Globe editorial: Immigration requires steady policy, not constant ad hoc change

Yes:

…The system to welcome new Canadians – the comprehensive ranking system, colloquially known as the points system – was designed to minimize political meddling. It’s the core method used to select economic immigrants, who account for about 60 per cent of all new permanent residents. Yet the Liberals, like their back-and-forth changes around temporary foreign workers, have weakened a system that prioritized newcomers with high levels of education and promising futures in Canada. Instead, they have politicized the system with a lengthening list of exceptions that does an end run around the central philosophy of the points system.

The latest proposal, as The Globe reported last Friday, is to potentially allow people who have at most finished high school and are currently in low-wage temporary foreign worker jobs a path to permanent residency. This is not what economic immigration is supposed to be. The future of Canada’s prosperity cannot be built on low-wage jobs.

The low-wage temporary foreign worker program for jobs such as those in food service was never a key pillar of our immigration system, nor should it ever be. It’s a relatively recent invention, created in 2002. The experience of a decade ago should have been a lesson: as this space wrote last year, Mr. Trudeau himself urged reform in 2014.

Loosening the rules in 2022 should have never happened. While Monday’s changes are welcome, what would be more welcome is an immigration policy that does not react to the latest news and instead focuses on long-term results.

Source: Immigration requires steady policy, not constant ad hoc change