Yet another intv with immigration minister Miller, charged with correction the missteps of the government and his predecessors:
This year brought one of the most significant policy reversals in the Liberal government’s nine years in power: drastically cutting the number of immigrants entering Canada over the next three years.
The dramatic reduction followed months of warnings from economists, corporate banks and even the government’s own officials that Canada’s population growth was outpacing the availability of services and housing, driving up costs.
It marked a pivotal political moment for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who came to power in 2015 on a pro-immigration message. By this fall, Trudeau admitted they “didn’t get the balance quite right,” particularly coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller sat down with National Post to discuss the government’s recent immigration changes.
National Post: You’re the fifth immigration minister for this government, but you’re the one who came in and had to reduce immigration levels. How does that feel?
Immigration Minister Marc Miller: Off the cuff, I think it was the right thing to do. I think it was an important thing to do for a number of things, just because of the need to make sure that we’re being responsible, to put the flow of people into the country and properly giving Canadians a snapshot of what population growth looks like in the context of a government that has been very bullish on immigration. I think rightly so. And I won’t pretend that we’ve gotten everything right, certainly haven’t in some respects, but we have gotten a lot right. Avoiding recessions has been important.
The prime minister put me in this position less than a year-and-a-half ago knowing that there needed to be some change and so gave me enough of a landing strip to be able to land a big bunch of policy planes and trusted me to do that. And so that is something that didn’t come out the head of one person. We were conscious as a government that there were some adjustments that needed to be made, but in a thoughtful way.
We do have, unfortunately, the tendency of confusing consensus with unanimity, we will not ever have unanimity on immigration. There are people that don’t want immigrants. There are people that want more than we can accommodate, but there is a consensus that’s been built. I think it’s one that is under some threat, if it hasn’t completely crashed in some other countries, but we have a unique moment in Canadian politics to get this right.
National Post: When did you realize you had to reduce permanent residents and what kind of sell was that to cabinet, maybe even the prime minister, caucus colleagues?
Miller: The levels plan are several months in the planning and it isn’t the result of one poll or one in-depth survey.
I truly wanted options this year that I could put in front of cabinet members where we could have a healthy discussion about where we wanted to see this country in the next three years, and what signal that sent to Canadians in the context of an election year. There will be no other levels plan, barring some extraordinary measure before the next election.
It’s very easy when you’re constantly increasing the numbers, to spread a little bit here and spread a little bit there. It’s a radically different intellectual and emotional exercise to say, ‘OK, well, we’ve got to cut 20 per cent, where you do care about immigration, where do you want to see this going?’ And it makes for some really difficult choices.
It is probably in my experience in cabinet, one of the cabinet items that is the most hotly debated with a variety of views that don’t always come to one mind. But I think on this one, there was broad consensus because of what people were hearing at the doors, I think what economists were signalling, what provinces and territories were telling us.
National Post: Did you have any colleagues saying ‘we can’t do 20 per cent?’
Miller: I’m not going to betray the trust that they put in me, but, you know, we have different views in our caucus and Canadians do as well.
Some people have huge hearts and want more refugees and humanitarian folks coming from the countries that are war torn. Certainly there’s an argument for that. Lots of people across Canada that want to bring the family members in, increasingly so with the number of first generation immigrants.
And then, you know, from the chambers of commerce, that want an unlimited supply of economic migrants, some temporary, some permanent.
There are different economic impacts: one, the initial investment into a refugee or an asylum seeker that pays off, perhaps only in the next generation or years later in someone’s career, if you look at it purely from an economic perspective and someone that comes in with a high set of skills and hits the ground running and integrates into society almost immediately.
National Post: Why should Canadians trust the Liberals to handle immigration when you and the prime minister have admitted you didn’t adjust as quickly as you could have?
Miller: It’s a fair question. I think we owe it to Canadians, first and foremost, to be honest with them and not double down when we get something wrong or not get it as right as we should have.
Let’s not underplay the good that’s happened with immigration. It is significant, and I think it has helped us get out of a perfect storm that we faced coming out of COVID.
We did, going into the COVID, particularly in my province (Quebec), have labour shortages (that) magnified coming out of COVID, so we scrambled pretty quickly to fill that and I think we did it successfully. What I would say, probably, is we didn’t turn the taps down fast enough and when it comes to international students, probably should have acted early.
I think we are being honest with Canadians. We’re being responsible in taking the shift, which is an important one, but not being cavalier in overcorrecting, which in these political situations is always a risk to simply please one group or another.
National Post: Was part of the reason you didn’t move fast enough was emotions people in cabinet have towards immigration and the role immigration has played to the Liberal brand?
Miller: I’m not too worried about our brand. It isn’t something I focus on too much when making policy.
I think there are legitimate questions about the impact of slowing down volume, the impact on the economy of having even a marginal population decline. When it comes to temporary residents, in my mind, I believe we probably trusted the provinces and the (post-secondary) institutions that they should be regulating better for too long.
National Post: Do you think that the time it took and some of the mistake made is contributing to the asks that are now coming from the incoming U.S. administration when it comes to immigration?
Miller: Not to downplay the asks, because I think we do have to take any actions or signals that the incoming administration is sending to us, I think we do have to take them seriously.
I think it’s the results of a toxic debate around immigration in the U.S., that is the result of how their southern border, the border with Mexico, is perceived and not with Canada.
There are some measures that I took coming into power … to put a little more discipline into the visa program, including the Mexican visa, actually putting the hammer down in May on Indian visas and visas from Bangladesh, so much so that our November numbers for transporter traffic is at a yearly low. That needs to continue.
National Post: Do you think you waited too long on the (Mexican) visa requirement because it had been an issue throughout 2023 and it wasn’t until February they were reinstated?
Miller: I won’t speculate specifically on that for a number of reasons, because there’s a lot of operational considerations that we take into account when making one of these decisions. They’re not taken lightly, particularly when we’re dealing with one of our larger trading partners in Mexico.
National Post: Are you considering any changes to the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement?
Miller: That is a discussion that is going to be had with the U.S. because it’s a two-way street. if we can always perfect the way the border is managed, I’m totally open to it. But amendments to the Safe Third Country Agreement at times requires a passage through Congress. It’s a long process that is a product of the U.S. machine.
On balance, it’s an agreement that has served us well. What I am considering is changes to the asylum system that could potentially address the way the … agreement gets gamed by people trying to come to Canada.
National Post: Why should there be an ability for someone to make an asylum claim if they didn’t come through an official port of entry?
Miller: People could be trying to save their own lives, and in any story of a refugee, you’ll find people that will commit technical breaches of the law in order to save their own lives.
I think it’s unfair to sort of paint them constantly, as quote unquote “illegals.” But there is a way to get into this country. It needs to be managed properly and it needs to be done in a way that’s fair and humane to folks.
Source: ‘We didn’t turn the taps down fast enough’: Immigration minister wants to save Canada’s consensus on newcomers
