Juno News - October 18, 2026


Indian Ambassador says Canada needs 15M more immigrants

Hosted by
Harrison Faulkner
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Dominic Barton Narendra Modi Mark Wiseman Mark Carney Dinesh K. Patnaik Anita Anand Sean Fraser Mark Miller Bao Deming
Early voting EXPLODES in Alberta’s separation referendum

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

177.1

Word count

1,956

Sentence count

88

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 well there's been some interesting developments regarding immigration in this country that have
00:00:10.560 been overshadowed by day-to-day politics as well as the u.s canada trade war in particular it
00:00:17.000 involves comments from the indian high commissioner dinesh k patnick he has once again gone on canadian
00:00:23.840 airwaves to tell the country that we need to accept millions of new immigrants most recently
00:00:28.980 in a conversation, he said that Canada needed to accept 15 million new immigrants over the next
00:00:34.580 decade in order to meet growing job growth. That comment follows earlier comments that he made
00:00:40.700 on Canadian television saying that Canada needed to reach 100 million people, the same population
00:00:46.860 target championed by groups like the Century Initiative. Well, on this show, we're going to
00:00:51.080 get into these comments from the Indian High Commissioner, as well as to take a step back
00:00:55.780 and look at the broader Century Initiative goals
00:00:58.520 and who involved in the Century Initiative has made their way into Mark Carney's government.
00:01:04.000 The story we are being fed about immigration being under control in this country
00:01:07.480 is just simply not true.
00:01:10.380 Because even though numbers have slowed down,
00:01:12.840 advocates who have championed mass immigration have found themselves
00:01:15.400 in high-ranking positions appointed by the Prime Minister.
00:01:18.920 And the comments from the Indian High Commissioner also set the stage
00:01:21.940 for what a new Canada-India trade deal could potentially look like, which frequently involves
00:01:28.140 the language of strengthening people-to-people ties and people-to-people exchanges. I believe
00:01:33.540 that's code word for immigration. We're going to get into all that later on in the show, but first
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00:02:21.020 as exclusive Juno News reporting you won't find anywhere else. As always, before we get into the
00:02:25.580 show, be sure to like this video, subscribe to the Juno News YouTube channel, and the comment
00:02:29.220 question for the episode is this. Does Canada need 15 million new immigrants in the next decade?
00:02:35.480 Let me know your answer in the comments below, and let's get into it. So we start the show with
00:02:39.100 these comments from last week from the Indian High Commissioner to Canada, Dinesh K. Patnaik.
00:02:45.780 He went on Canadian television and said this. Which means that if you have to get one trillion,
00:02:50.640 you need to create 15 million jobs in this country in the next 10 years that will be created so 15
00:02:58.320 million people you will need you have 21 million workforce reducing every year by 186 000 so i
00:03:04.800 don't have to do the math for you so canada understands this prime minister khani's team
00:03:08.880 understand this so what we are working together is to work out a talented innovation strategy
00:03:14.560 across the world not just with india with the philippines with asia wherever the
00:03:18.320 their population is available to see how we can get the best of talent best of people
00:03:24.020 to come study work and contribute to both canadian as well as to their host country
00:03:30.380 we need 15 million new immigrants geez that sounds like a lot and last time i checked at
00:03:36.260 public perception of immigration in canada i don't think the public is really in support of that so
00:03:41.560 we would have a population of roughly 56 million people in the next 10 years the country can't
00:03:48.000 possibly support that. We can barely support what we have already. Interestingly, the same guy made
00:03:52.960 comments earlier in the year saying that Canada needed to reach a population of 100 million people
00:03:59.140 and that India can help Canada reach that population target. Take a listen. It's a relationship of two
00:04:06.240 countries which actually are complementary economies. Economies where you have things which
00:04:11.120 we need, we have things which you need. I mean, for example, simple examples. We have, you're a
00:04:16.740 country of uh you're the second largest country in the world with a 40 million population 40 million
00:04:21.640 you need at least about 100 million population you need people to man many of your resources
00:04:26.940 we have the capacity we have the intellect we have the talent we have the resources
00:04:31.680 we have not only we are even today our bilateral trade if you look at it we are selling more to you
00:04:37.320 than you are selling to us now the reason this is being discussed and highlighted and debated
00:04:41.640 on social media right now is because Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit
00:04:46.060 Canada in December. And it's predicted that at that meeting, there could be a new Canada-India
00:04:51.600 trade deal. One of the Prime Minister's objectives has clearly been to try to rebuild ties with India
00:04:58.380 that were severely strained under Justin Trudeau. And one thing you will increasingly notice if you
00:05:05.240 watch the commentary from Narendra Modi and even from Prime Minister Carney in relation to their
00:05:11.040 conversations, is a line about strengthening people-to-people ties and people-to-people
00:05:15.680 relations. As Prime Minister Modi says in this tweet from October 13th,
00:05:20.240 we agreed to build on the positive momentum in India-Canada ties and work towards concrete
00:05:24.240 outcomes across key areas of our strategic partnership, including trade, energy, technology,
