Has Canada Fixed The Immigration Frauds?

Namaste everyone.

Welcome to the Charbuk Podcast.

This is your host Kushal Mehra.

Now, a few days ago, there was a detailed report on Stats Canada.

I'm going to be putting up the image on the screen.

where it was shown that the quarterly population growth rate of Canada from 2014 to 2025 was published.

Obviously, I'm narrating it for the audio listeners, but the video listeners can look at the screen right now on how the population growth as per stats Canada has fallen down.

After that, there has been a lot of commentary on this.

But I wanted to make specific claims.

Obviously, this tweet is shared by Darshan Bhai.

This particular image says that the latest federal immigration data shows that Canada welcomed more than 817,000 newcomers, 8,17,000 for Indian viewers, newcomers in the first four months of 2025 when tallying up permanent and non-permanent streams.

Between January and April 2025, 132,100 people were granted permanent residency, while 194,000 student permits and 491,400 work permits, including extensions, were finalized by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

Now, there's been a lot of debate around these numbers, whether Canada has actually reduced the claims or not, whether

whether these claims that no Canadian population has started to go down, especially I think Ontario and British Columbia were right after Alberta and maritime provinces for population growth, where Manitoba was 2.9% and Saskatchewan was 2.6%.

But I thought, you know, let us have a serious discussion around this.

What is the reality of these figures?

How much can we rely on the Stats Canada report?

Are there any possible statistical anomalies in that?

So I reached out to Darshanbhai because he also had commented on this.

So Darshanbhai, welcome.

And what do you make of the initial look at the report of Stats Canada?

It's you know, first of all, Bloomberg reduced it to a headline saying the population growth rate had gone down to zero.

Actually, there is a small increase, about twenty thousand or.

So it is next to zero at zero point zero five percent, so that has taken root.

And because we don't have a culture of intellectual inquiry in Canada,

That quickly became the established fact or belief that population did not grow in the first quarter of 2025.

I consider it to be a statistical improbability with all the plus and minus factors.

So when there is no culture of intellectual inquiry, everyone will toss out one aspect or one factor that affects the equation.

But nobody will look at the polynomial equation.

That is an equation that has multiple variables.

So first of all, let me go back to my article from September last year.

Statistics Canada had put out a report saying that 98% of the population increase was due to immigration.

Which means that 2% of the population increase was due to all the other factors.

So even if you stop immigration in a hypothetical world, of course, if you stop immigration completely,

Then the population would have gone up by about 20,000 in one year.

So what are these factors?

First of all, there are local births, then deaths.

So births minus deaths.

Then there are people leaving Canada.

Either they are Canadians who are leaving for greener pastures or people who are here on a temporary visa.

Their visa expires and then they decide to leave.

And yes.

that does happen in spite of all the news or commentary that we hear about people overstaying their visa.

Then the biggest complication is that the people who don't leave are not counted in the population.

So in December of 2023, the chief economist of CIBC came out saying that Statistics Canada was undercounting the population by roughly 1 million.

that created an uproar and finally the immigration minister at the time Mark Miller also said that there are anything between 300,000 to 500,000 people who are undocumented which means people who came here on some valid visa on the expiry of their visa they have not left.

Now since then in the 16 months since then

one can reasonably expect that phenomenon to have picked up steam because the immigration policy started getting tighter.

So how many more undocumented people are there

People who file for asylum, they are in technical lingo, they have no status and therefore they are not counted in population.

So given all this, I consider it a statistical improbability that the increase in population in three months was only 20,000.

Let's keep this in perspective.

We were having roughly 1.2 million to 1.3 million people being added to Canadian population every year for three years.

Which means in one quarter, on an average, the population increased by anything between 100,000 to 110,000.

For that to have reduced to 20,000 is a massive drop.

It's, you know, how much is it?

Less than...

20% remaining, which means more than 80% drop.

So that I don't think has happened because we have not shut down temporary foreign worker visa.

We have not shut down international student visa.

Permanent resident applications were already in the queue.

And as and when their case was finalized, they were

granted permanent residency.

Now, one argument that I saw was that many of the people to whom a new visa was issued were already in Canada.

So yes, they were already in Canada, but that doesn't mean that there will be an 80% drop.

Remember, by the natural birth rate minus deaths, there is a marginal increase in Canadian population.

So

despite all the talk about low birth rate.

And that is another point where, you know, some bit of intellectual inquiry is required, which I have gone into to the extent that it was possible for me in my article that you showed on the screen, which is that if the replacement rate is supposed to be two point one percent, Statistics Canada says that the birth rate in Canada is one point thirty three.

instead of 2.1 children per woman.

And if we are having a 20,000 people increase in the population by natural causes, then I have doubt about that birth rate of 1.33 children per woman, because we are obviously at the replacement level slightly ahead, but that is a marginal figure.

So I don't know.

These are the points that we need to

investigate seriously and people with more resources than I do.

But coming back to the point, people who are already here and granted visa and therefore they just change their status, that cannot account for hundreds of thousands of visas being issued.

