'Reckless and irresponsible': Alberta government says feds must do more to reduce immigration

After the federal government said Thursday it would make significant cuts to its immigration levels, Alberta responded that Ottawa's plan doesn't go far enough.

Ottawa announced it will will cut the number of new permanent residents from 485,000 projected for this year to 395,000 in 2025, with further cuts down to 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.

It's a significant amendment to its previous plan, released in November, when Canada was expected to admit about 485,000 permanent residents this year and 500,000 in both 2025 and 2026.

The new strategy sets out to relieve pressures on the housing market and to stabilize population growth across the country, according to federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

But in a joint statement from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and provincial Immigration Minister Muhammad Yaseen, the province called for Ottawa to go further in limiting the number of newcomers to Canada.

"The federal government's reckless and irresponsible open-border immigration policies, permitting almost two million newcomers to enter Canada last year alone, have led to unsustainable financial pressures on all provinces," reads the statement sent Thursday afternoon. 

"As a province, we need a reprieve from this explosive population growth so we can catch up with these pressures. So do all provinces. The federal government's plan to cut a mere 105,000 new permanent residents will not solve these pressures when they are bringing in almost two million additional people annually."

In an email to CBC News, a spokesperson for the province clarified that its two million figure comes from Immigration Refugees Citizenship Canada's 2023 annual report, and is composed of permanent residents, temporary residents, international students, temporary foreign workers and visitors in the International Mobility Program. 

The province says the federal government should reduce the number of temporary foreign workers, international students and asylum seekers but not provincially selected economic migrants.

The federal government's new immigration plan suggests Canada's population will decrease by 0.2 per cent over the next two years, a notable shift from last year's 3.2 per cent increase — the highest annual surge since 1957, according to Statistics Canada. 

"The numbers that the federal government put out were quite astounding," Alicia Planincic, an economist with the Business Council of Alberta, told CBC Radio's Alberta at Noon. 

Planincic says she's concerned about big swings in either direction in terms of population growth. 

"My concern with the announcement today is what's going to happen is actually temporary residents will now be prioritized for permanent residency," she told CBC Calgary's News at 6.

"Now, I worry that we're going to have a system where we're prioritizing, you know, the cashier at Tim Hortons over engineers and scientists and people that would bring more value to Alberta's economy longer term."