More coverage for the latest “Leaky Bucket” report (catching up on the report issued last November, CBC only covered this week):
…Highly educated immigrants are leaving faster than those with lower education levels, while those with doctorates are more than twice as likely to leave as those with a secondary education or less, according to the report.
But ICC research shows the antidote to the skilled immigrant exodus is a sense of belonging and optimism about life in Canada, the factor most closely tied to whether newcomers stay long term.
While financial struggles and concerns push many to leave, the data found that the strongest driver of immigrant retention is optimism about the future, measured by immigrants’ confidence in their personal and family prospects, plans for long-term residence in Canada and belief that friends and family can succeed here.
Even a one per cent increase in optimism boosts the likelihood of staying by 28 per cent, according to ICC data.
“Immigration is a long game. It isn’t just about inviting people to come to Canada as immigrants,” said Shamira Madhany, managing director for World Education Services Canada. “What really matters is how included people feel and how inclusive the system is.”
The Canoo app, which aims to support and promote an early sense of connection among newcomers, has had more than 420,000 members since it was created in 2010. …
More on retention issues and impact of housing pressures as part of decision to stay or leave:
…This week, the ICC and Ipsos are releasing a selection of data from “The Newcomer Perspective,” a massive new survey of 15,383 verified adult immigrants. Among many compelling insights, it delivers immense detail about which newcomers are looking to leave Canada and why. For example, we found that the desire to leaveis unevenly distributed; economic immigrants – those who were selected for their ability to contribute to Canada’s shared prosperity – are by far most eager to hit the road.
Over 30 per cent of federally selected economic immigrants – those with the very highest scores under the points system – say they are likely to move to another country within two years, compared to 22 per cent of immigrants admitted under family-reunification programs. Economic immigrants selected by provinces (who tend to have lower scores under the points system) are less likely to consider leaving (21 per cent), but that is still one in five who are planning their exit.
Though immigrants are routinely blamed for driving up housing costs, unaffordable housing is driving skilled immigrants away, with over 80 per cent citing it as their main reason for wanting out. The current line is that there are too many immigrants for our housing supply. Perhaps it’s better to ask whether there are too few houses for the immigrants we need…
Abisoye Akinpelu and her children were among the 25 immigrants at a Calgary citizenship ceremony on Saturday, ready to become Canadian citizens.
“I feel so accomplished. It’s a long journey for us and it’s been filled with ups and downs, but it’s worth it,” Akinpelu, who came to Canada from Nigeria, said.
Akinpelu says she enjoys Canada’s multicultural community, and how Canadians from different backgrounds can live peacefully together. Immigration Minister Marc Miller was also at the citizenship ceremony where he said citizenship is not a choice to be made lightly.
“This is the best country in the world to be in. I think you know that … Otherwise, perhaps you wouldn’t have made that choice.”
However, the 2021 and 2016 Census reported fewer immigrants are choosing to become Canadian citizens. According to new data released by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), the proportion of people becoming citizens within 10 years of their arrival in Canada has dropped by 40 per cent.
“People are less interested in becoming Canadian. Let that sink in,” Daniel Bernhard, the ICC’s CEO, said. “It’s not because they are not interested or not grateful. It’s in many cases because they are trying to contribute and we’re not allowing them to.”
The numbers indicate citizenship uptake is the lowest among highly educated economic immigrants, and Bernhard said it’s because they are weighing their options before taking the oath.
“Not feeling welcome is not just whether your neighbours are nice to you, or whether your kids have a good place in school, but whether your employer thinks that you have something important to contribute,” Bernhard said.
“The cost-of-living crisis in Canada continues to bite, and (their) skills and experience are not recognized in the labour force here,” Bernhard said, adding that many immigrants may feel frustrated and potentially decide to move on from the idea of becoming Canadian citizens.
As well, a recent poll by Angus Reid found the housing affordability crisis is forcing more newcomers to rethink their place in Canada and consider moving to a different province, or a different country altogether.
Bernhard said the lack of affordability is already having an impact on citizenship uptake, but confirmed the ICC is calling on Ottawa to provide more opportunities for people to celebrate and appreciate the value of citizenship, and to put a cap on virtual citizenship ceremonies.
