“We’re going to significantly reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada for the next two years. This is temporary — to pause our population growth and let our economy catch up,” he announced in a post on X. “We have to get the system working right for all Canadians.”

At a news conference, Trudeau pitched the change as a temporary “pause” in order to allow logistics to catch up with the growing population, promising further investments in healthcare, housing, and social services.

“Our immigration system has always been responsible and it has always been flexible,” he said. “We are acting today because of the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labor needs and maintaining population growth, we didn’t get the balance quite right.”

“Immigration is essential for Canada’s future, but it must be controlled and it must be sustainable,” Trudeau added.

The plan, put forward by Immigration Minister Marc Miller, calls for a 20% reduction in permanent residents in 2025, then continue to drop by roughly 4% annually through 2027, Bloomberg reported. From 2024 to 2025, the total planned number of immigrants will be reduced from 500,000 to 395,000.

In another unprecedented move, the number of non-permanent residents faces its first-ever limit, declining the expected number by hundreds of thousands.

Trudeau adopted some rhetoric previously used by former President Donald Trump in blaming corporations for using immigrants to undercut the wages of native Canadians.

“Far too many corporations have chosen to abuse our temporary measures employed in exploiting foreign workers while refusing to hire Canadians for a fair wage,’’ he said. “While under the watch of provinces, some colleges and universities are bringing in more international students than communities can accommodate, treating them as an expendable means to line their own pockets. That’s unacceptable.”

Among the new immigration restrictions are measures that place a limit on the percentage of companys’ workers that are foreigners.

Canada has one of the most liberal immigration policies on Earth, with one in five Canadians being born abroad. The ruling Liberal Party has overseen one of the largest migration waves in the country’s history, which it argues is necessary to stay economically competitive in the modern world.

This argument was undercut by an inability to properly recover after the COVID-19 pandemic. Anger over the economic system and a massive wave of immigration has caused the Liberal Party to plummet in the polls, setting the Conservatives up for a likely victory in late 2025.

The situation is so dire that Trudeaux is facing calls from many within his own party to not run for a fourth term of office next year.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, a prime minister hopeful, accused his rival of destroying the country’s immigration system.

“He has destroyed our immigration system through his own personal incompetence and destroyed 150 years of common sense consensus with the Liberals and Conservatives on that subject,” Poilievre said.

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“He cannot fix what he broke on immigration and housing or anything else because he is busy fighting his own caucus,” he added.

Canada has welcomed 3 million new migrants since the COVID-19 pandemic, shooting the population up from 38 million to 41 million people in just a few years. This growth saw housing costs rise, breeding popular discontent.