Canada also has a centre-left government, albeit led by a Prime Minister with considerably more real-world experience than either his predecessor \u2013 the hapless Justin Trudeau \u2013 or his Australian counterpart, whom he visited in Canberra in March. Who knows what they discussed behind closed doors, but the official communique gives us a flavour of the discussions: \u201cLeaders acknowledged the Ngunnawal people as Traditional Custodians of the lands \u2026 Leaders recognised the shared values underpinning the close partnership \u2026 parliamentary democracy, multiculturalism \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Multiculturalism ranks alongside five-pin bowling, poutine and Justin Bieber as one of Canada\u2019s least helpful contributions to the world. It was adopted in Canada around the time Coca-Cola launched its \u201cI\u2019d like to teach the world to sing\u201d campaign, with a similar spirit of earnest but incurious optimism. Over the course of half a century, the saccharine sentimentality of multiculturalism hardened into the doctrine of diversity among the fruitcake theorists on the progressive left and in Labor\u2019s policy platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognise Australia\u2019s diversity is our greatest strength,\u201d it reads. Labor will \u201cseek to develop policies and make decisions informed by an envelope-based understanding of the needs of different Australians\u201d.<\/p>\n
Did the authors of this document even try to contemplate the downside of diversity and attempt to measure the trade-offs? Almost certainly not. As Thomas Sowell observed: \u201cIt is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.\u201d The diversity imperative is distorting Labor\u2019s thinking on immigration just as the White Australia policy did in the 1960s, and for essentially the same reason. Theoretical arguments about the ethnic composition of Australia have clouded practical decisions about the quantity and quality of our migration intake.<\/p>\n
Linking the housing shortage to the unprecedented number of migrants admitted since Covid has become taboo among the Labor intelligentsia. In April, junior Treasury minister Andrew Leigh wrote this in the Australian Financial Review: blaming migrants for a housing shortage was \u201ca populist manoeuvre\u201d. On housing, he wrote that \u201cmigrants aren\u2019t the culprits\u201d, \u201cIn fact, they\u2019re often part of the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carney, a former central bank governor who studied alongside Angus Taylor at Oxford, takes a different view. His strategy, released in 2024, stipulates that immigration needed to be matched to Canada\u2019s \u201ccapacity to build new homes\u201d and that the objective was to \u201cbalance housing supply with housing demand\u201d. Canada reduced planned permanent migration from the previous trajectory of 500,000 a year to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027, while also introducing targets for temporary migration for the first time. The previous target of 673,650 new temporary residents in 2025 was roughly halved to 385,000 in 2026 and 370,000 in 2027, as were student arrivals, which were cut to 155,000 in 2026, down from 305,000.<\/p>\n
The changes to the housing market have been startling. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported in July that slow population growth was weakening housing demand. Vacancy rates were rising in a number of cities and rent growth was slowing. <\/p>\n
![\"Canadian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/eb3d27e574d3197c73c179175a7b85aa.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The heat had been taken out of the property market, and prices were beginning to drop in some cities, though not as sharply or as erratically as in Australia. It is too early to tell whether Carney\u2019s incentives<\/a> to build new housing stock in close co-operation with provincial governments will work. Yet by slamming on the brakes for temporary migration and prioritising migrants with useful skills, Carney is correcting the imbalance between supply and demand in the housing market.<\/p>\n Albanese, on the other hand, is frozen in the headlights, without a coherent housing policy and an immigration policy that remains in flux. Reports at the weekend suggest Albanese has been spooked by predictions that cutting immigration will push the country into recession. He\u2019s also nervous about taking on the commercial vested interests of the university sector by capping overseas student numbers and removing the links between student visas and permanent migration.<\/p>\n Neither can we gloss over the PM\u2019s vanity as a constraint on rational housing and migration policy. The suspicion that Albanese has succumbed to a particularly strong form of hubris \u2013 an occupational hazard political leaders should guard against \u2013 has been confirmed over the last fortnight with \u201cMelon-gate\u201d. The entire executive government, including its most fervent feminists, has been absorbed in attempting to impose a benign interpretation on the PM\u2019s lewd hand gestures.<\/p>\n Albanese\u2019s strongest objection to linking housing policy to immigration may be that Taylor called for it first and that Albanese\u2019s authority will be further diminished by tacitly admitting it is a sensible idea.<\/p>\n Either way, housing and immigration are shaping up to be perhaps the biggest test of leadership and character in Albanese\u2019s prime ministership. Correcting course requires the courage to confront vested interests both inside and outside his own party, and correct the mistakes made in Jim Chalmers\u2019 May budget. <\/p>\n It will require taking a firm position based on economic principles and inner conviction, the kind of leadership we last saw in a Labor government under Hawke and Keating.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a leadership style that has been conspicuously absent in this government. Yet the experience in Canada suggests it has not entirely been extinguished, even on the left.<\/p>\n Read related topics:Anthony Albanese<\/a> Nick Cater is senior fellow of the Menzies Research Centre and a columnist with The Australian. He is a former editor of The Weekend Australian and a former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph. He is author of The Lucky Culture published by Harper Collins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"8 hours ago. Updated\u00a031 minutes ago Since neither of these objectives featured in his speech on budget 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<\/a><\/p>\n