The Financial Post reports in its Friday edition that Ottawa's policy following the pandemic to ease border restrictions in response to record high job vacancies lacked a "balanced" approach that ultimately compelled Ottawa to take the rare step of reducing its annual immigration targets. The Post's Naimul Karim writes that the feds now want a net reduction of about 900,000 temporary residents, such as international students and foreign workers, in the next two years and has cut its permanent residency targets to 395,000 in 2025 from 500,000. The government expects the new targets to take Canada's population growth rate below 0 per cent in 2025 and 2026, after increasing at a record rate of 3 per cent in the past two years when it added about two million people. The reduction in targets was the right move, Douglas Porter, BMO's chief economist, said, but the "big swings" in population growth rates hurt the economy. "It's a pretty big shift in policy and it will require some heavy-duty adjustments in businesses," Mr. Porter said. "In an ideal world, we would have had population growing one to 1.5 per cent steadily over the four-year period, instead of two years of 3 per cent and close to zero in the next two years."