Was happy to be part of this and had fun pouring through and analyzing the data:
Continuing its focus on understanding the causes and potential responses to the decline in citizenship uptake, today the Institute for Canadian Citizenship is publishing an in-depth analysis by expert researcher Andrew Griffith of demographic and socioeconomic data from Census 2016 and 2021 of naturalized and non-naturalized immigrants.
1. Citizenship is declining across all major demographic variables
Citizenship rates have declined across all major source countries, education levels, and provinces of residence. Notably, citizenship uptake is lowest among university-educated immigrants, who represent a growing proportion of recent immigrants. Despite higher immigration levels, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta experienced the largest declines in naturalization.
2. Family class immigrants have the lowest naturalization rates, refugees the highest
Immigrants who arrive under the family category have the lowest naturalization rates in both census periods, but also experienced the largest decline – 17 percent – between the two periods. Naturalization is higher for economic class and refugee immigrants, but these categories also experienced declines of 10 percent and 5 percent respectively across the two periods analyzed.
3. Naturalized citizens generally have higher incomes than non-citizens, non-citizen women lag behind in most labour force measures
Among immigrants with a bachelors degree, median after-tax income of non-citizens is only 43 percent of the median after-tax incomes of citizens across all census periods. The gap in unemployment levels between non-citizen and citizen women increased from less than 1 percent in Census 2016 to 2.3 percent in Census 2021 – a 155 percent increase.
4. Government can act to reverse the trend
Government should expand funding to programs that educate, encourage and prepare immigrants for citizenship, and also adopt a meaningful performance target focused on the naturalization rates of recent immigrants – those who arrived within 5-9 years. It should avoid diminishing the value of citizenship by making it a more visible and celebrated part of the immigration journey.
Good informative analysis of those who have participated in Canoo, generating what I consider to be sensible recommendations (disclosure: I continue to work with ICC on citizenship data questions). I would however recommend a greater shift towards in-person ceremonies with specific public reporting on virtual and in-person with a performance target ideally at 80 percent or close to it:
Our analysis combines survey and interview data from newcomers participating in the Canoo Access Pass who shared their perspectives on Canadian citizenship and the various factors that influence their views on whether to naturalize.
While a majority of the permanent residents (PRs) surveyed express positive views on Canadian citizenship and either intend to apply or have already done so, a significant 21% remain uncertain or reluctant to apply. Through in-depth follow-up interviews with 40 respondents, we found the following factors play a role in shaping newcomers’ views on naturalization:
Dual Citizenship Restrictions and Economic Opportunities: For newcomers from countries with robust economies and stringent dual citizenship regulations, the allure of Canadian citizenship may be overshadowed by the advantages of retaining their original nationality. Economic prospects within and beyond Canada play a pivotal role in shaping individuals’ decisions.
Unmet Expectations and Integration Challenges: The journey to integration is often fraught with obstacles, from navigating the labour market to grappling with cultural nuances. Mismatches between preconceived notions and the realities of life in Canada can lead to feelings of isolation and hinder newcomers’ sense of belonging.
Challenges Accessing Support Services: Many newcomers report feeling adrift amidst the numerous integration services, highlighting a pressing need for specific accessible resources that foster a sense of community and facilitate a smoother transition to life in Canada.
In response to these findings, the ICC proposes the following recommendations to increase newcomer access and improve Canada’s citizenship program overall:
1. Establish Meaningful Naturalization Targets: Set ambitious yet achievable benchmarks for PRs to obtain citizenship within a specified timeframe, fostering a sense of purpose and belonging.
2. Enhance Accessibility of Citizenship Ceremonies: Make citizenship ceremonies more inclusive and publicly accessible, celebrating the diverse tapestry of Canadian identity.
3. Invest in Citizenship Promotion Programs: Allocate resources to initiatives that promote citizenship awareness and engagement, empowering newcomers to embrace their Canadian identity.
4. Prioritize Immigrant Satisfaction and Retention: Uphold immigrant satisfaction as a cornerstone of national policy, nurturing a welcoming environment that encourages long-term residency and civic participation.
