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Pierre Didn’t Need to Say Yes to Mass Immigration. He Just Needed a Riding Map

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Pierre Didn’t Need to Say Yes to Mass Immigration. He Just Needed a Riding Map.

The Conservative leader’s defenders say the CPC never endorsed high inflows. The record is more awkward: Amritsar flights, foreign-nurse licensing tours, a 2022 “pro-immigration” radio pitch

Michael Bator

Aug 28, 2026

The Conservative leader’s defenders say the CPC never endorsed high inflows. The record is more awkward: Amritsar flights, foreign-nurse licensing tours, a 2022 “pro-immigration” radio pitch — then a hard turn once the polls turned. Harmony’s (CPC trolling me for years) defence of Pierre Poilievre is simple. The Conservative Party of Canada does not say yes to mass immigration. Maxime Bernier is unelectable. Michael Bator is spreading misinformation. Vote Pierre. That last instruction may still be how a lot of Canadians vote. It is not an answer to the charge. Bernier’s point was never that Poilievre published a manifesto titled Yes to Mass Immigration. It was that the Conservative leader changes with the wind: one script for Punjabi radio and festival season, another for the housing-and-wages audience once public opinion soured.

You can test that without mind-reading. You only need the clips, the petitions, and the dates. The Amritsar campaign was not a slip. It was the product. In April 2023, Poilievre stood in Brampton in a room holding banners that read “Direct Flights to Amritsar Now” and “Open the Skies to Amritsar.” This was not a stray remark on the way out the door. It was a launch. “Punjabi Canadians have been calling on the federal government to deliver direct flights between Amritsar and Canada,” he said. “But even after years of activism from the Punjabi community, the Liberal government has failed to fight gatekeepers and open the skies to Amritsar.”
Hindustan Times, April 2023Then the line that tells you who the policy was for: “I, along with my deputy leader Tim Uppal, shadow minister Jasraj Singh Hallan and a group of other conservatives, are launching a full campaign to get the direct flight from Canada to Punjab, especially Amritsar, so that over a million Canadians who have their origins in that part of the world can fly directly from our country to that beautiful place.”

Same Hindustan Times report He repeated the pitch to Indo-Canadian media the same week: Canada has the largest Punjabi diaspora in the world; London and Milan already have the route; seniors and families should not have to land in Delhi and drive. He said he had met the Indian High Commissioner, written the transport minister, and sat down with Air Canada and Air India.

Indo-Canadian Voice A week later he was at the Surrey Vaisakhi parade, thanking volunteers who “helped rally support… for a direct flight to Amritsar” and pointing people to the party petition.

Poilievre on X, April 23, 2023 That petition lived at conservative.ca/amritsar.This did not age out after one news cycle. In April 2025, on RED FM, he was still selling Toronto and Vancouver to Amritsar and blaming Liberals for failing to land a single direct flight after a decade. Singapore, Malaysia, the UAE, the UK, Italy — they had the route. Canada did not.

YouTube: “Pierre Poilievre Talks Donald Trump, Liberals, Income Tax Cuts and Direct Flights to Amritsar,” RED FM CANADA

A flight is not an immigration quota. Pretending otherwise is sloppy. Pretending this was just “cutting red tape for travellers” is sloppier. You do not build a named campaign, parade presence, petition URL, and years of Punjabi-media hits around a route to one city in one Indian state unless you are courting one electorate in Brampton, Surrey, Calgary, and the suburban ridings Conservatives cannot win without.

If the defence is “Canada First,” the question writes itself. Why that city, that community, that banner, that petition? “Bring home the nurses” was the other half of the circuit. The second exhibit is the Blue Seal. In March 2023 the party put it on paper. Foreign-trained doctors and nurses already in Canada were being blocked by “gatekeepers.” The numbers cited: 34,105 foreign-trained nurses and 18,900 foreign-trained doctors not working in their profession. Only 37 percent of foreign-credentialed nurses were working as nurses. The fix was a national competency test, an answer in 60 days, and a certificate that would travel across provinces that signed on. Poilievre’s own language went further than “process the paperwork.”“I will put an end to this bureaucratic madness and bring home our doctors and nurses to help fix our broken healthcare system. My plan will ensure foreign-trained healthcare workers can easily work in Canada.”

Conservative Party: “Remove Gatekeepers to Bring Home Doctors & Nurses”And: “The Blue Seal will mean that it won’t matter where someone comes from, it matters what they can do.”