So to my mind, it's a statistical improbability that the increase in Canadian population in one quarter was only 20,000 when

We were running at a clip of 100,000 or 110,000 for the last three years.

It may have dropped to 50,000.

It may have dropped to 70,000.

I don't know.

But these are the doubts in my mind.

Now, the only way something like this has happened is so for the benefit of our listeners and viewers, there are fresh applications coming at X rate, right?

There is a rate at which applications are coming in for the last five years.

Post-COVID.

Post-COVID, five years.

This is the period we are talking about.

Pre-COVID, Canada was a normal country.

Post-COVID, as they say, So that's what has happened with Canada.

For this particular statistical claim to come true at a statistical level,

all the current uh averages of applications should have dropped systematically to next to nothing like there are no new applications literally quite literally almost next to nothing new applications that's when something like this will achieve so basically what we are saying is the measures that were taken under the trudeau administration by mark miller had led to a halt in applications

So have applications halted is a natural question that should be asked, right?

Have they shared that number?

I could not find it in the Stats Canada report.

Applications.

Even I could not find it.

And for your audience, my ability to look at information right now is limited because I had a cataract operation.

So my vision for distance is corrected.

But that means because it's an artificial lens, it doesn't have the flexibility of a

natural lens.

So I cannot read.

I am awaiting the expiration of the prescribed period when I will get my reading glasses.

So my ability to read is limited right now.

But even then I could not find any data on how many applications have been received.

Now, one argument that doesn't hold to scrutiny

was that people who are issued a visa don't necessarily come to Canada immediately.

And therefore, the population did not go up in spite of the visas being issued.

But that is not a valid argument because, you know, people who were issued visa in the previous quarter would have come in this quarter.

And over a longer period and with large numbers like in the hundreds of thousands, you expect them to be somewhat similar over different quarters.

There may be a little bit of a bump in the fall when bulk of the international students arrive, etc.,

But that to my mind, that's not an argument because it's a self canceling factor.

The factor from previous quarter cancels the factor of the current quarter, more or less.

So that is first of all, we don't have as extensive data being reported by officials or official departments.

as i have seen for example in the united states i hate comparing canada to the united states which is a default position in canada but in this case i observed during the 2008 financial crisis there was a lot of blogging happening at the time about the various aspects of the economy and most of the bloggers were americans and they were quoting federal reserve data and

I think everyone knows that it's not just one federal reserve.

There are regional federal reserves also.

So each one has a specialty in researching one particular aspect and then they publish very detailed data.

Then there are other institutions like the Bureau of Land Management and for labor statistics and all.

So we don't get as detailed data.

In fact, it's pretty sketchy.

There is hardly any meaningful data being published.

So we don't know how many applications were received.

At least I don't know.

But for all these factors, like new visas issued, minus people who did not come, minus deaths, plus births, plus people who were already here and just changed their status, all those factors to neatly balance out the number of new visas issued.

I don't know if the probability is one in million or billion, but that's a very, very low probability.

And I don't think that has happened because all the universities and colleges are still being granted.

You know, their applicants are being granted study permits and all temporary foreign workers.

We still have the same problem that we had last year, despite all the pronouncements by Immigration Minister Mark Miller.

And, you know, it is

One elucidating comment came from the new immigration minister who said that we have rules in this country and we expect people to follow the rules.

So when their visa expires, we expect them to leave.

There is no mechanism to capture the date when somebody does not leave, regardless of whether you can find them or not, because they could have gone underground regardless of that.

You should be able to tell that X person is now illegally in Canada.

But there is no mechanism to capture that data and that is rather simple to do in today's technology.

Every visa should have a barcode and then when they enter, the barcode is scanned and when they exit, the barcode is scanned.

And straight away you know.

Whether someone is overstaying or not, finding them is a different issue altogether.

But at least you have a handle on how many people are in Canada illegally or undocumented in official language.

So with all these factors, I don't think the rate of population increases drop from 110,000 in a quarter to 20,000 in a quarter.

Now, one more question.

One number which nobody wants to talk about.

And maybe we can spend the rest of the time talking about that.

Now, this Handel cover constantly writes about LMIA positions and many other things also.

And even he had raised his doubts on the Stats Canada position.

But forget that.

I want to look at a different position altogether.

What is the state of refugee status applications in Canada as of now?

The last I saw, I think there were 270,000 plus pending applications and

The number of applications being finalized.

That means asylum is granted or refused or the person withdraws the application.

All those put together was about 72,000.

So at that time I had tweeted saying that there is like four years worth of backlog in official language.

It's called inventory as if people are merchandise.

I don't like that term.

But there is roughly four years of inventory of asylum applications.

That's the last I saw.

So what I have understood is basically what has happened, the population has not dropped.

But what has happened is a record number of people have lost their official status.

That's what has happened.

So they're still here.

Now their official status is unknown.

So they're not counted in the population of Canada.

That means

The population of illegal aliens has increased in Canada.

Right?