For the 1st time, Canada will set targets for temporary residents After trimming growth in Permanent Residents, imposing caps on international students, Minister Miller reverses course again and reduces the number of temporary foreign workers. Taken together, marks a significant repudiation of previous decisions and ministers, ironically making it easier for a possible future conservative government to impose further limits should it choose to do so. And including temporary foreign workers and international students in the annual levels plan is long overdue.
Omar Khan, in Ramadan heralds a political awakening for Canadian Muslims, notes the need for political responsibly among Muslim and other Canadians “it’s a responsibility to recognize that proper understanding between communities comes through dialogue, not ultimatums. There should be no litmus tests for elected officials wishing to address Muslim congregations. Those with divergent opinions should be engaged, not frozen out.”
I really enjoyed working on this analysis with the ICC. Check out the report and tables:
The proportion of permanent residents taking up Canadian citizenship within ten years of arrival declined 40% between 2001 and 2021. Today, the Institute for Canadian Citizenship is publishing a new analysis conducted by expert researcher Andrew Griffith, which examines this trend more closely.
Key findings from the research
1. Naturalization is declining across all major source countries
Less than 50% of citizenship-eligible permanent residents from top immigration source countries are becoming Canadian citizens within ten years of arrival. This is the case for permanent residents from China (30%), India (49%), South Korea (35%), United Kingdom (43%) and United States of America (48%), among other top source countries.
2. Source country restrictions on dual nationality have a limited impact on naturalization rates
A prevailing theory on the cause of declining naturalization rates is that a growing number of immigrants to Canada come from countries that prohibit multiple citizenships. This research debunks this claim. The proportion of permanent residents from countries that prohibit naturalization has grown, but the increase in the number of permanent residents choosing not to become citizens is higher amongst source countries that allow dual citizenship. Between Census 2016 and Census 2021, the number of permanent residents from India choosing not to become Canadian citizens increased by 47%. For permanent residents from China, it increased by 40%. Both countries prohibit dual nationality. For those from the Philippines, which allows dual nationality, the number of permanent residents choosing not to become Canadian citizens increased by 64%.
3. Permanent residents are taking longer to become citizens
For those who do become citizens, the time between arrival and naturalization has increased significantly. Between 2005 and 2022, permanent residents who arrived under the Economic category took 21% longer to naturalize at 6.1 years on average. For the Family Reunification Class, time increased 17% to 7.4 years on average. Among source countries, time to naturalization for permanent residents from China increased almost 70% to 7.9 years, while for the Philippines it increased almost 30% to 6.6 years. India remained relatively stable at 6.1 years on average. Permanent residents from Iran saw the largest increase overall, 181%, taking 12.5 years to naturalize, on average.
4. The ten years following arrival are critical
While fewer permanent residents are naturalizing overall, 92% of naturalizations take place within ten years. In other words, if a permanent resident chooses not to become a Canadian citizen within ten years of arriving in Canada, it is unlikely that they will ever choose to do so. This finding highlights the first ten years as a critical period to intervene.
Agree with his litany (rant?) of policy failures in housing, healthcare, labour markets etc.
But most of the commentary and analysis notes that large increases in permanent and temporary immigration have contributed to all these problems by not factoring the impact of a larger population, driven by immigration.
Given the time lags to address these so long-neglected issues, it is only responsible to advocate for a freeze and/or a reduction of current levels that takes account of housing, healthcare and other impacts, rather than current governmental immigration planning which largely ignores these:
Despite record levels of polarization, it seems pundits and politicians of all stripes agree on one thing nowadays: no matter the problem, immigrants are the cause.
Housing crunch? Too many immigrants.
Health care squeeze? Ditto.
Wages too low? International students flooding the labour market.
These arguments are lazy, dangerous and, most of all, incorrect. Yet somehow, they’re everywhere.
But even a cursory glance at these arguments shows that the people making these claims haven’t given the evidence even a cursory glance.
