Star editorial: Canada needs immigrants. It also needs a plan for the influx of new Canadians.

Even the Star is critical of the government’s approach to immigration.

Money quote: “On the larger immigration question it must come to grips with the reality that bigger isn’t always better when there’s no strategy.”

Marc Miller characterized it as a mere piece of housekeeping. Canadians were telling his Liberal government, he said, to “be a little more organized” and plan a little better when it comes to immigration policy.

But Canadian immigration policy needs a rethink, not just better organization. While the federal immigration minister rightly says Canadians are not xenophobic, they are paying more attention to immigration than they have in recent years. As Miller concedes, it’s time for the Trudeau government to pay more attention as well. It’s time to tailor the number of immigrants to our needs because in recent years Liberal immigration policy has been a set of numbers in search of a coherent strategy.

The numbers are not just big – they are historic.

Miller will stay the course for the life of his government, sticking to previously announced plans to welcome 485,000 permanent residents in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025, but will freeze that number for 2026. When the Liberals were elected in 2015, the immigration intake was set at 265,000 per year, but under its steadily increasing levels in non-pandemic years, 98 per cent of the country’s population increase now comes from international migration, Statistics Canada reports.

The real numbers eclipse permanent resident targets. Canada’s population hit 40 million last summer, part of the largest year-over-year percentage increase in population in 66 years, with the country on a path to double its population in 25 years. The 2.2 million non-permanent residents living in this country on July 1, 2023, comprised largely of temporary workers and international students, was up 46 per cent over the previous year. They now outnumber Indigenous Canadians.

Miller agrees his government has become “quite addicted” to temporary foreign workers and mused about capping the number of international students in this country, now estimated at 900,000. The temporary workers too often find abusive working conditions. Students are too often lured to private colleges with fraudulent claims only to receive substandard education and false hope.

Miller has promised renewed scrutiny on those issues, but the larger picture also needs greater scrutiny. Yes, we are getting older and workers are needed, including those who can fill what the government estimates is a shortfall of 100,000 needed to build homes. But those workers, too, need some place to live, adding more pressure on the market. The Liberal argument that growing immigration means a growing economy is also being questioned, because Canadians’ personal standard of living has not grown with an influx of new arrivals.

None of this is the fault of immigrants, temporary workers or international students. It is a fault of lack of government planning. Canadians facing financial stress are right to worry that a glut of workers available through immigration will drive down wages. They are correct to be concerned about more stress being put on the country’s health care system and social services. They have seen refugees sleeping on the streets in Toronto.

Canada’s worker to retiree ratio of three-to-one and a low birth rate will put greater stress on our social programs, necessitating the open-door policy, Miller says. He has begun work to better integrate federal policy with the needs of provinces who deliver services for newcomers and will upgrade services in smaller centres in the hope that more will settle outside Canada’s three largest cities. All this will take time.

A recent Environics and Century Initiative poll found 44 per cent of Canadians agreed to some degree that there was too much immigration in Canada, the largest one-year jump in that view since the annual survey started in 1977. Importantly, 42 per cent of respondents said immigrants made their community a better place and only nine per cent felt newcomers made things worse.

This country is indisputably enriched by immigrants. The Liberal government must guard against Canadians scapegoating immigrants as they face increased financial stress. It must get a handle on the ever-increasing number of temporary workers and international students in this country. On the larger immigration question it must come to grips with the reality that bigger isn’t always better when there’s no strategy.

Source: Canada needs immigrants. It also needs a plan for the influx of new Canadians.