That should be the natural correlation, right?

Yeah.

And the ones who are here legally, because this population is not counted, they were counted before.

Now that they have filed for asylum, they are no longer counted.

So it depresses the total count.

So it's very interesting.

Now, let's say I have lost my temporary status in Canada.

I have.

Okay.

That's a given.

What do I do?

So what is the process in Canada?

So I can apply for renewal on something.

Now, during that renewal period, what I assume is I think I'm allowed to stay in Canada with some permissions, right?

I'm allowed to stay in Canada because I was already in that state.

I was working.

I was doing something.

And...

That was the concern of the government of the day.

Some of them are definitely going to try the refugee route.

100% sure.

Also, what I find very interesting is in the drop of these people who have lost their status, previous status, keyword previous immigration status that has been lost.

This previous immigration status that has been lost, these people must be in hundreds of thousands, right?

Because for the number to fall down so drastically, it has to be hundreds of thousands.

So in this, now we talk about the next set of problems that are going to come for Canada.

Refugee status claims, which are more likely than not usually fraudulent.

Even in the old system, they were fraudulent.

Most of them were fraudulent.

Some were genuine.

Before somebody misunderstands me, there are genuine cases.

There are cases of atheists that I have helped to come to the Western world because they were prosecuted by the law machinery over there and persecuted by the society over there.

There are many atheists in Pakistan that I have helped to go to Europe and some other parts of the world.

That is not the issue over here.

The issue over here is...

that there are many who abuse.

So I'll give you three examples.

And I never forget to give these examples because I laughed so hard when I heard these stories from an immigration agent who I refuse to name.

There are three examples from India.

It was the political, you know, the circle of politics being completed.

One person said they were from Punjab, from, no, no, from Delhi, from the Aam Aadmi Party.

And they were persecuted by the BJP and Congress.

political or political persecution application from India there is no religion persecution application from India that should be considered valid forget political but then there was a congressman who applied saying the opposite and then there was a BJP guy saying I am from this state where I am a BJP supporter I am being persecuted

for my political views.

Please grant me asylum over here.

This is the level of rubbish that we see these days.

How do you assess this rubbish?

Yeah, it's difficult to assess.

The only recourse is to declare certain countries as safe countries from where asylum application cannot be made like the UK did for India, I think sometime last year or maybe the year before that.

But you know, that is a

kind of an anomaly in our scheme of asylum processing.

The system is being overloaded by what someone called jokingly as the suddenly gay people.

This friend of mine has a sense of humor.

And he's a Punjabi.

He's a Sikh, in fact, not just a Punjabi, but a Punjabi Sikh.

And he said all these suddenly gay Mundas, because their study permit ran out, they were unable to get a work permit or their work permit ran out, they were unable to get an extension.

And suddenly they decided that they will file an application on grounds of being gay and that in India,

They would be persecuted.

Whereas in India, the situation is at least you can say it is complex.

There are strata of Indian society where it's no big deal.

And there are strata of society where it's a problem.

For the person who is... No, but you can live a life as a gay man or a lesbian woman in India now.

Maybe in some cities in India, gay pride parades may not be considered kosher.

But overall in India, you can be gay and live your life.

The bestiality law has also been, you know...

read down by the BJP government, by the court under the BJP government.

So these things are there.

The fight for, you know, legalization of homosexual marriage is also going on in India.

There is no resistance from the majority Hindu population of India, which is why things are relatively normal.

Till India is Hindu, it will be normal.

Exactly.

Actually, I know someone personally who is in the LGBTQ camp and who is a

in a director's position in a multinational company of the US.

Right.

So depending on where you are, it's perfectly safe.

And in immigration law, there is something called IFR, that is internal relocation route, something like that, which basically means that if a person has the

opportunity to relocate within the same country to flee their persecution, then that person's asylum claim will not be granted.

This is the principle.

I don't know whether IRCC follows it or not.

or follows it strictly or not.

Let me explain this using an Indian example.

Kunal Kamra because BJP and Shinde Sena is in power is living in Pondicherry under a DMK government.

Perfect example.

Yeah.

So you have recourse to internal flight.

or people of Op India who were originally from Mumbai when the Uddhav Thackeray Sena along with Sharad Pawar and Congress came to power, went to Nolda under BJP.

Yeah, right.

So as long as you are able to relocate within your country, within your home country and thereby avoid whatever persecution or harassment that you are facing,

then that person is not considered eligible for asylum in Canada.

That is the law.

Now, the application of that law may be not 100% consistent, but all these suddenly gay moondas, I don't know how far their application can go in terms of approval.

So do you know that Pakistani terrorist who was caught last year?

Yeah.

Mohammad Shahzaib Khan.

Do you remember that guy?

Yeah.

Do you know what his application status was?

He was a student getting converted into refugee status.

And you know what he was using?

He's gay.

Yeah, suddenly.

Yeah.

So now that's what I wanted to come to.

This entire Stats Canada report leads to other implications.

These are serious national security implications for Canada and America both.