For example, the housing crisis far predates the recent immigration boom. In hot markets like Toronto, residential home prices more than doubled between 2000 and 2014. Immigration rates during that period were more than 30 per cent lower than they are now. The last time immigration levels skyrocketed like they have recently was between 1985 and 1995. House prices didn’t boom in those years; they crashed more than 25 per cent.
Let’s put some uncomfortable truths on the table.
Immigrants didn’t subsidize property speculation with public funds by exempting housing investments from capital gains taxes. Successive federal governments did that.
Immigrants didn’t block zoning reform for decades, making it illegal to build more housing. City councils did that.
Immigrants didn’t remove some 130,000 homes from the rental market to become quasi-legal hotels on Airbnb. Profiteering investors did that, often illegally, while governments looked the other way.
Immigrants aren’t responding to recent housing price drops by holding up the construction of more than 8,000 housing units in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area until prices go back up. Developers are doing that.
Immigrants are not causing the cataclysmic deterioration of our health care system. In Ontario alone, an estimated 20,000 internationally trained nurses are sitting on the sidelines, prevented from healing patients because of bureaucratic holdups to their accreditation that provinces have known about forever, but have chosen not to resolve.
Immigrants are not suppressing wages. Companies like Uber did that, performing the world’s greatest Pinocchio routine by claiming, incredulously, that their work force neither wants nor deserves basic protections like minimum wage or a reliable place to pee while on shift. Even more incredulous is the reaction of governments across the land, which just sat back and watched as these American companies boastfully broke the law and drove down wages while paying no corporate taxes. As with Airbnb, governments eventually changed the laws to fit the crime, locking a generation of people, disproportionately immigrants, into low-wage servitude for California corporations.
Increasingly, this labour force is made up of international students, who desperately need the money because provinces permit rapacious colleges and universities to charge outrageous international fees for what is too often a useless education. Why do the students pay? Because post-study work permits are a reliable pathway to permanent residency, which the federal government keeps wide open. When the fees got to be too much, the feds lifted work restrictions for international students. Now they study even less while paying even more to subsidize the rest of us.
Immigrants didn’t cause our failings. We did that all by ourselves.
In fact, strategic immigration is our best chance to solve many of these challenges.
Tens of thousands of immigrant health care professionals have passed their Canadian exams and are eager to reinforce our failing system. If we simply let them contribute, we could relieve huge pressure from the front lines, practically overnight.
The extra 2.3 million new homes we need to build by 2030 won’t build themselves, yet Canada will lose 700,000 skilled workers to retirement between 2021 and 2028. Unless you’re hoping to find a few hundred thousand Canadian-born tradespeople in the couch cushions, immigrant expertise is the only way to get us anywhere close to meeting our housing goals.
Blaming immigrants for our homegrown problems is a double defeat. It opens the door to the horrifying mainstream xenophobia that contemporary Canada has so far escaped, while closing the door on the very people who are our best chance at overcoming these challenges, resulting from decades of made-in-Canada complacency and neglect.
To the many opinion leaders now casually calling out Canada’s supposed immigration excess: please do your homework. Check the evidence. And open your mind to the fact that while Canada’s problems may be far-reaching, their origins are hardly far-flung.
Daniel Bernhard is CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.
Further interest by conservatives on self-administered citizenship oaths, along with concerns over declining naturalization rates, the latter reflecting a longer-term trend, the steep increase in citizenship fees under the Harper government, and the shutdown and slow recovery of citizenship in 2020 and 2021. Dual citizenship prohibitions appears to be less of a factor except for Chinese immigrants.
Understandably, but unfortunately, Shawn Taylor then argues that it is more the “sense of self loathing” and negative narratives that explains the decline with little to no evidence (no public opinion research that I have seen substantiates this claim). He then praises the existing citizenship guide, Discover Canada, developed under the Harper government, which was a vast improvement over its predecessor but overly reflected the ideological bias of that government:
New Canadians may soon face a brand-new obstacle on their path to citizenship. Beyond interminable delays and hefty fees, by June they could also find themselves having to prove they’re not a robot by clicking on every image that contains a motorcycle. Or a parking meter. Or a horse
Last month Ottawa announced plans to eliminate the long-standing requirement that citizenship applicants publicly swear (or affirm) Canada’s Oath of Citizenship at an official ceremony before receiving their citizenship papers. Such oath-taking ceremonies have been a requirement since 1947. And while they went virtual during Covid-19, they’ve always been public events overseen by a citizenship judge or other designated Crown representative.