Same page Then he took it on the community circuit.Winnipeg, Filipino community, June 2023: “There are 20,000 immigrant doctors & 32,000 immigrant nurses blocked from serving patients… so immigrant professionals can get tested and get to work within 60 days.”

Poilievre on X, June 2, 2023January 2024 video: “Maria is one of Canada’s 32,000 foreign-trained nurses blocked from working here. Let them take a test, prove they’re qualified & get to work.”

Poilievre on X, January 27, 2024Taste of Manila, August 2024: “Everyone is excited about removing gatekeepers to allow Filipino nurses to write a Blue Seal exam and get licensed to treat patients & reduce wait times.”

Poilievre on X, August 19, 2024Tamil community event, April 2024: Blue Seal for doctors, engineers, and nurses.

Poilievre on X, April 29, 2024Be precise, because the other side will be. Blue Seal is mainly about licensing people already here, not a new federal nurse-import quota.

That distinction matters. What also matters is the sales channel. The same leader who later talks about overwhelmed hospitals sold faster entry of foreign-trained clinicians to the exact diasporas whose votes the party has spent a decade chasing. “Cut the red tape” is popular in a waiting room and popular in a banquet hall. That is the point.The cleanest receipt is the flipIf Amritsar is the ethnic-vote file, the immigration-volume file is the weather vane.

November 2022. Exclusive interview with Harjit Singh Gill on Shere Punjab Radio. The title of the upload is not subtle: “Conservative party is pro-immigration.”Poilievre said it out loud. He also used a working example: a Punjabi restaurant that had been open four years and still could not serve customers because Ottawa would not process the cook. Bring in the cooks, he said, and the business could hire Canadian waitresses, receptionists, janitorial staff. Process economic immigration quickly. Speed foreign-credential recognition. Welcome everyone who wants to work hard.“The conservative party is pro-immigration and we want to be the party that welcomes everyone who wants to work hard and achieve their dreams.”

YouTube: Sherepunjab Radio, November 8, 2022CBC captured the same period. Poilievre told Punjabi radio the party was pro-immigration. At an ethnic-media roundtable he talked about expanding Express Entry, making it easier for temporary foreign workers to become permanent residents, and improving parent sponsorship.

CBC: “Pierre Poilievre thinks he can win over new Canadians,” December 2022That was the offer when the coalition still needed to be built and the housing revolt had not yet swallowed the issue.Watch the product change once the country did.January 2024: tie the number of people invited to the number of homes built.

CIC News summary of the Winnipeg press conferenceAugust 29, 2024: “We have to have a smaller population growth.” Curb the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the international student pipeline. Do not grow the population at three times the housing stock.

CBC: “Poilievre says he would cut population growth,” August 29, 2024By 2025 the line was “too many, too fast.” End the fraud in the student and TFW programs. Get back to something closer to the old system. Later still: scrap new TFW visas except agriculture, cap population growth below housing, jobs, and health-care capacity, Harper-era permanent levels, a “mathematical formula.”
CIC News, January 2025
VisaVerge, September 2025
La Converse, 2026 election guide

He can hold both thoughts in one speech now — welcome the ones who contribute, license the doctors and nurses, and cap the numbers — because that is what a professional opposition does after the median voter moves.

Global News transcript of his convention speechThat is allowed in politics. It is not evidence of a man who does the unpopular thing because it is right. It is evidence of a man who found the popular thing twice: first among the communities he needed to peel off the Liberals, then among the voters who decided the last decade of inflows had broken housing, wages, and hospitals.

Same leader. Different room. Different script. What the defence actually requires you to believe. To keep Harmony’s version intact, you have to believe several things at once. You have to believe a multi-year Amritsar campaign, complete with parade troops and a party URL, is just aviation policy. You have to believe years of Filipino, Tamil, and Punjabi photo-ops around foreign-trained nurses are just health-care reform that happened to be filmed in banquet halls. You have to believe “the Conservative party is pro-immigration,” plus faster cooks from abroad, plus TFW-to-PR, was a temporary misunderstanding.

You have to believe the later “too many, too fast” turn was always the plan, merely waiting for the correct week to be announced.Or you can believe the ordinary thing: Pierre Poilievre is very good at finding the vote. In 2022 the vote he needed lived in ethnic media and suburban temples and festivals. By 2024 the vote he needed lived in the comments under every rental listing in Toronto and Vancouver. He served both.That is not a secret Liberal talking point. It is how you win a Canadian election if you are a Conservative who watched 2015 and decided the party would never again be caricatured as hostile to new Canadians — until hostility to the volume became the majority position, at which point the volume became the scandal.Bernier’s insult was that this is poll-chasing.