Now, Shahzaib Khan is a classic case that had been exposed last year is when the Americans actually exposed them.

The Americans caught this guy driving all the way across the border, trying to go to New York to attack a Jewish synagogue, allegedly.

This guy was on chat rooms where they were monitoring him, talking about, you know, he was, I think he was an ISIS recruit or something of that sort.

And this guy has clearly used the fraudulent immigration, lax immigration policies of Canada.

Now, for those who don't understand, Canada is a very high trust society.

They built their entire system on very high levels of trust where people coming in, they assume they're just saying the right thing.

Now these...

These shady people have realized that and different elements have started exploiting the system at a very hyper level, especially in the last five years.

A lot of fraudulent claims of LMIAs and many other things have also emerged in the trucking industry.

In the trucking industry also, if you break this down, right, a major chunk of these people will be trucking, restaurants and all these kinds of shady industries where they are suddenly, you know, refugees, oppressed, this, that, all sorts of things which are happening.

What are the national security implications to Canada of this fraudulent system?

First of all, before I answer your question, I will take issue with your statement that Canada is a high trust society.

This will come as a shock to most Canadians.

But my argument is this, that knowingly allowing bad players to defraud millions of international students

Even after the issue blew up early last year, the thing has continued.

Knowingly allowing that to happen is not the hallmark of a high trust society.

No, there is at the individual level, Canadians are high trust people.

But at the official level, it's the opposite.

where all sorts of scams are allowed to go on for political benefit or gain.

So it is a low trust society at that top stratum.

The reason why people's word is taken at its face value is because we are not mature enough as administrators.

A capable administrator would want to make sure of certain basic facts that this foreigner coming into the country, does it pose a risk to public safety?

Does it pose a risk to the public safety in the United States?

They may not be intending to do any harm here, like the case of Shahzaib Khan shows, but they may have plans to

carry out violence in the United States because this is an easy gateway.

Now, go back to 9-11.

After 9-11, then President Bush set up Department of Homeland Security.

It did not exist before that.

And the first head of that department, I don't know what that position is called, but I think it was Secretary of Homeland Security.

Janet Napolitano claimed falsely that the 9-11 attackers had come to USA via Canada.

That was because the so-called millennial bomber back in 1999, he wanted to carry out some kind of bombing or something in the United States, had gone to British Columbia and then, you know,

Either tried to go to USA from there or managed to go, but he was apprehended before he could carry out his plan.

So based on that, she said that the 9-11 attackers had come via Canada.

But it took only one generation for that bogus statement to become fact.

where we have people coming to Canada on some kind of a visa and then infiltrating into the US or planning to do so to carry out terrorist acts.

So we have to get our act together.

Now, May last year, Immigration Minister Mark Miller was asked by a journalist

whether international students have to undergo a criminal background check.

And he said yes, which was false.

And I fault the journalist for not knowing the answer beforehand.

As a journalist, once you ask a question about a fact, you should know the fact.

Then you will know that the politician or whoever is answering the question is not telling the truth.

It is not a factual answer.

And then immediately on that day, I posted saying this is verifiably false.

The immigration officer can ask for a police clearance certificate, as it is called in India.

Here it's called criminal background check.

But in case of India, they don't.

And in case of many other countries, they don't.

So, for example, the criminals who flee India

and come to Canada and then join a criminal gang here.

And then it creates a bilateral issue with India because Canadian official stance is that they are acting on the behest of Indian government.

But we don't know.

So if you screen people properly, then you are also saving your bilateral relation with the fastest growing economy in the world.

So it's a major problem.

I agree.

So let's talk about this.

I have said it multiple times.

So it's not like when you immigrate to Canada on a permanent residency, you don't need a police clearance certificate.

Exactly.

Exactly.

See, even Minister Miller said on record that from some of these countries, a police clearance certificate does not mean a lot because it can be fraudulent, it can be bought, etc.

Words to that effect.

And my point was that you are from the same country, you are requiring permanent residency applicants to produce a police clearance certificate.

And then you are saying that in the case of study permits, it is irrelevant because it can be fraudulent.

Yeah, I think it also depends on what part of the country you're from.

Let's say a police certificate from Mumbai, Delhi, all the major cities.

It's not that easy.

Police just do background checks on you.

So it's not as simple as people make it sound.

But yes, there was a problem from particular parts of Punjab.

where cops had made this a business.

It was a business of generating PCCs.

And in fact, if you remember last year, I had mentioned this point along with you on one of our immigration discussions that people need to be very careful about this whole PCC thing also.

that is done that you need some level of checking about people and some level of vetting and even after that there will be leaks through the system there is no foolproof system in my opinion a system can be exploited by no matter whomsoever we talk about that's not the issue over here the issue is that

A country sends a message.

So let me use this as an example.

The moment Canada sent a message that, you know what, you just can't walk into our country anytime you want to.

That was the message Canada sent last year after a lot of, you know, hoopla around immigration.

Immigration applications of student permits in India dropped by 80%.