Now, with massive waiting times afflicting the entire immigration system, the federal Liberals are proposing to speed up this last stage in the process via a “secure online solution.” Immigrants will simply have to left-click their computer mouse to complete their oath and thus become citizens of Canada. It seems an uninspiring culmination to what should be an important, if not life-changing, event.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government unveiled this time-saving proposal quietly in the Canada Gazette on February 25, but it has since attracted plenty of high-profile outrage from Canada’s Liberal elite. Former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson said she was “horrified” by the idea of doing away with citizenship ceremonies, calling them the “mark of a civilized society.” Sergio Marchi, federal immigration minister during the Jean Chrétien years, called it “a misguided idea” that would add “insult to injury!” (Exclamation in original.) Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi added that it was “a terrible idea.”
“Becoming a Canadian citizen is a transformational event,” explains Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), in an interview. “This is truly a special ‘once in a lifetime’ occasion – you can get married more than once, you can have more than one child but you can only become a Canadian once. We should celebrate it as such.” Bernhard worries that turning the final stage of citizenship into a “box you tick” will degrade its significance by making it indistinguishable from any run-of-the-mill online transaction.
The ICC, founded by Clarkson and her husband John Ralston Saul in 2005, is an advocacy group focused on integrating and celebrating new Canadians. To this end, it hosts lavish citizenship ceremonies in iconic locations, such as Toronto’s Pearson International Airport or in national parks, and encourages existing Canadians to attend in order to create a broader sense of community engagement. “Everyone is invited to the party,” Bernhard says. “We want to extend a collective welcome and make it a moment for reflection and celebration. Citizenship isn’t just something on your passport. It should exist in your heart as well.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is actually over-staffed when it comes to processing immigration applications. ‘IRCC is estimated to have 65% more staff than would be required to meet the goal’ of its own service standards, the PBO reports.Tweet
It is, of course, impossible to know what exists in Ottawa’s heart. But the federal government appears determined to make the citizenship process dramatically less special – downright banal, in fact. And for reasons that are of its own creation. While the federal government’s current service standard states that a citizenship application will be processed in 12 months, new applicants are currently being told it will take two years to complete, including a three-month wait to schedule a citizenship ceremony.
What’s causing the delay? Waiting times have exploded across the federal bureaucracy, and it can’t be blamed on a lack of resources. According to a recent report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is actually over-staffed when it comes to processing immigration applications. “IRCC is estimated to have 65% more staff than would be required to meet the goal” of its own service standards, the PBO reports.
Set against such evidence of bureaucratic ineptitude, it seems downright satirical for Ottawa to suggest that new Canadians will “enjoy time savings…[of] approximately 90 minutes” by not having to sit through a formal citizenship ceremony they would likely have remembered for the rest of their lives. “This government has a problem providing the basic service of immigration applications,” snaps Bernhard. “The ceremony is not the problem.”
An Even Bigger Citizenship Problem
When it comes to the state of Canadian citizenship, however, Bernhard has bigger worries than the mere loss of public formalities. Top of the list is the fact new arrivals to this country appear to be falling out of love with the idea of becoming Canadian in the first place. Earlier this year, ICC asked Statistics Canada for an update on the rate at which immigrants become citizens.
In 1991, 68.6 percent of immigrants holding a permanent residency card achieved citizenship between five and nine years of arriving. (Permanent residents can apply for citizenship after spending five years in Canada.) This figure rose above 75 percent in the next two censuses. It has since fallen dramatically. In 2016, only 60.4 percent of permanent residents became citizens within the stated time period. And according to the latest 2021 census data provided by Statcan, it’s now down to 45.7 percent. In other words, fewer than half of recent immigrants are choosing to become Canadian citizens once they’re eligible.
Falling out of love with Canada? According to recent Statistics Canada data, fewer than half of recent Canadian immigrants choose to apply for citizenship after their five-year wait period is up.