The generous version is coalition management. The operational version is the same: do not pick a fight that costs a seat you can keep with a banner.The question that survives the talking pointsNone of this proves Poilievre wants “open borders.” He does not run on that, and he has spent the last two years running against it. None of it proves every foreign-trained nurse should stay unlicensed while emergency rooms buckle. Canadians can want faster credentialling and lower inflows. Those are not opposites.

The question is narrower, and it is the one Harmony ducked.If the Conservative Party does not say yes to mass immigration, why did its leader spend the building years saying yes to the politics that produced it — faster foreign labour, faster family and community traffic to Punjab, faster professional entry sold community by community — and only discover the brake once the country was already screaming about rent?

A leader who does what is right whether or not it is popular would have told the 2022 radio audience the thing he tells rallies now: the pipeline was too wide, the colleges were a racket, the TFW program was eating entry-level jobs, and a direct flight is not a substitute for an integration policy.

He did not. He told that room what that room wanted. He told the next room what the next room wanted. That is not backbone. That is a weather vane with a petition link.

If you want the CPC line, Harmony already wrote it. If you want the file, it is all still online. Start with the Brampton banners, the Vaisakhi post, the Shere Punjab interview, and the party page that promised to bring the nurses home. Then read the 2024–26 speeches and ask what changed besides the polls.

Source listAmritsar flights

Nurses, credentials, “cut red tape”

The 2022 “pro-immigration” record

The later turn

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Despite High Youth Unemployment, Tim Horton’s Wants Even MORE Temporary Foreign Workers

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Turning Back the Invasion

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Turning Back the Invasion

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East Indian Scammer Who Scammed Another East Indian Scammer for False Papers Doesn’t Have to Give Back His Money:

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MAN WHO PAID TO ILLEGALLY EXTEND WORK PERMIT NOT ENTITLED TO MONEY BACK, COURT RULES

TWO MEN CALLED ‘EQUALLY AT FAULT’ BY JUDGE

  • National Post
  • 13 Nov 2025

[This is a sordid story of the widespread scamming, especially on the part of East Indians of the student visas, the temporary foreign workers programme and Canada’s porous “refugee” system. Fraudulent documents are sold for a fortune and, of course, it’s these people who are scamming and exploiting their own people. The whole temporary foreign workers programme, except for agriculture should be cancelled.]

A worker from India paid a fixer $15,000 to extend his work permit in Canada and then sued after being refused a promised letter of endorsement from the City of Grande Prairie. A court has ruled he cannot get his money back.

An Indian man who paid a fixer $15,000 in a failed attempt to extend his work permit in Canada entered into an “illegal contract” and is not entitled to get his money back, according to a recent decision from Alberta’s Court of Justice.

Ritik Sibbal sued Rajiv Chourhary Nathyal because the letter of endorsement from the City of Grande Prairie that Nathyal had agreed to help him obtain never materialized.

“Sibbal understood that a letter of endorsement would allow him to continue to work in Canada after his (postgraduate work permit) expired and potentially obtain permanent residency. Sibbal told the court that Nathyal agreed that the $15,000 he provided would be returned if a letter of endorsement was not obtained. The application for Sibbal’s letter of endorsement was refused; however, Nathyal never returned the money to Sibbal,” Justice Susanne Stushnoff wrote in a recent decision out of Edmonton.

“Sibbal was very poised before the court and presented as a smart and articulate individual. He was motivated to enter into an illegal contract due to his authentic desire to become a permanent resident of Canada. However, one of the elements that makes Canada such a desirable place to live is its legal system,” the judge wrote in her decision, dated Nov. 7.

Nathyal was served with notice of the lawsuit, but failed to defend himself.

Sibbal testified that he “came to Canada in April 2019 to attend business college in Vancouver.”

After graduating, he obtained a work permit that was good for three years.

His goal was to obtain a work permit before that expired that would allow him to stay in Canada and obtain permanent residency here.

Sibbal moved to Grande Prairie in August 2023 under the understanding that the city in northwestern Alberta “was considered ‘rural,’ ” and that he might only need a letter of endorsement to work past the expiration of his postgraduate work permit.