You know, you get a message.

The host nation, no, the applicant nation got the message and everybody just moved on from Canada.

Now, if you go to, you know, all these immigration agencies in India and you ask them, Canada is almost done.

Nobody wants to go to Canada.

Yes, some major universities, yes, but the diploma will route from India has shut.

This was only operational because Canada was willing to do business.

The moment people realized Canada is not willing to do business, everybody, almost all immigration agents other than fraudulent ones, stopped.

And there is a lot of crackdown happening at the Indian level, at the level of Punjab police.

There were cases of Chandigarh police nabbing a few, Delhi police nabbing a few.

These fraudulent immigration news don't come a lot in Mumbai.

In general, you don't find people from Mumbai over here.

You just don't.

It's very rare.

See, it's a telling commentary that Indian government is investigating more than 100 Canadian colleges.

Because, you know, they are also concerned about their people being defrauded.

So Indian government is investigating more than 100.

I think the number was over 140 Canadian colleges.

That shows how much lacks or in my harsh terms, low trust our system is.

As long as money is coming in, we don't care if people are being defrauded, not just on the study permit thing, but also on the work permit thing.

where the United Nations report says that Canada's work permit regime is a contemporary form of slavery.

And nobody is ashamed of it in Canada.

And of course, mainstream media will not hammer on it.

Once the news comes out, they will put out one report and that's the end of it.

They won't chase it because sometime before the election, I started calling them regime loyalists.

So they will not do anything to upset the regime.

But, you know, it's shameful.

Future generations of Canadians will be ashamed of the fact that this was allowed to happen.

Contemporary form of slavery.

yeah it is and and and i want to play this clip by cash patel because it's very relevant to what's happening in canada and uh it's a small clip so where's all the fentanyl coming from so where's the trafficking coming from still where is all where are all the narco traffickers going

to keep bringing this stuff into the country, the Northern border.

Our adversaries have partnered up with the CCP and others, Russia, Iran, on a variety of different criminal enterprises and they're going and they're sailing around to Vancouver and coming in by air.

And the sheer tyranny of distance of the Northern border and the lack of cooperation from federal authorities and prior administrations to actually firm up the Northern border is what's causing a continuation of violent crime.

Now we're focused on it.

And we're calling our state and local law enforcement partners up there.

But you know who has to get to step in is Canada.

Because they're making it up there and shipping it down here.

And I don't care about getting into this debate about making someone the 51st state or not.

But they are a partner in the north.

And say what you want about Mexico, but they helped us seal the southern border.

The facts speak for themselves.

The border that's open, I'll give you a statistic that I gave to Congress that nobody was paying attention to.

Over 300 known or suspected terrorists crossed into this country last year illegally.

Known or suspected terrorists, not illegals.

Not just illegals, known or suspected terrorists.

85% of them came in through the northern border.

This year, 100 known or suspected terrorists have crossed into this country illegally.

64% in the north.

That is shameful.

Yeah.

It shows how low trust our country is at the official level.

As long as some politicians are gaining benefit from it,

either voter support, funding, whatever, they let it continue regardless of cost to others.

That is a low-trust society.

I mean, I don't know what to say.

I mean, even with this, I don't know.

Did you read this claim by Cover?

He's written this.

Cash grab to mind, though, the comeback of Canada's most shameless diploma mills.

Private diploma mills were expected to collapse after the Canadian government ended the public-private partnership scheme, but they didn't.

In fact, they thrived.

The same plaza colleges, same operating out of single rooms, they have come up with a new invention now.

reinvention they have hired consultants and social media influencers to push a new pitch urging people already in canada on work permits to return to school their angle your previous diploma is useless but our new program can save you and just like that a new scam i mean yeah you see this is what happens when a country loses a real economy right

That is honestly the most profound thing we can say on this.

Yeah, because I've seen it in my childhood and in my younger days in India when economic growth was like anemic at best.

Right.

And then all these scams proliferated because people want to get ahead.

They want to make money and there are no legal avenues available.

Now, I'm not giving them a pass for doing that.

especially when it is something as serious as duping someone, a young chap or a poor family halfway across the world and then showing them a false promise and bringing them here and basically they are in indentured servitude.

So I don't condone that.

But if you want to tackle this, if you want this to stop, then the first thing that is required is robust economic growth.

which is not there because, you know, we diverted our attention to social engineering and, you know, everything was either racist or xenophobic or, you know, some kind of a phobic.

So, you know, there was no attention on the economy.

All the major projects keep either getting, you know, stored at best, like the oil and gas pipelines, etc.,

Or the government will then step in with 50 billion dollars of people's money to throw at EV battery plants when the technology is rapidly becoming outdated.

There is no demand for EVs.

And anyway, China is making something much cheaper.

Right.

So there is no real economic growth in Canada and therefore all these scams will proliferate because when there is no economic growth,

There is also pressure to show better numbers.

So Minister Miller kept claiming that we avoided two recessions, not on a per capita basis.