“The figures are shocking,” says Bernhard. He considers the trend a fundamental blow to Canadian identity: “One of the ways Canadians see themselves as being unique in the world is in how we welcome immigrants. It is a tradition that goes back to before the founding of Canada.” As proof, he cites an 1840 speech by pre-Confederation Quebec politician Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, who declared that Canada’s strength lay in welcoming “various populations which come from diverse portions of the globe” and making them “like ourselves, Canadian.”
Now, however, the data suggests a decided lack of interest among new arrivals in joining what Bernhard calls “the team that is Canada.” If immigrants decide they don’t really care about signing up for membership in Team Canada, “then we’ve got a big problem.”
Mobile Free Agents or Pressure from Communist China?
Canada has a lot invested in immigration. Earlier this year, the Trudeau government announced new targets for in-migration that are unprecedented in the modern era. After accepting fewer than 200,000 permanent immigrants in 2020, the Liberals now plan to increase intake to 465,000 in 2023 and 500,000 by 2025. Such a tidal wave of new residents clearly is already straining the capacity of the housing market and likely fuelling inflation as well. Nonetheless, immigration enjoys strong support across all political parties and regions, if somewhat tempered in Quebec. This national consensus appears to be holding because the needs of the labour market are so great. But if all these newcomers feel no particular attachment or affection for their new country, then the economic argument for immigration becomes much weaker.
Chinese immigrants must now choose one passport or the other when they arrive in Canada. If they can’t have both, it appears most are deciding to remain Chinese citizens even after they settle permanently in this country.Tweet
Bernhard admits he doesn’t have an answer to why new arrivals seem to be increasingly disenchanted with becoming Canadian, and he’s hoping Statcan will soon offer more clarity on the issue. From his perspective, the worst-case scenario is if these ambivalent immigrants are mostly highly-educated, high-income “free agents” who are prepared to pull up stakes and move to another country as soon as something better comes along.
Bolstering this fear is a recent poll conducted by ICC of new Canadians showing that nearly one-third of 18-34-year-olds and one-quarter of those with a university education considered themselves likely to move elsewhere in the next two years. As these potentially wealthy – and wealth-creating – individuals offer a substantial economic advantage to whichever country they settle in, Canada has a strong incentive to retain them. Getting them to become citizens seems the surest way to lock them down.
Partly easing this fear of mobile free-agent immigrants is a 2019 Statcan study using earlier data that found the decline in citizenship uptake to be largely driven by immigrants with low education and low income. Further, almost the entire drop between 1996 and 2016 was attributable to migrants from one country in one region. “Most striking was the large decline in citizenship take-up among immigrants from East Asia – mainly China,” the Statcan report states. Naturalization rates for all East Asian immigrants fell from 83 percent to 45 percent over this time.
Communist China’s increasingly strident prohibition on dual citizenship may be to blame here, since it means footloose Chinese immigrants must now choose one passport or the other when they arrive in Canada. If they can’t have both, it appears most are deciding to remain Chinese citizens even after they settle permanently in this country. And if government policy in China is the principal factor behind the precipitous decline in citizenship uptake, then there’s little Canada can do to correct the situation
An international perspective is also useful. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) International Migration Outlook 2022 Canada remains near the top of the immigration leaderboard despite recent concerns. We stand third overall in terms of total immigrants accepted, trailing only the United States and Germany. (While the U.S. is often painted as unwelcoming, it has long been the world’s dominant recipient of permanent, legal immigrants. Under President Donald Trump, for example, it admitted more than 1 million immigrants annually until Covid-19 hit in 2020; last year it welcomed over 830,000.)
As well, the average annual rate at which foreign-born residents become citizens across all OECD countries is just 2.2 percent. In Canada, it’s 4 percent – nearly twice as high. While the OECD also notes Canada’s citizenship rate has fallen significantly in recent years, this global perspective does not reveal any grave threat to Canada’s way of life or its ability to attract immigrants. Among the top five immigrant-accepting countries (Spain and the United Kingdom complete the set), all have substantially larger populations than Canada; our status as a generous, welcoming and desirable country appears solid.