Letters of endorsement support “a foreign national’s job offer and their application for permanent residence under a specific immigration program,” said the decision.

Sibbal got several jobs in Grande Prairie, believing his employers would help him obtain the proper documentation, said the decision.

When those fell through, Sibbal only had six months left on his postgraduate work permit, which was set to expire in August 2024, said the decision. “He became anxious about his path forward.”

Sibbal called several immigration lawyers in Edmonton, one of whom pointed him to Nathyal in Grande Prairie.

The two met in early 2024 and Nathyal offered to help Sibbal obtain a letter of endorsement so he could stay in Canada, said the decision. The price: $35,000. “Sibbal offered Nathyal $15,000 in advance with the remainder to be paid in instalments over the next few months.”

Sibbal testified that he had “no choice” but to agree to the offer as his work permit “was soon to expire and it was his father’s dream for him to obtain permanent residency in Canada.”

Nathyal told Sibbal he was going to get him a letter of endorsement from “the relevant authorities at the City of Grande Prairie,” said the decision.

“According to Sibbal, Nathyal was to obtain the letter of endorsement by telling the authorities that he was going to employ Sibbal. This was not the truth. Nathyal was never going to be Sibbal’s employer.”

Sibbal testified that he didn’t get anything in writing about their contract. “He explained that Nathyal would not allow anything in writing as both of them knew that the contract they were entering into was ‘illegal.’ ”

Sibbal paid Nathyal $15,000 in cash in February 2024, said the decision, which notes Nathyal refused to provide a receipt.

Sibbal “heard nothing” from Nathyal for several months, despite repeated attempts to reach him. After he managed to get through, Nathyal told him to “wait for a few more weeks.”

Nathyal called Sibbal at the end of July 2024, saying

NATHYAL WOULD NOT ALLOW ANYTHING IN WRITING.

Grande Prairie had refused the letter of endorsement.

When he met with Nathyal in August 2024, “Nathyal advised that he proceed with a ‘fake refugee case,’ ” said the decision.

Sibbal “consulted with his parents who wisely advised him not to go down this path,” it said.

He called Nathyal to say he wouldn’t pursue a refugee claim, then asked him for help obtaining a labour market impact assessment. That’s a “document that a Canadian employer may need to get before hiring a foreign worker,” according to the decision.

When Nathyal told him that would cost an extra $35,000 to $40,000, “Sibbal indicated that this was ‘outside of (his) budget for now,’ ” said the decision.

When he asked about getting his $15,000 back, Nathyal told him to give him a month and a half.

“Over the following two weeks Sibbal followed up with Nathyal on multiple occasions,” said the decision. “Nathyal would respond periodically but never returned the money.”

The last time Sibbal heard from Nathyal was on Sept. 12, 2024.

“Nathyal texted Sibbal stating that he did not receive the payment he had purportedly been waiting on,” said the decision, which notes Sibbal told the court he was returning to India.

The judge found “that the contract between Sibbal and Nathyal was breached,” but she refused to enforce it.

The two men “were equally at fault in these circumstances,” Stushnoff said.

“Although Sibbal framed his pleadings and testimony in a way that cast a sympathetic light upon him, I find that Sibbal was a willing buyer and Nathyal was a willing seller.”

Sibbal “did not come before this court with ‘clean hands,’ and I exercise my discretion and refuse to grant the equitable relief he has sought,” said the judge.

The court “has a responsibility to preserve the integrity of the legal system, and this involves ensuring that claims seeking to enforce illegal contracts or unjust enrichment claims based on illegal contracts do not result in an inconsistency in the law,” the judge said,

“Submitting fake job offers or employment contracts, providing advice to do so, and charging fees beyond those expressly permitted by the legislation are all illegal under Canada’s immigration legislation and undermine the integrity of the Canadian immigration system. The monetization of Canada’s immigration system is against Canada’s public policy.”

Grande Prairie paused its Rural Renewal Stream Immigration program this past February, citing “federal and provincial immigration policy changes that have lowered immigration allocation spaces throughout the province.”

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Jamil Jivani Launches Petition to End Temporary Foreign Worker Programme: Let’s Hope The Whole Tory Caucus Gets Behind It!

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Jamil Jivani launches petition to end temporary foreign worker program

ByThe Canadian Press

Updated: May 22, 2025 at 6:31PM EDT

Published: May 22, 2025 at 4:46PM EDT

Conservative MP Jamil Jivani arrives on Parliament Hill ahead of a Conservative Party of Canada caucus meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

OTTAWA — Conservative MP Jamil Jivani has launched a petition to end the temporary foreign worker program.