The macro numbers were going up because they were goosed up, basically, because of higher population and inflation.

You strip out those two factors.

I wrote an article on that.

where in 1960s, the real per capita growth rate for the entire decade was 4.22%.

And in the decade of 2012 to 2021, it was 0.67%.

So, you know, if people are not getting ahead and you want the GDP to still keep going up, then you are going to resort to all these fraudulent schemes

that make the macro numbers go up.

But at the individual level, people are falling behind.

Yesterday your chat with Vyat Claypool showed up on my YouTube feed.

And because I can't read, I'm listening to podcasts.

So I listened to that.

And you said that when you were at York University, you had a one bedroom apartment with only one roommate to share with.

And the rent was around $900.

back in 2001 plus parking, $900 plus parking.

Now, when I came to Canada and started living in Brampton soon after that, about 20 years ago, and I had a one bedroom apartment in a proper purpose built rental complex of four buildings.

And my rent was $850 for one bedroom apartment.

And we were living as a family.

Right.

Now, today you look at the rent.

If people are paying $2,500 for one bedroom apartment, GDP has gone up.

But not in a way that benefits the average person.

In fact, they are scrambling to make two ends meet.

Whereas at $850, even if you adjust it for inflation, that is the broader level of inflation as reported by StratScan, then it should be

way less probably 40 less it should be around 1500 1600 so minimum wage at that time was around eight dollars today it is sixteen dollars i think and fifty cents or thereabouts so yeah you expect the rent to double from 850 to 1700 but the rest you know between 1700 to 2500 that 800 is eroding the quality of life of the renter your gdp has gone up

that's not the measure it's the only in my opinion there is the on the economic front nothing beats inflation adjusted per capita GDP and its growth rate.

This is the only thing that matters but again as I said we don't have spirit of inquiry or culture of inquiry in Canada barring a few here and there and I'm not shilling for anyone but any

opinion that goes counter to the narrative in the mainstream media will come from one of the post media outlets, National Post or Toronto Sun or one of those, you know.

Other than that, everybody is, even now, you know, the mainstream media is carrying stories of how cuts to immigration have harmed all these colleges or they are likely to lead to, you know,

labor shortages, like your unemployment rate is 7%.

Don't talk about labor shortages.

There is this Professor Michal Sputter who puts out interesting data and analysis.

So most of the spirit of inquiry is seen from individuals, not from institutions, including media.

But he some time ago, he posted a chart showing that for every job vacancy, there are almost three applicants, three unemployed people, not applicants, because an applicant can be employed.

He said for every job vacancy, there are almost three unemployed people.

Now, at that point, you can't talk about labor shortages except in specific fields where there may be labor shortages.

So, you know, this, I mean, for all the lampooning of mainstream media that you see on social media, they are still able to set the narrative, which is a real barrier to progress.

Honestly, Facebook, you cannot share an article in Canada.

Do you know, on my personal Facebook account, I can't share any article from any Indian media.

Regardless of where the media outlet is.

So I cannot share anything there.

On my business account, I can.

I have a public account and a personal account.

In my personal account, I can't share anything.

On my business account, I can before somebody misunderstands me.

There, I can.

Everything in Canada is now pretty much happening through Twitter or X.

I mean, that's where most are.

And even in that, honestly, other than a few people like in Canada that I have come across, who don't want to have serious discussions, who want to break down numbers, who want to have mature discussions, everything is just click farming in Canada also.

Like they'll find some random video and then they will generalize every immigrant or they will find some random video about some white people in Canada and generalize about white people in Canada.

It's just ridiculous.

It is shamelessness.

This is the incentivization of the blue tick.

I mean, although it has gotten much better information out also, there is this problem.

In Canada, what I found in general is a very low quality of discourse around policymaking.

This is not the case in the United States of America.

In the United States of America, you have a very high quality of discussion happening in the think tank apparatus and in the podcasting space.

In Canada, it's not the case.

It's very, very few, one or two people who actually want to have.

And the sneering by the mainstream media of X people on X is very disappointing in Canada.

Very disappointing.

They should be engaging with these people.

Exactly.

Actually, I have noticed that I'm not tooting my own horn.

But when you look at the most prominent journalists or commentators in the mainstream media, they don't engage with their audience on Twitter.

They will post something and then whatever the responses are, they won't engage.

And

In fact, I have seen people like it when I reply to almost all the comments that follow on my post.

But see, mainstream media for the large part has abandoned its role of informing the public.

So they are not talking to us.

They are talking at us.

And that is because they are regime loyalists.

They will not allow, barring a few token voices here and there, they will not allow anything, any voice to go against the... Are you saying Canadian media is Godi media?

Yeah, it is.

It is.

See, consider the fact.

Why doesn't CBC allow comments on its YouTube posts?

Like, what is the reason?

I have yet to fathom it.

See, YouTube has its own community standards.

So if someone goes off the rails, their algorithm will not show that post.

It is a taxpayer funded media outlet and taxpayers cannot comment on what they are saying.