The Horror Stories We Tell Ourselves
The evident decline in Canada’s citizenship rates may say more about the attitudes and habits of existing Canadians than those of newly-arriving immigrants. The federal bureaucracy’s failure to meet its own published service standards is certainly a self-inflicted wound. As is the proposal to solve this problem by eliminating much-loved citizenship ceremonies. The effect of both situations is to debase the perceived status of Canadian citizenship by emphasizing the transactional over the transformational. Then there’s the Roxham Road debacle, which offers migrants the opportunity to illegally sneak into our country via a dead-end road rather than at a regular border crossing and still be recognized as refugee claimants, with all the official support and standing this entails. If Canadian citizenship is supposed to be so valuable, it seems foolish to further cheapen the reputation of the entire immigration system in this way.
Beneath these obvious failures of governance and policy, however, lurks an even deeper and more insidious problem. As Bernhard explains, becoming a citizen is akin to joining a team with all other Canadians. A “club,” so to speak, that is exclusive to those who wish to be identified as Canadian and who intend to participate in its promotion and maintenance by voting and performing other civic duties. If we accept such an analogy, then it clearly matters how we advertise and promote this club to new members. So what sort of stories do Canadians tell about their own country these days? And do they amount to an effective marketing strategy?
“The story of Canada that our major institutions tell has increasingly become one that focuses on only the most negative aspects of our country, such as oppression, racism, discrimination and dispossession,” observes Christopher Dummitt, an historian at Trent University’s School for the Study of Canada in Peterborough, Ontario. Common examples of this new tendency are factually-dubious claims, often from officially sanctioned sources, that Canada has committed and continues to commit genocide against the Indigenous population, is systemically racist towards black people, was once a slave country, and on and on. “It is a deliberate distortion of our actual history,” says Dummitt in an interview.
This sense of national self-loathing has become so encompassing that official multiculturalism, once billed as an unquestionable Canadian value, is now considered evidence of an “unjust society premised on white supremacy,” as two University of Calgary education professorsabsurdly argued last year. Even professed supporters of Canadian identity, such as ICC co-founder Ralston Saul, now casually declare that “Canada has failed on many fronts.” As for how such a perspective might work as a branding exercise, Dummitt says, “If the story about Canada is that it was an institutionally corrupt nation beset by the original sin of colonialism, then why would anyone want to become a citizen of that?”
Dummitt has been pushing back against the now-pervasive narrative that Canada is, at its core, morally bankrupt. In 2021 he organized a rebuttal signed by many eminent Canadian historians condemning the Canadian Historical Association’s (CHA) unilateral declaration that Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples was “genocidal.” In making such a claim, Dummitt’s rebuttal stated, the CHA was “insulting the basic standards of good scholarly conduct.” He has also spoken out against the practice of tearing down statues honouring Canada’s founding fathers, and is currently fighting Toronto’s plans to scrub the name of 18th century British parliamentarian Henry Dundas from its streets and public squares on the (entirely bogus) assertion that he was an ally to the slave trade. “We need to call out these nonsensical claims,” Dummitt states determinedly. “And we need politicians who are willing to celebrate the Canadian nation in diverse ways.”
If there is a piquant irony to how Canadian history is currently being told by and to Canadians, it’s that new immigrants are actually more likely to receive a fair, balanced and generally uplifting vision of their new country than native-born residents. That’s because immigrants must still study for their citizenship test using a guidebook written by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper before our current historical miasma took effect.
“Discover Canada,” unveiled in 2011 by former Citizenship and Immigration minister Jason Kenney, was widely recognized for its nuanced treatment of Canada’s history, governance and culture. It explicitly acknowledges the low points in our past – including the Indian Residential School system and racist policies towards Chinese immigrants – but never claims such events represent the totality of the Canadian experience. The overall (and entirely honest) message is that Canada has always been a remarkably tolerant and welcoming country with a proud heritage of accommodation, democracy and the opportunity to achieve prosperity for all. As a result, Dummitt observes, immigrants who read the guidebook may actually have a better understanding of the true nature of Canada than Canadian students who’ve been force-fed a litany of horror stories about our past in high school and university classrooms.
