Canada’s Immigration Experiment of 2015-2024: What Have We Learned?

A key pillar of the Liberal government’s policy platform in the October 2015 election was a substantial increase in immigration aimed at boosting the Canadian economy. Over the following decade, Canada’s annual population growth rate increased from 0.8% to 3.2%, driven almost entirely by increased immigration. In response to mounting criticism and concerns about the effects of record-level immigration levels on housing and labour markets, the Trudeau government reversed course on its immigration agenda in 2024, imposing hard caps on international student admissions, reimposing regulations on the temporary foreign worker program from 2014, and revising its own immigration targets for 2025-2026 downwards. What went wrong? Was the policy doomed from the start, or was it a failure in implementation? What economic lessons are to be learned from Canada’s 2015-2024 immigration experiment? In this lecture, Professor Mikal Skuterud will answer these questions and offer a roadmap forward for regaining public confidence in Canada’s immigration system.