[red-iron-pine]

American in Canada.

One of the work permit paths is points-based -- "Express Entry". There are plenty of other ways, and there are programs like the Temporary Foreign Worker (contemptuously referred to as TFWs), who bring in lots of low skilled workers. Lots of Filipino coffee-slingers working at Tim Horton's (a fast food chain), for example.

Immigration also isn't the problem, the problem is the boomers buying up all of the housing, and large corporations (many of which are foreign) buying up the rest. This is combined with Canada's climate and geography -- aka most of the country is uninhabitable in any real sense -- which concentrates the population in a handful of markets where the prices are absurd.