Precisely because of the guidebook’s even-handedness and generally upbeat tone, however, many groups are demanding it be replaced with something grimmer and much less complimentary about Canada and its past. When the CBC tried to foment outrage over the continuing existence of the Harper-era citizenship guide in 2019, Janet Dench, then-executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, called the situation “incomprehensible” and demanded a new version that “acknowledges the problems in Canadian and current reality, and how that affects Indigenous and racialized people.” In other words, Dench wanted Ottawa to tell newcomers a much more negative – and almost certainly much less accurate – story about the country they were coming to. With this sort of self-hatred being expressed by current citizens, is it any wonder immigrants are having second thoughts about joining Club Canada?
Discover Canada, the Canadian citizenship study guide introduced by the Harper government in 2011, is one of the few remaining official documents that offers an evenhanded and generally uplifting vision of Canada’s history by celebrating our legacy of democracy, accomodation and prosperity.
If we want to make Canadian citizenship more attractive to newcomers, the first order of business should be to project a more uplifting story about what Canada means. And to do that, says Dummitt, “we need to stop telling lies about our past.”
Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.
Just launched yesterday, a fun project to work on and one that hopefully will make some key IRCC data more accessible and understandable. My post on the Institute for Canadian Citizenship website below.
Check it out and let us know what you think:
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dan Hiebert (University of British Columbia) and Howard Ramos (Western University) were speculating about the possible impact of COVID-19 on immigration and citizenship in Canada. These discussions highlighted the unique value and importance of data and ultimately led to monthly tracking of IRCC data across the full range of programs: Permanent Residents, temporary workers, settlement services, international students, citizenship, and visitor visas.
The importance of data was made visible during the citizenship backlogs in the early 2000s and 2010s, which prompted the respective governments to increase funding to IRCC to reduce large backlogs.
We were curious how COVID-19 would change the complex set of push and pull factors that incentivize migration. Put simply, source countries have attributes that make life look more attractive abroad and host countries have features that attract newcomers. For instance, a weak economy or poorer quality of life at home compared to good jobs and good health abroad.
Monthly tracking of data would allow us to observe the downstream impact of COVID-19 on the number and origin of people moving through Canada’s various immigration and citizenship programs delivered through IRCC.
As it happened, the data revealed that COVID-19 did not significantly affect immigration source countries apart from China, where Chinese government restrictions and policies resulted in an ongoing decline compared to other countries.
In the end, it was the Canadian government’s immigration policy response after the initial shutdowns and restrictions that had a much greater impact on immigration and citizenship than our relative handling of COVID-19.
The government’s response included both short-term measures to address particular pressure points such as seasonal agriculture workers, greater flexibility for international students for remote study, and perhaps most significantly, the vast expansion of temporary residents transitioning to permanent residency (TR2PRR).
Picking up on earlier plans stalled by the pandemic, the government took full advantage of the opportunity to implement substantial increases in immigration levels, with the most recent plan committing to welcome 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025.
The citizenship program, briefly shut-down, moved to a mix of virtual and in-person citizenship ceremonies and has recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Medium and longer-term measures included more online applications and tracking along with IT, AI, and associated investments to improve processing.
Each of these responses had an impact on the people moving through IRCC’s immigration and citizenship programs. But to what degree? The observable change can only be seen in IRCC’s monthly data tables, which remain complex and unapproachable to most.
The goal of this dashboard is to make basic immigration and citizenship data more readily available and accessible to the public. It focuses on permanent residents and new citizens in terms of overall numbers, immigration categories, the countries of citizenship and the year-over-year change. Application data is not included given the approximately six-month time lag. IRCC web data provides a sense of interest in immigrating to Canada and becoming a citizen.
The data series starts in 2018, two years prior to the start of COVID-19, and tracks the impact of COVID-19 and the related effects of the government policy and program responses to COVID-19.
Now, more than two years later, most of Canada’s immigration programs have recovered from the depths of COVID-19 health and travel restrictions.
Multicultural Meanderings 