McKinnon: The age of Canada’s exorbitant privilege is ending. Now we have to secure our future

From one of my former GAC colleagues and nice to see his thoughtful contribution. Immigration excerpt:

…A stark example of our broken approach to policy making was the decision to dramatically increase immigration levels to maintain economic growth, which seemed like a seemingly painless way (as opposed to serious policy choices) to do so. Ultimately, it failed even at this, as modest headline economic growth masked declining per-capita incomes. It also enabled provinces to underfund higher education by relying on foreign students paying high fees without guaranteeing them quality education. It has had unintended consequences in areas such as productivity, national security and health care. And now, support for large-scale immigration is at risk as Canadians doubt government control over borders and question the ability of governments to meet existing housing, health and education needs.

Our culture of political expediency sees immigration and, by extension, foreign policy, through largely a vote-gathering lens, rather than through the national interest. Thankfully, Canadians have largely avoided xenophobic anti-immigrant populism to date, but that could change if we do not return to an approach that benefits all of Canada. If we discourage a thoughtfully targeted migration approach, we undermine the innovation needed for our success.

That diversity is central to our prosperity, so long as diversity is not seen simply as an end in itself. The advantage of diversity is in the varying knowledge and experiences that can be brought together to find creative, productive and enduring solutions to the challenges we face. But a diverse society still needs to achieve belonging, which comes from finding common ground – not from hype about what divides us.

…It is a sad commentary on the dearth of major Canadian policy innovation and nation building that has taken place in recent decades that we must go back 40 years for inspiration, but so it is.

Back to now. Profound change in the relatively comfortable and undemanding world in which Canada has prospered has been a long time coming, but events in recent years have catalyzed the shift, meaning many Canadians are only now beginning to realize how much has changed. Action is urgently needed. But it is hard to see it happen if we do not find some common ground to bring us together to address the challenges at hand.

We have done it before. We can do it again.

Source: The age of Canada’s exorbitant privilege is ending. Now we have to secure our future