It is because they believe in talking at people, at Canadians, not to them.

I'm surprised they haven't shut off comments on their Twitter posts yet.

Maybe they will, but at least that is one avenue available where people can voice their views, plus or minus, on whatever the CDC is saying.

Yeah, it's not a serious country.

We don't have sociological research from academia that goes against the top-down narrative.

We don't have the media doing that.

politicians are either on board or too scared to talk.

I'll give you an example.

On 24th of March, the first day of the campaign, election campaign, I was at a press conference of Pierre Collier and my question was in the context of his promise to increase the oil and gas exports of Canada to more countries by putting up

pipelines to both the oceans on the east and on the west.

So my question was that one of the two biggest markets for our oil and gas is India, but our relationship with India is in the deep freeze.

So how will you restore cordial relations with India?

And he didn't answer the question.

He talked about repealing Bill C 69 and

whatever else that he had been saying but he did not touch upon the main where the question actually was which was how do you mend relations with India so that you can sell oil and gas to them.

Now that is playing safe and then when Prime Minister Karni invited Prime Minister Modi to G7, Pierre Palliot came out saying this is the right thing to do.

India is a big market and we need

It's a democracy and all the usual stuff.

But when there were stakes, he played it safe.

Now that he didn't win the election, he follows what Prime Minister Carney did.

So that is on the political level.

People are either on board the narrative or playing it safe, not saying anything that goes against the narrative.

Media is regime loyalist.

Academia is nowhere to be seen in putting out contrary research.

You remember my first chat with Clyde.

The reason why it went viral, like in a couple of days, it had 130,000 views was because this was the first time people were hearing something that they were curious about.

what exactly is going on in the international student area.

And nobody had told them.

And we had a one and a half hour chat.

We are supposed to be in an attention economy where people look at the headline and scroll past.

And for those people to spend one and a half hours, 130,000 of them in 48 hours means that it was something that they really wanted to know.

But nobody is bringing it to them.

And again,

We don't have a culture where, you know, some podcasters can become big names like Joe Rogan in the US, you know, where he can put out something and there will be millions upon millions of viewers.

OK, our population is one ninth of the US.

But even if you adjust the numbers, there isn't that interest.

So the same people who say that MSM is useless.

will not support independent voices.

So we are in a funk, basically, at a societal level.

I think Canada is too obsessed with American news.

This is my honest assessment.

They're just too obsessed with American news.

Just to back you up on how bad immigration policies can lead to loss of business, just look at this.

This report is from LiveMint.

For those who don't know, this is a report from Live Mint.

Israel-Iran conflict effect.

India ramps up crude oil imports from Russia, US in June of 2025.

This is June 22, yesterday, by Anubha Mukherjee.

I want to read some.

Important bits of this report.

Indian refiners are expected to import 2 million to 2.2 million barrels of crude oil per day in June 2025, marking the highest level of Russian oil imports in the last two years, according to the agency report citing data.

The crude oil imports from Russia were at 1.96 million barrels a day in May 2025.

This expected hike in volumes is also said to beat the total volumes brought from Gulf nations like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, as per the report.

On crude oil imports on the US front, Indian refiners crude oil imports from the United States also jumped to 439,000 barrels per day in June 2025 compared to that 280,000 barrels per day levels in the previous month.

The data report also showed how the full month projects from crude oil imports from the Middle East into India showed at 2 million barrels per day, lower than the May 2025 levels according to the agency report.

what has happened is again America seems to have benefited way more from you know the and they have imported the Indians have imported American oil and as always it's not like Canada could not have done this

Canada could also have supplied all of this.

But there is a fundamental lack of understanding in Canada when it comes to foreign policy.

Canada is like this.

They try to be passive aggressive.

And in Hindi, there is a correct word for it.

And beyond the point, people are like ..

In order for people to listen to you, you need to have stature.

And you gain that stature by playing in the major areas of geopolitics.

One of them is energy supplies.

Now, most of our oil is going to the United States.

In fact, almost all, I think.

And about 80% of our natural gas is going to the United States.

So nobody is going to listen to us because we are not playing a significant role in their lives.

Why should they listen to us?

Just because we are Canada, that we are an offshoot of the British Empire at some point?

No, the world has moved on.

See, I'll give you an unrelated example, but it

It is in the same vein.

I was watching a program on TVO about immigration.

There's this agency that helps newcomers settle into Canada.

And that guy said that we are still carrying a mindset that we are in the 1960s where we are an advanced country and third world countries are backward.

So when people come here, we are teaching them how to write checks.

And if they are from India, they have never written a check because everything is online.

Even a street vendor of vegetables will take payment from your phone.

Basically QR code based economy in India.

It's either cash or QR code.

Even credit cards are skipped.

Yeah.

So, you know, the same mentality prevails in the political sphere also where we think that we have global importance, but we have lost it over the last few decades, gradually and then suddenly, you know.

Gradually, we started becoming less and less important.

Then there was the financial crisis of the 1990s.

