Canada PM vows crackdown on immigration, says 'mistakes made'

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged that his government "made some mistakes" leading to record immigration levels, necessitating a "big turn" in policy. Those remarks came in a video posted on Trudeau's YouTube channel on Sunday.

- Anirudh Bhattacharyya

"In the last two years, our population has grown really fast, like baby boom, fast and increasingly bad actors like fake colleges and big chain corporations have been exploiting our immigration system for their own interests," Trudeau said.

Trudeau said there was a demand after the Covid-19 pandemic to bring in labour. "So, we brought in more workers. It was the right choice. It worked. Our economy grew. Restaurants and stores reopened, businesses kept running, but most importantly, in spite of lots of economists' predictions, we avoided the worst-case scenario - a recession. But some saw that as an opportunity to profit to game the system," he said.

"Far too many colleges and universities used international students to raise their bottom line," he said, adding, "There is fraud and abuse and it needs to end."