By admin (May 21, 2024)
Marc Miller is the New Immigration Minister of Canada
Major changes were announced by the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau to his cabinet at 10:30 Eastern Time On 26 July.
A Member of Parliament from Quebec, Mark Miller is the new immigration minister of Canada. Recently, Miller served as Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, a role which was meant to support the self-determination of the indigenous peoples of Canada.
The most recent Immigration minister of Canada, Sean Fraser, will now become the minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities.
In 2015, Miller was first elected to the Parliament of Canada. Miller was a practicing lawyer who also served in the armed forces of Canada before entering politics. Miller was born and raised in Montreal, earned two degrees from the Universite’ de Montre’al in Political Science and one law degree from McGill University.
The Prime Minister of Canada appointed a body of ministers known as the cabinet. The cabinet is responsible for pursuing and communicating the policy priorities of the federal government. Every two years or so, Canadian Prime Ministers tend to shuffle their cabinets.
There are so many reasons to conduct a shuffle which include promoting those who the Prime Minister feels have done a good job, replacing poor-performing ministers, and providing the government with an opportunity for public communications and to refresh their policies.
In October 2021, the last major cabinet shuffle occurred following the federal election that year. Fraser was appointed the Immigration Minister of Canada and the head of the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) as part of that shuffle.
Since November 2015, Trudeau has served as the Prime Minister of Canada. More aggressive immigration levels were pursued by Canada over this time. 250,000 new permanent residents each year were welcomed to Canada before Trudeau’s tenure. This increased to 300,000 per year when Trudeau took power, and then 340,000 per year right before the pandemic.
Every year, Canada hiked its targets to over 400,000 new permanent residents during the pandemic. Canada is now seeking 500,000 permanent residence landings yearly by 2025 under the Immigration Levels Plan 2023-2025.
Canada’s aging population and low birth rate have driven the pursuit of significantly higher immigration levels. To strengthen the economy of Canada and fiscal standing as the country’s 9 million baby boomers reach the retirement age of 65 years old within the next decade, the federal government sees immigration as a suitable measure. The rise in immigration levels coincides with Canada dealing with historically high job vacancy rates and historically low unemployment rates.
The Prime Minister may decide to issue new mandate letters to the cabinet after a major cabinet shuffle, outlining what each minister is expected to focus on while serving their role. Trudeau provided Fraser with a list of immigration policies to prioritize in December 2021, including improving application processing for newcomers, hiking immigration levels, reforming Express Entry, promoting francophone immigration to Canada, and strengthening family reunification.
Fraser has implemented a variety of these measures since then. For instance, Canada has begun to hold category-based selection for Express Entry over the past month, as a means of achieving a variety of economic priorities such as boosting Francophone immigration.Canada Immigration News will bring you more interesting updates about the immigration landscape of Canada.