We dug ourselves out of it by pumping immigration numbers or whatever else we did.

And then over the last 10 years, it has gone suddenly because we were all into virtue signaling and social engineering and looking down our noses at everybody else when we had no achievements to post on.

So people started stop taking us seriously.

But yeah, you're right.

If the US can export more oil to India, why can't we?

Just imagine, India needs critical minerals.

Canada has one of the highest reserves of critical minerals on planet Earth.

There has been consistent lobbying inside Canada to start this with India, from both Canadians and Indians.

Such is the Canadian political class.

They have not done anything.

They have sat on it.

Notice the Karni-Modi joint pressure in G7, Kananaskis.

Critical minerals were mentioned there for the first time.

It was people like me who had to write backdoor reports and send it and tell them .. Yeah.

Yeah.

But see, mutual gain is not a priority.

If you are familiar with the name of Heather Exner Pirro, she's an energy journalist on Twitter.

You can find her.

And recently, she posted data showing that from finding the deposit of the mineral to operationalizing it, in Canada, it takes almost 20 years.

19.9 years.

So if you find a critical mineral deposit that was previously unknown today, then you can start exporting it in 2045. Who is going to wait for that?

Right.

We have and India is going big, not just on fossil fuels.

It's also going big on renewable energy, wind and solar and everything else, even nuclear.

Right.

So we have everything that they need from, you know, the legacy energy sources to the new ones and the in-between ones like uranium.

We have everything.

We could be their biggest trading partner.

We also have agricultural products, lentils and other stuff.

So we could be their biggest trading partner.

But it's because, you know, there is this.

I would call it a basket.

of approaches in politics one is first of all you talk about environmental concerns when it comes to fossil fuels it is direct when it comes to other minerals it is indirect that you know there is this pristine habitat and we are going to disturb it by mining x item then there are indigenous issues so typically there will be some

concerns around indigenous rights and how they are going to be affected by the industrial activity or mining activity.

And from my experience, the indigenous community is split down the middle.

There is a very big cohort of the indigenous population that wants to participate in economic growth.

And there is the other cohort that is against such activities being done in their traditional lands.

And it is the latter group that gets a hearing in politics.

The former group, you know, those who are in favor of all these projects, they don't get as much importance.

So it is a way to mire the project or proposed project in delays such that everybody gives up what Parkinson called denial by delay.

Yeah.

You delay it so much that people give us to hell with it.

We'll go elsewhere.

Yeah.

I mean, this figure is the final figure that I wanted to end with.

These are the quarter two 2024, quarter three 2024, quarter four 2024 and quarter one 2025 overall for Canada.

I am interested in Ontario.

Look at the number in Ontario.

They have really piped down in Ontario.

Really piped down.

Because major diploma I think almost 80 of them.

Yeah.

How have they managed this in Ontario?

I find this figure so indigestible.

When I saw this figure of Stats Canada, I was like, what the hell?

How has this happened?

Yeah.

True.

Nobody is minding the store, right?

Yeah, I don't know.

So before we wrap up, Darshan, by any last comments on this entire story, maybe we can end on this.

What do you think you will judge Stats Canada on?

Like after six months, maybe or a year when we see all these applications run out of their thing?

Do you think that is the answer?

Yeah, first of all, as I said earlier, the major intake of international students happens in the fall semester.

So September is when they come in.

So sometime towards the end of the year, hopefully, we will have a clearer picture of the population growth rate of Canada.

But again, there is this complicating factor of asylum claims of people whose status is expiring and then

are not counted in population anymore and because they are not counted there is no way to know where that number lands whether it's you know 50 000 or 500 000 and on a population base of 41 42 million that's a significant percentage of the population so population growth rate number has to be taken with a pinch of salt

Yeah, I agree with you.

But as always, it was an absolute pleasure to talk to you.

And guys, before I wrap up once again.

A reminder to everyone, this coming Sunday on the 29th of June, we have the United Against Terrorism Conference.

If you guys have not registered yourself, United Against Extremism Conference, I'm sorry.

If you have not registered yourself for the conference, I would urge each and every one of you to go right now, scan this QR code, and register right away.

You will have to show your ID on the day of the conference.

It is what it is.

You can also use the link that I've mentioned in the tweet.

As you see, this tweet is here.

You can use this link.

I will copy and paste it for everyone on the live screen.

Also, all the details will be there in the description of the podcast.

Do consider coming on this day and joining this conference.

There are going to be a lot of interesting speakers.

I will be announcing all the speakers in the coming four or five days.

One by one, we will announce all the speakers.

But trust me, you will not regret coming over here.

Obviously, you will have food and drinks over there.

Go follow Darshan Maharaja on X.

His X handle is there.

You can also read all his blogs on darshanmaharaja.ca if I remember the website correctly.

You can also support the Charbuck podcast by becoming a member on YouTube or on Patreon or sending one-time donations through UPI India or Interact Canada.

All the details are there in the description of the podcast.

I will see you guys next time.

Until then, namaste.

Take care.

Bye-bye.