Matt Webb

Bramptonian refugee of many interests, from AI and investing to manufacturing and politics. Enjoyer of 🍺🍄🐈☕️📚🎸🪕🎷🚀🔫🏕️🥩 & stickshift. Ringed @uwaterloo

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

Return to tradition https://t.co/RxGXH0tAAh

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@ConstantiReload @JJ_McCullough Here you go. He’s not framing it from a hardline perspective because he’s trying to walk a fine line running for liberals but he really is saying all that.

[Eric Lombardi (EricForOLP.ca) 🇨🇦🚀 @EricDLombardi]

Canadian leaders are too afraid to engage seriously with the frustration many normal people feel about immigration after the last few years.

But I share many of their concerns.

We have made honest conversation too difficult. And in Ontario especially, we have been naive about the effects of sudden population growth on housing, wages, infrastructure, public services, and yes, social and cultural cohesion.

Immigration has historically been one of Ontario’s greatest strengths. It helped build our industries, our cities, and our prosperity.

But many Ontarians feel gaslit if they express frustration about current circumstances.

Young people watched rents explode. Entry-level work became more competitive and lower paid. Colleges transformed into immigration pathways. Infrastructure and healthcare struggled to keep up. It has changed our politics, too.

People are not imagining this. Ontario experienced a genuine immigration shock. This at least is somewhat acknowledged.

And while Ottawa deserves plenty of blame, Ontario cannot pretend this simply happened to us.

Doug Ford’s government helped create the conditions for this crisis by blowing up the higher education funding model.

They froze tuition, underfunded colleges and universities, then allowed institutions to make up the difference by massively expanding international student enrollment.

That turned parts of our higher education system into an immigration-processing business.

Now Ontario now needs a reset.

And because immigration policy is ultimately federal, Ontario will need to work closely with (and pressure) Ottawa to pursue a system that is sustainable, orderly, and capable of maintaining public trust.

Permanent immigration should return to a more normal and sustainable baseline, and no longer be subject to insiders claiming “labour shortages”.

Over the next 5-10 years, Canada should gradually unwind the enormous temporary resident population from roughly 5 million people nationally to well under 1 million. Some, of course, should be offered a path to stay, but many cannot and we need to honestly acknowledge that.

That likely means a prolonged period of near-flat population growth.

Going forward, temporary worker, asylum, and student streams need to shrink substantially. More than they have. Visa rules need to actually mean something. Asylum claims cannot quietly become a parallel permanent residency system.

At the same time, we should reward people who follow the rules. If someone came legally, worked or studied honestly, avoided welfare, and left when required, they should receive a meaningful advantage if they later apply to immigrate permanently.

And finally, we need to remember what immigration policy is for.

It is not primarily a humanitarian program. It is a civilization-building and economy-building program.

Ontario and Canada should prioritize immigrants with the skills, education, economic potential, and cultural compatibility to help build a prosperous, cohesive, high-trust society.

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@ConstantiReload @JJ_McCullough Lombardi actually did say that 😂

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@SCUBA_DoobyDoo @Sacad987486 @TRobinsonNewEra What a hair to split

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@Sacad987486 @TRobinsonNewEra You can literally see him trying to saw the guy’s head off while pinning him to the street in the video

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@work2500 @GurvSC Which they'll only do if he has serious competition gaining traction like Lombardi might. That's what happened to Trudeau.

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@JJ_McCullough He's also positioning himself as more fiscally conservative than ford (not hard to do), as a mass immigration skeptic/realist and is appealing directly to affordability concerns not unlike the CPC

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@work2500 @GurvSC As PC leader? There's no mechanism for that. He needs to lose and get backstabbed by his toadies.

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@work2500 @GurvSC Doug Ford and his cronies filling the PC party are corrupt spendthrifts who stand for nothing but backroom deals and bribery. Governs and spends like a liberal. Why would I care about his label when I disagree with the vast majority of what he's done in power?

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@work2500 @GurvSC The whole point is that Ford isn't "our people". He's so un-conservative that this liberal candidate is positioning himself to the right of him on many key issues.

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@KarenFactsLover @UWaterloo @EricDLombardi Seconded! Competence and pragmatism no matter the flavour is much needed at the moment. As much as I lean conservative, Doug Ford doesn't represent me anyway. May as well go with someone I know made it through the same meat grinder.

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@Smileyyeg Not in wealthy countries at least 😅

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@camburke71 @Bratt_world I watched it for the first time on a plane last month, and it’s actually crazy how dead on that dystopia is as an extension of our current trajectory. Like if 1984 actually happened around 1984

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@jaketropolis Powder Mage is exactly this

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@expired_grl This can be a spinoff of the vending machine anime

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@pastadunlop @yuanyi_z One of Trudeau's many legacies

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@somewheresy An absurd amount of famous comedians and comedic actors are Canadian...

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@MTe005 @Prominent_Bryan Importing subsidized foreign indentured servants to undercut the local workforce is the opposite of a free market, actually.

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@Prominent_Bryan Too logical and reasonable, nothing that is both of those things will ever fly in the face of boomer entitlement politics

[Matt Webb @Webbaste]

@TorontoStar That’s a great way to make everyone under 25 homeless 😂