Marc Miller: The new Immigration Minister of Canada
This morning at 10:30 AM Eastern Time, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made big changes to his cabinet.
Marc Miller, a member of Parliament from Quebec, is now in charge of immigration in Canada. Miller was the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations for a while.
His job was to help Canada's Indigenous people decide for themselves. Sean Fraser, who was Canada's last Immigration Minister, will now be in charge of Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities.
Miller was elected to the Canadian Parliament for the first time in 2015. Miller was a lawyer and a member of the Canadian Armed Forces before he got into politics. Miller was born there and grew up there. He got two degrees in political science from the University of Montreal and one in law from McGill University.
Cabinet is the group of ministers that the Prime Minister of Canada chooses. They are in charge of getting the federal government's policy goals done and getting the word out.
Most Canadian prime ministers change their team about once every two years. A change is done to get rid of ministers who aren't doing their jobs well, promote ministers who the Prime Minister thinks have done a good job, and give the government a chance to update their policies and how they talk to the public.
The last big change in the cabinet was made after the federal election in October 2021. Fraser was named Canada's Immigration Minister and head of the Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) as part of this change.
Since November 2015, Trudeau has been Canada's Prime Minister. During this time, Canada has tried to get more people to move there.
Before Trudeau became Prime Minister, about 250,000 new legal residents moved to Canada each year. When Trudeau became prime minister, this number went up to 300,000 per year, and then it went up to 340,000 per year right before the pandemic.
During the pandemic, Canada raised its goals for new permanent residents to more than 400,000 per year. Under the Immigration Levels Plan for 2023–2025, Canada wants 500,000 permanent residents to come to the country each year by 2025.
Canada's aged population and low birth rate are pushing the country to try to get a lot more immigrants.
The federal government thinks that immigration is a way to strengthen Canada's economy and finances as the country's 9 million baby boomers hit the age of 65 and become eligible for retirement in the next 10 years.
Canada has a low jobless rate and a high number of open jobs at the same time that the number of immigrants is going up.
After a big change in the cabinet, the Prime Minister may decide to send new mission letters to each minister. These letters will tell each minister what they should be focusing on in their job.
In December 2021, Trudeau gave Fraser a list of immigration policies to highlight. This list included raising the number of immigrants, making it easier for newcomers to apply, changing Express Entry, making it easier for families to stay together, and encouraging French-speaking people to move to Canada.
Since then, Fraser has put some of these plans into action. For example, Canada has started to use category-based selection for Express Entry in the last month as a way to reach different economic goals, such as increasing the number of Francophone immigrants.
As another example, at the end of May, Fraser announced steps that would help Canadian families stay together.
