The Liberal Party – a pro-immigration party
Since his previous election in 2019, Justin Trudeau has always been a strong advocate for immigration. He gave the guarantee that this path would allow the government to meet the need for labour in regions facing a labour shortage and kept on increasing immigration quotas and encouraging Francophone immigration to promote diversity.
For its new mandate, the Liberal Party intends to follow the same path. The challenge is to reach the goal of more than 400,000 new immigrants this year, in 2021, 411,000 in 2022 and 421,000 in 2023.
The party is also clear on the major element that slows down immigration: the processing time of new applications. Recently, applicants in Quebec have waited for nearly two years to obtain their Permanent Residence. In the rest of the country, processing times have reached records since the beginning of the pandemic.
Therefore, the federal government has a significant role in restoring immigrants' confidence: more than promises, concrete actions must be taken. It's worth noting that before the pandemic, the deadlines for obtaining Permanent Residence outside Quebec (by Express Entry) had returned to “usual” deadlines ranging between 6 and 8 months. This delay is sometimes too long and also too costly for many immigrants. One of the promises Justin Trudeau made during his campaign is to reduce these delays and, above all, make applications free of charge. This includes no fees for permanent residence applications, shorter processing delays and more straightforward procedures for applications made by temporary foreign workers and former international students.
