But he says the shift in public opinion and increased concerns about immigration has been “dramatic.”
“Not only are there more concerns now, there’s also a better debate,” he says. “More questions are being asked about how the system is working? And why isn’t it working?”
During a protest in Toronto, people held up placards reading “We want our future back” and “End mass immigration.”
“We need to ban immigration, we need to suspend immigration so that people’s wages can be higher than rent,” says Kratzer, whose group has participated in such protests.
Accusations about the newcomers are also being spread on social media. Last winter, Natasha White, who describes herself as a resident of Wasaga Beach, Ontario, claimed on TikTok that some newcomers were digging holes on the beach to relieve themselves.
The post was viewed by millions of people and sparked anti-foreigner sentiment, with many saying the newcomers should “go back home.”
Tent cities and shelters for the homeless
We also interviewed people who work with asylum seekers in Canada. They say that concerns about increased border security are making asylum seekers feel more fearful.
Abdullah Daoud, executive director of a refugee centre in Montreal, believes that the asylum seekers he works with understand that the focus of immigration figures will be on them after November.
“They are definitely more nervous,” he says. “I think when they come here, they think we’re welcome?” Am I in the right place or not?’
People who want to live in Canada as refugees do not have access to government immigration services until a decision is made on whether they really need asylum. This process, which once took just two weeks, can now take up to three years.
Tent cities and food banks have been set up in Toronto to welcome the newcomers. The city's homeless shelters are often short of space. Last winter, homeless people died of exposure while sleeping on the streets.
“People are finding that even though they are working two or three jobs, they still don’t have enough money to pay the rent or feed their children,” says Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who is herself an immigrant and moved to Canada from Hong Kong at the age of 13.
“I can understand how difficult it is to live a miserable life where you can’t afford anything and then the fear that you will be deported at any moment, but it would be unfair to blame the immigration system for this.”
Trudeau: ‘We failed to maintain balance’
Amid growing frustrations, Trudeau announced a major change in October. He decided to reduce immigration targets by 20% over three years, saying, “After the Corona pandemic, we failed to maintain a balance between meeting the needs of workers and population growth.”
He added that he wants to give all local governments time to make arrangements in this regard so that more people can stay, but after his resignation, the question is: is it enough? And is there a risk that the Trump presidency and the growing anti-immigrant sentiment on this side of the border will also spread to Canada?
Abdullah has a different view on this. “Unfortunately, I think Trump’s victory has had an impact on Canadian politics. I think a lot of politicians are using it as a way to spread fear.”
However, other experts believe that this will not have much of an impact.
Olivia Cho says, “Canadians are much better than that.” We remember that successive waves of refugees helped build Toronto and Canada.
Politicians debating population growth ahead of the next election will be aware of the fact that half of Canada’s population are themselves first- and second-generation immigrants.
“If the Conservatives win the next election, we can expect a reduction in immigration,” says Professor Jonathan Rose, but he adds that the Conservative leader “will have to take a cautious approach.”
“Since the large immigrant populations in Toronto and Vancouver will be crucial to any electoral victory, no candidate will want to be seen as anti-immigration and may talk more about changes to economic and housing policies,” says Professor Rose.
And there are also a large number of Canadians, including business leaders and academics, who believe the country should continue a strong growth policy to counter Canada’s declining birthrate.
“I have high hopes for the Canadian people,” added Lisa Laland of the Century Initiative. She advocates policies that would see Canada’s population grow to 100 million by 2100.
“I think we’re more concerned about affordability and costs than about immigration,” she says. “We think it’s very important to our culture.”
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#Canada #Donald_Trump #United_States
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