00:05:28.800 security, and people-to-people ties. Together, India and Canada are contributing towards a more
00:05:33.440 stable and prosperous world. And Canada's foreign minister, Anita Anand, traveled to India to meet
00:05:39.040 directly with Modi again earlier this week. And in this tweet from the prime minister,
00:05:44.260 he once again mentions that word, people to people exchanges. And so the question is,
00:05:49.960 what does that actually mean? Because obviously Canada has a large Indian diaspora.
00:05:55.480 Obviously a lot of our immigration recently has come from India. And part of the reason why Canada
00:06:01.380 has had to restrict or slow down immigration to an extent that we're not quite sure just yet,
00:06:06.140 because the numbers keep changing and the full story seems to really be evolving. But it's clear
00:06:13.020 that Canada's population growth is slowing down. Obviously, a large part of that is because of some
00:06:17.880 of the issues with temporary immigration and international students, of course, and temporary
00:06:23.080 foreign workers. Again, the majority seem to be coming from India. So why is it that this new
00:06:30.400 Canada-India trade deal, whatever it might end up being, always seems to involve an element of
00:06:36.640 people-to-people ties. This is an assumption on my part, but I imagine that any deal in which India
00:06:43.080 opens up its market access for Canadian exporters must involve an exchange of people. But I want to
00:06:49.240 go back to those earlier comments from the Indian High Commissioner, the equivalent of an ambassador,
00:06:53.800 where he called on Canada to have a population of 100 million people. That is the same goal
00:06:59.100 of the Century Initiative. The Century Initiative, as you all well know by now,
00:07:04.020 is a powerful lobbying group that is trying to push the country to have a 100 million population
00:07:10.600 by 2100. We're not quite sure why 100 million by 2100, besides the fact that it's sort of an easy
00:07:16.920 number to ring off. All I know is that Canada is nowhere near capable of having a population of
00:07:24.000 that size. Not even close. The prime minister has tried to make it seem to Canadians through
00:07:30.820 a variety of ways that he is taking immigration back under control. First, he says it like this.
00:07:37.940 This message on immigration is we're taking back control of immigration. You've seen temporary
00:07:42.640 worker numbers down by 50 percent. Asylum claims down by a third. Foreign students,
00:07:49.100 new foreign student numbers down by 60% since this government came in and 100%
00:07:56.540 investigation since 2025, which is as long as I've been. And then he uses Stats Canada
00:08:02.160 to push out data, which shows the population actually decreasing. Well, after a review,
00:08:09.240 it turns out that that was not true. That was a lie. Canada's population is actually increasing,
00:08:13.660 but at a remarkably slower rate. The point is the prime minister is trying to push the
00:08:19.040 narrative that he is taking immigration and putting it back under control. That it will no
00:08:25.540 longer get to the state that it was under Sean Fraser, Mark Miller, and Justin Trudeau. Which
00:08:31.700 is strange when you realize that the advocates of the Century Initiative, the co-founders of the
00:08:38.920 Century Initiative, Dominic Barton, as well as Mark Wiseman, have both been appointed to high-level
00:08:44.780 important and powerful roles by the prime minister. Mark Wiseman is now Canada's ambassador
00:08:50.280 to the United States. Dominic Barton, Canada's former ambassador to China, who even has his own
00:08:55.540 Chinese name on his Wikipedia page, Bao Deming. I've never seen that before, by the way. He was
00:09:00.780 appointed by the prime minister to be the chair of the board of directors of Invest in Canada.
00:09:05.940 So isn't it kind of weird that a prime minister who tries to convince the Canadian people that
00:09:10.700 he has immigration under control is surrounding himself with people who were founders of the
00:09:17.440 Century Initiative and are open and well-documented advocates for mass immigration. It's possible that
00:09:24.640 he doesn't believe in mass immigration, but I doubt that. The scale here is important to
00:09:29.180 conceptualize for Canadians watching because the rate at which Canada's population has grown is
00:09:35.180 truly mind-boggling. For example, since 2015, Canada's population has grown by 16.6% according
00:09:43.500 to BBC News. So since the Liberals came to power, we've grown 16% of our population.
00:09:49.320 So that's kind of what we're seeing right now. We are seeing action to reduce immigration in
00:09:55.460 Canada, to slow the rate of growth. We are seeing what I think can reasonably described as alarming
00:10:02.080 rhetoric coming from the Indian ambassador, the high commissioner, pushing Canada to accept
00:10:06.680 millions of new immigrants, the idea that a new trade deal with India could involve some level
00:10:11.480 of immigration and exchanges, and the fact that the prime minister seems to be extremely close
00:10:18.000 and well-connected with documented and outspoken advocates of mass immigration. So the prime
00:10:23.980 minister and the liberal government aren't giving Canadians a lot to trust them on. All we have is
00:10:28.580 the data. All we have right now is the data and the rhetoric and the concerns that something could
00:10:33.720 get way out of control. That all wraps us back into the comment question of the video. Do you
00:10:37.720 agree with the Indian High Commissioner? Does Canada really need 15 million new immigrants in 0.99
00:10:42.220 the next 10 years? I have a feeling I know what the comment section is going to look like, but
00:10:46.240 nonetheless, let me know what you have to say in the comments below. All right, everyone, that's
00:10:50.920 going to do it for us this week on the show. Thank you so much for watching. A reminder, you can use
00:10:54.160 my code JunoNews.com slash HarrisonReturn to get a discount on a Juno News subscription.
00:10:59.780 My name is Harrison Faulkner and this is Ratioed.