The petition says the temporary foreign worker program is a “large contributor” to an unsustainable level of immigration and claims the program is taking jobs away from Canadians and suppressing wages.

In a social media video about the petition, Jivani links immigration to doctor shortages, crowded hospitals, the housing crisis and a challenging job market.

“There’s a pretty clear consensus, even across people with different political views, that immigration levels are just unsustainably high,” Jivani said.

“Anyone who goes to a hospital can see there’s not enough beds. Anyone who goes to look for a family doctor can’t find one. You go to buy a house, there’s not enough of those. You go to find a job, there might not be one of those for you either.”

The Ontario MP said it’s reached a point in Parliament where you “can’t have a sensible conversation” about the issue.

Jivani said his petition does not include temporary workers in the agricultural sector. He suggested that seasonal agricultural workers should be under a separate program.

The Ontario MP said that youth unemployment is one reason why he’s brought forward this petition.

The unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 reached 14 per cent in April, according to Statistics Canada’s May jobs report.

Last year, the government announced plans to reduce the number of temporary foreign workers being admitted to Canada. This measure includes refusing to process applications in metropolitan areas with more than six per cent unemployment.

The government plans to admit 82,000 workers annually under the temporary foreign worker program from 2025 to 2027, according to its immigration levels plan.

In an emailed statement, Employment Minister Patty Hajdu needled Jivani over not being named one of the Conservative caucus critics in the House of Commons.

“I know MP Jivani wasn’t included in Andrew Scheer’s shadow cabinet,” she wrote, referring to the Conservative MP who is leading the Official Opposition in the House of Commons, “but he may want to ask that the party resume briefing him, because if they had, he’d know that in the last year alone, we considerably scaled back the TFW program to reflect local labour needs.”

Hajdu added the government is consulting with labour and industry groups about future changes to the program and said it “in no way” replaces Canadian talent.

The minister said the program is “vital” to the agricultural sector and tourism industry.

Jivani appears to be acting alone with his petition, since he does not hold one of the Conservative critic positions.

Alberta MPs Michelle Rempel Garner and Garnett Genuis are the immigration and employment critics, respectively.

The Conservatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Canada’s Housing Crisis — It’s Immigration, Stupid!

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Canada’s Housing Crisis — It’s Immigration, Stupid!
National Post (August 11, 2023) below lays out all the figures. The cause of Canada’s horrific housing crisis and the lack of affordability is not some deep mystery. It’s Trudeau’s invasion level immigration intake, now approaching half a million a year — that’s a city almost the size of Hamilton, Ontario (537,000) EVERY year. But that’s not all. Almost another half million foreign bodies — international students and temporary (often not so temporary) foreign workers need rental housing. Yet, Trudeau pal, Marc Miller, the new Immigration Minister shows no sign of reducing the numbers, even in face of the housing shortage. The Bible (Proverbs 26:11) notes: “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so the fool returns to his folly.”  CIC News (August 9. 2023) reported: ” “I don’t see a world in which we lower [immigration targets], the need is too great … whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at but certainly, I don’t think [we will] lower them.” According to Miller, immigration is not the reason that Canada is facing housing supply challenges across the country. Therefore, Miller takes issue with the fact that immigrants are often blamed for taking away homes from Canadians and causing housing inflation”. Ontario Premier Ford, in the midst of a scandal for selling off portions of the Province’s Green Space for housing, pleaded that Ontario will grow by adding the size of two Torontos — roughly 5.4-million people — in the next decade, almost all immigrants. Yet, foolish Ford does not blame the federal government’s immigration policies — Paul Fromm

Foreign student surge adds to housing crisis

  • National Post
  • 11 Aug 2023
  • Bryan Passifiume

PETER J THOMPSON / NATIONAL POST FILESFor many international students, coming to Canada means fighting a tight entry-level rental market.

Record numbers of international students coming to Canada is making the already inflated cost of housing worse, said Steve Pomeroy, a policy research consultant and senior research fellow at Carleton University’s centre for urban research.

The biggest strain on Canada’s housing market, he said, isn’t only the rising rate of permanent residents, with more than 400,000 permanent residents in 2022, and the Liberal government determined to hit 500,000 a year in the next couple of years. Those coming here seeking temporary residence, either temporary foreign workers or international students, are fuelling rental price increases.

