Housing and immigration will take centre stage on Monday as the federal cabinet retreat in Halifax enters its first full day of meetings.
The annual late-summer cabinet meeting is intended to set the agenda for the autumn session of parliament which begins in three weeks.
The Liberals are at a decisive moment, after more than a year of falling in the polls and, at most, a year before the next federal election.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to take questions from the media early Monday morning, something he has done much less frequently since the Liberals lost a critical byelection in a Toronto stronghold in late June.
Ministers are also expected to provide updates on the ongoing renewal of the temporary foreign worker programme, as well as domestic childcare and electric vehicle tariffs.
The cabinet will also be forced to deal with the still-unresolved labor dispute within the two national railroads, with the Teamsters planning a protest at today’s meeting.
Last week, the government asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to initiate binding arbitration to end a work stoppage that began when both Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) shut down their jobs at midnight Thursday.
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The board on Saturday agreed to the request for binding arbitration, but Teamsters President Paul Boucher has vowed to fight it in court and will lead a protest in Halifax today.
But for the Liberals, affordability and housing shortages will remain top priorities.
The explosion of immigration under his watch has become a major problem, contributing to rising housing costs and fueling anti-immigrant sentiment in many parts of the country.
Last summer’s Cabinet retreat began to address the explosion of international student visas and in January, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced that the government would approve 35 per cent fewer student visas this year than in 2023.
It has now turned its attention more to temporary foreign workers, many of whom are paid low wages for jobs that are hard to find Canadians to do. The number of low-wage foreign workers increased fivefold between 2016 and 2024, with much of that growth occurring during the post-COVID-19 labour shortage experienced in 2022.
Miller has said conditions have changed and the program must change as well. The government recently approved a six-month freeze on the entry of new low-wage temporary foreign workers into Montreal.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is also expected to discuss with her Cabinet colleagues the summer consultation that studied whether to join the United States and Europe in imposing new tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles.
The Cabinet heard on Sunday night from U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan during a working dinner kicking off the Cabinet retreat, who warned of China’s economic policies, including overproduction and state subsidies that lead to unfair prices and competition.
President Joe Biden announced in May that he would quadruple import taxes on Chinese-made electric vehicles to 100 percent, and Canada is expected to follow the U.S. lead with its own new tariffs.
Freeland spent July conducting the consultations necessary to do so, but has yet to say when the tariffs will be applied or what they will be.
The European Union is due to vote in October on whether to introduce new tariffs in its member states as well.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is pushing the government to impose tariffs, promising to do so if he wins the next election.
Speaking to reporters on the way to a Cabinet meeting Sunday night, Sullivan said the U.S. will not tell Canada what to do, but there are important questions about economic fairness and data security related to Chinese-made cars.
“The United States believes that a united front, a coordinated approach on these issues, benefits us all,” he said.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
