Who Will Fix Canada’s Broken Immigration System?

By Mata Press Service

While federal parties scramble to stake out ground on housing, affordability, and climate change, a defining issue for Canada’s future is conspicuously missing from the centre stage of the 2025 election campaign: immigration.

As Canadians head to the polls next week, a growing coalition of over 100 community organizations and business groups across the country is demanding that federal leaders articulate a clear, unifying vision for immigration, or risk undermining one of Canada’s greatest strengths.

“In the face of an alarming rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric and deepening concerns about our economic security, this is a critical time to help Canadians recognize the value that newcomers bring to our economy and to the social fabric that makes Canada such a special place in the world,” said Betty Lepps, Executive Director of Collingwood Neighbourhood House.

That fabric, advocates say, is fraying, torn by funding cuts, overburdened infrastructure, and toxic political narratives scapegoating immigrants for government mismanagement on housing and services.

In Vancouver alone, neighbourhood houses—often a newcomer’s first link to community—are reeling from nearly $5 million in federal funding cuts, quietly handed down by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in late 2024. At Collingwood, 100% of funding was slashed, ending 40 years of settlement services overnight.

“We’re losing entire programs and being forced to lay off staff—many of whom are racialized women working with and for their own communities,” said Lepps.

The damage doesn’t stop there. Vancouver Community College’s LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) program is on the brink of closure. Organizations like the Immigrant Services Society of BC (ISSofBC) and the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC (AMSSA) are warning of lasting harm if federal leaders don’t urgently reset priorities.

“We urgently need political leadership to bring us together as a country to develop a renewed long-term vision for immigration,” said Chris Friesen, COO of ISSofBC.

“Our economic prosperity, our pension plans, and our collective future depend on it.”

Friesen points to a stark labour gap ahead. “In British Columbia alone, a 2024 Labour Market Outlook Report projects a labour force shortage of 1.12 million over the next decade. Nearly half of that gap is expected to be filled by immigrants.”

But as advocates make the economic case, the human story is just as compelling.

Shanna Delantar, a newcomer who struggled for months to find work, credits her turnaround to South Vancouver Neighbourhood House. “They introduced me to a program that gave me hope and changed my life,” she said, now working to support other newcomer youth.

Yet such stories are becoming harder to sustain.

“These promises of welcome, safety and inclusion are being broken,” Lepps warned. “We’re at risk of losing who we are as a nation.”

Despite the urgency, immigration has been largely absent from campaign platforms, apart from being used as a political wedge, say political analysts.

“Newcomers are being used as a political scapegoat for Canada’s failed housing policy,” said Jenny Kwan, NDP Immigration Critic. “Gutting settlement service funding by 50–100% harms the very social, cultural and economic fabric of Canada.”

The Globe and Mail’s editorial board agrees: “None is more vital than restoring confidence in Canada’s broken immigration system.”

That system, they argue, was strained by lax federal policies under the Liberals, which allowed temporary workers and foreign students to flood in post-pandemic—without matching supports or oversight. Even Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted as much: “We have not lived up to our promise to those we brought to this country.”

Carney now supports lowered immigration targets. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has gone further, promising to cap immigration levels based on the number of homes built—a dramatic reduction to around 250,000 immigrants per year.

Critics warn that’s too low. “Canada is an aging society,” wrote the Globe’s editorial board. “Reducing immigration too much could create labour shortages and leave too few younger workers available to sustain health care and pensions.”

The NDP has proposed a national task force to reassess the immigration system, though some say that it risks delaying the needed action.

For the first time in over 25 years, a majority of Canadians now believe there are too many immigrants coming to the country. That shift is being weaponized by some political voices, while others sidestep the issue altogether.

Yet for the organizations serving newcomers daily, the stakes are clear.

“Canada needs a strong economy to support a just society,” reads an open letter from a coalition of Canadian community organizations, business groups, and others that are calling on the federal leaders to commit to renewing a positive vision for immigration.

This vision, the coalition said, must;

• Create responsive systems that attract global talent, address labour shortages, and regularize undocumented workers already contributing to the economy.

• Align immigration goals with long-term funding in housing, healthcare, and education to ensure newcomers succeed and are not blamed for infrastructure gaps.

• Confront discrimination, reaffirm core Canadian values, and rebuild public trust by setting a positive national tone on immigration, and

• Improve refugee systems and define success through measurable social, economic, and global impacts—not just arrival targets.

“Immigration must not be sidelined,” said Lepps. “This election is about the Canada we believe in—and the Canada we risk losing if we don’t act.”