Reporter claims 'Canada is relinquishing its welcome mat,' when in fact we are returning to pre-pandemic levels

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In 2017, when our fresh-faced prime minister was still under the mistaken impression that incessant virtue-signalling was a reasonable way to run a country, Justin Trudeau issued a proclamation to the world’s huddled masses: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” Canada, in other words, was instituting an open-door immigration policy, in contrast to the United States, where president Donald Trump had just signed an executive order intended to curb Muslim immigration.

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In the years that followed, the Liberals continually hiked their immigration targets, first to 400,000 permanent residents per year, then 500,000. It was only after Canadians’ historic consensus around the benefits of immigration started to fracture that the government pulled back, announcing on Thursday that the number of permanent residents admitted in 2025 will fall to 395,000, from the previous target of 485,000. That’s a pretty dramatic cut, but still well above the number of newcomers that were being admitted when the Liberals first took office a decade earlier.

Yet that’s not the impression Toronto Star readers got. The lede in a........

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