“Temporary foreign workers and students are going to be renters, as opposed to owners,” he said.

Average rents nationally jumped more than 10 per cent last year and are expected to rise again this year, although rents in hotter markets, such as Toronto and Vancouver, are up significantly more.

Data released earlier this year by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) show 807,750 international students with valid student visas studying at Canadian post-secondary institutions as of the end of 2022.

At 30 per cent higher than the 617,315 students in 2021, it’s now at the highest level it’s ever been.

With the exception of 2020, where numbers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s complement of international students historically saw between six to nine per cent growth annually.

Pomeroy said universities are driving the numbers as a way to generate more revenue, because they can charge international students much higher tuitions.

“In Ontario, university tuition fees are frozen, grants are frozen, but the only variable that universities have to generate new revenues is international students, so they naturally go and chase those,” he said.

More visiting students, he said, create inordinate demand at the very bottom of the rental market, where there’s already a tight market for low-income workers, fixed-income seniors and those who rely on social assistance.

Benjie Rustia, an official with an international immigration and study agency located near the Philippine capital of Manila, said his international-student clients know that coming here means fighting

fighting a tight entry level rental market.

“They are well informed by their relatives or friends in Canada,” he told the National Post.

“Making informed decisions is the basic aspect for the process for international students, and are based on thorough research and understanding.”

Late last month, news of an international student from India found living under an east Toronto bridge brought attention to the problem, and highlighted concerns from advocates that Canada’s affordability crisis is rendering increasing numbers of foreign students homeless.

Most international students coming to Canada flock to Ontario, which in 2022 saw more than 411,000 foreign students enrolled in the province’s post-secondary institutions.

British Columbia ranked second with 164,000 students last year, followed by Quebec with 93,000, Alberta with 43,000 and Manitoba with 22,000.

While India’s 319,130 international students rank as Canada’s biggest cohort, followed by China with 100,075, the Philippines is seeing big bumps in the number of their students coming here.

Canada issued 25,295 study permits to Filipino students to study here in 2022, a 76 per cent increase from the 14,355 visas issued to students from that country in 2021.

As of June 2023, 11,400 permits were issued to students from the Philippines.

Rustia said his clients typically search for schools that offer on-campus residence living or look for schools near where they can stay with friends and relatives already in the area.

News reports on Wednesday described long wait-lists for on-campus housing at Calgary universities, with 740 students waiting for housing at the University of Calgary, and the city’s Mount Royal University establishing a waiting list for their 950 dorm rooms for the first time in the school’s history.

Solving this problem, Pomeroy said, could be done by striking partnerships between schools, governments and developers.

“If the government was smart, it would say ‘OK, we’re causing the problem by giving out these visas to international students, how can we solve this problem,’” he said.

“Let’s work with the universities, let’s work with the private developers for some incentives and stimulus.”

He suggested using existing programs, such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s rental construction financing initiative — which provides low-cost loans to encourage rental apartment projects — to encourage student-centred rental construction to keep the pressure off local residential rental markets.

A statement to the National Post from Universities Canada, a post-secondary institution lobby group, agreed the federal government should be doing more to address the issue.

“Solving the housing crisis will require collaboration among all levels of government, and universities remain willing partners in these efforts,” wrote interim president Philip Landon.

Canada’s universities, he wrote, are doing more to approve and build more on-campus housing, as well as provide resources to help students access off-campus living space, as well as developing “innovative housing models” to relieve local rental market pressures.

Emails to Immigration Minister Marc Miller went unacknowledged.

Tom Kmiec, the Conservative party’s immigration and citizenship critic, said that the current government’s housing and immigration policies are leaving newcomers on the streets.

“More homes were being built in 1972 when Canada’s population was half of what it is today,” he said in a statement.

“The Liberal government has failed to deliver on their housing promises and failed to come anywhere close to building the number of houses we need, leaving Canada short millions of homes and Canadians struggling to afford a place to live.”

a tight entry level rental market.

“They are well informed by their relatives or friends in Canada,” he told the National Post.

“Making informed decisions is the basic aspect for the process for international students, and are based on thorough research and understanding.”

Late last month, news of an international student from India found living under an east Toronto bridge brought attention to the problem, and highlighted concerns from advocates that Canada’s affordability crisis is rendering increasing numbers of foreign students homeless.

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