Example of any number of articles and commentary by Postmedia columnists warning that the appointment of Mark Wiseman, and to a lessor extent, Marco Mendocino, mean that PM Carney will continue the same high immigration policies of Trudeau. IMO, too early to tell, whether he would continue or expand the restrictions of former Minister Miller, or not. But certainly Wiseman’s appointment could be interpreted as such:
Donald Trump and his tariffs will not be the only key issue that determines who will be prime minister after April, 28. Canada has been plagued by a diverse set of problems for years, all of which will be remembered by voters on election day, including immigration.
Prior to Trump’s election and his decision to threaten Canada, one of the biggest controversies in Canada was the abrupt end of an uncontested pillar in Canadian political culture — immigration. It crumbled as if struck by a sledgehammer after just a few years of the Trudeau government’s careless mass-immigration policies.
The numbers laid bare illustrate Canada’s resulting issues of scarcity. Simply put, Canada is not built to sustain half a million newcomers per year.
Stephen Harper’s government admitted roughly 250,000 permanent residents per year between 2006 and 2015. The Trudeau wave saw those numbers increasing from Harper’s pre-2015 levels, to an average around 334,000, with four years (2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023) exceeding 341,000, at a time when Century Initiative, lobby group that advocates for dramatically higher immigration levels, was at the height of its influence in Ottawa.
In 2018, representatives of the Initiative lamented that Canada’s annual intake of about 310,000 people per year would only increase the population to 53 million by 2100, and called for an increase to 450,000 to reach the goal of 100 million.
Created by former McKinsey executive, Dominic Barton and former BlackRock executive Mark Wiseman, Century Initiative publicly endorsed the Trudeau government’s moves to take in 500,000 new immigrants per year by 2025.
However, the scheme rapidly lost all political currency as the population influx rocked Canada. Immigration-driven demand for housing and services vastly outstripped the supply of both, resulting in a palpable decline in affordability and access to health care, schooling and social services.
Between 2015 and 2024, Canada’s ranking in the Human Development Index plummeted from 9th to 18th, while the country fell behind Italy in the average growth of real GDP per capita.
Western governments since the Great Recession have tried to claim that large-scale immigration is an unambiguous economic benefit. Given the state of the economies of Canada, Germany, and others that embraced mass immigration, immigration has not been a silver bullet to remedy slow growth and stagnation.
Immigrants themselves are not at the root of Canada’s long-standing problems. However, it is also clear that increasing their numbers in such a deliberate fashion failed to make Canada more competitive or improve the lives of its citizens.
There has not been a meaningful increase in the numbers of engineers, physicians, and software developers. In essential services like health care, the ratio of family doctors in relation to the general population has actually worsened. Rather, Canada has imported hundreds of thousands of unskilled international students who stock shelves, deliver food, and flip hamburgers for minimum-wage.
On the other hand, academic institutions have become dependent on this new class of economic immigrant, who often enters the country on a student visa to attend suspect career colleges while paying exorbitant international student fees.
This is not an economic climate that breeds dynamism or healthy growth. Canada needs to be a top choice for highly-skilled immigrants, which means having attractively affordable housing and quality services, neither of which have been rapidly deteriorating.
Even if the restrictions on foreign credentials are loosened in Canada, few trained doctors or dentists from India or South Africa will pick Toronto over Dallas as long as the latter offers substantially higher paycheques and cheaper housing.
In-fact, just 46 per cent of immigrants are now choosing to receive Canadian citizenship, compared to 72 per cent in 1996. Last fall, Ipsos found that just over one quarter of all newcomers plan on leaving Canada within two years, with many citing the lack of affordability. This they have in-common with younger Canadians, many of whom are resigned to bleak and leaner lives than those enjoyed by their parents.
It is therefore concerning that Mark Carney has brought on Century Initiative co-founder Mark Wiseman as an advisor, whose name is ironic considering the results of his lobby group’s ideology. Canadians do not want Century Initiative-inspired ideas anymore, with nearly 60 per cent of residents polled last summer wanting substantially less immigration.
Unlike Europe, where mass-immigration has resulted in a slew of cultural and social clashes between asylum seekers and the established population, the pushback to immigration in Canada still mostly stems from economic factors, particularly housing.
Nonetheless, Wiseman’s presence on the prime minister’s team is political poison. He once even publicly endorsed pushing the Century Initiative’s agenda, even if it caused outrage in Quebec.
For many Québécois, their future is a major source of concern as their demographic place in North America shrinks. The prospect of more mass immigration could be the landmine that blows up Carney’s current run of goodwill in Quebec.
Without Quebec, Carney has little hope of winning a majority government, and even a parliamentary plurality is uncertain. Within hours of Wiseman’s involvement being announced, both the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois went on the attack, in both official languages.
Pierre Poilievre himself attacked the Century Initiative as striving to “bring in people from poor countries in large numbers, to take away Canadian jobs, drive wages down and profits up,” and that Canada should only admit people who can be actually housed and employed
Wiseman’s role will harden the perception that Carney is merely feigning a Liberal shift back to the centre under his leadership. It was a misstep that undercuts Carney’s credibility on immigration caps, which he has nominally pledged to maintain until housing is expanded.
To their credit, the Liberal government significantly scaled back the annual immigration numbers in Trudeau’s final months as PM, if only due to public backlash. A new leader, and Trump’s blustering, has gifted the Liberals a huge opportunity to reinvent themselves as the defenders of the country, while sidestepping hard questions about their thus far poor record in government.
Mark Carney is saying and promising all the right things to pull the Liberals back towards the centre and a genuine pro-growth agenda, earning him plaudits across the political spectrum, even from conservatives. However, if he continues to surround himself with the same crew of advisors and cabinet ministers who sailed Canada into a lost decade, can Carney truly be the captain to right the ship, least of all on immigration?
Multicultural Meanderings 