Canada’s immigration system needs massive, wholesale reform.
Tinkering around the edges won’t cut the mustard.
When Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called to ask if I would serve as the Shadow Minister for Immigration, I'll admit to feeling some initial reluctance.
I chalk that up to knowing what was being asked of me. Having served in this role from the start of the Liberal government in 2015 until early 2020, the impact of this policy file and the amount of effort it takes to get the policy right is not lost on me. Managing it as a government minister or an opposition critic requires a substantial lift. That’s because the delicate consensus supporting Canada's pluralism can quickly fray without careful and wise handling of federal immigration policy.
Unfortunately for Canada, putting it mildly, the successive Liberal Ministers who have helmed this file over the past decade have not exuded such wisdom.
Without exception, all of them abandoned the fundamental principles that have long sustained Canadian public support for immigration: do not admit more newcomers than the country can house, provide healthcare and jobs for, or culturally integrate - and do not create conditions in which Canada’s immigration system can be easily gamed.
The consequences of the Liberal's failures on this front have been stark - a housing crisis, record-breaking healthcare wait times, suppressed wages, job losses, youth unemployment, rampant fraud and abuse, and heightened tensions between communities.
Their mismanagement has fractured the political discourse, too. On one extreme, profiteers and partisans will deny any issues exist at all, often labelling critics of the Liberals' juiced immigration levels as anti-immigrant or worse. On the other, some now reject pluralism altogether. Caught in the middle are millions of Canadians who support immigration in principle but grapple with a Liberal-created reality of soaring housing costs, scarce jobs, and strained access to healthcare and services. They watch as the government does things like consider buying hotels to house asylum claimants while their rents spiral out of control. Most don't blame the immigrants who came to Canada for these problems, but they do blame the Liberal government whose policies led them to this place.
They should be offered solutions, not more arrivals, until these challenges are addressed.
And so, massive reform is needed. But the question that first went through my mind after being asked to serve on the file again was, is reform even possible under this government?
My skepticism is rooted in my previous experience on the file, having watched the Liberals give a proverbial middle finger to any constructive proposals to get immigration on the right path. As early as months into the Liberal's post-2015 election win, problems with their approach to immigration quickly became apparent. In response, I mounted vigorous campaigns to stop the Liberals from lifting the visa requirement for Mexican nationals, knowing that doing so would result in a flood of bogus asylum claims. I spent years pressing the government to close the loophole in the Safe Third Country agreement for the same reason. I pushed the government to keep female genital mutilation listed in the citizenship guide as an abhorrent practice, knowing how important it was to promote gender equality as a cultural norm to newcomers. I prosecuted the rampant fraud in the Temporary Foreign Workers program to prevent the human exploitation that has long accompanied it. But no matter the effort, the response from the Liberals was the same: no change, and the implication that criticism of failing policy was somehow tantamount to racism.
Fast forward to today, nearly a decade after my prior Cassandra-like experience as the critic-in-chief of the Liberal's immigration policies. Despite a decade of effort on my and fellow Conservatives' efforts to push for the Liberals to reform their immigration policies (much credit to Tom Kmiec), the Liberals have insisted upon juicing them instead. They've done this while simultaneously pursuing economic policies that have lowered economic growth and increased inflation. They've polarized the debate on these issues to the point where even Liberal partisans fear stepping out with constructive advice. The result is millions of people about to have no legal reason to be in Canada, a housing crisis, burgeoning health care wait times, concerns about a looming jobs crisis, cultural tensions, and a never-before-seen in Canada skepticism about immigration.
And as far as I can tell, the Liberals still have no intention of undertaking major reform to the file because their actions have left them without an easy path to get there, even if they wanted to.
The Liberals have allowed too many loopholes and nurtured too many ways to game the system to assume that tinkering around the edges of fundamentally broken programs will cut the mustard in today's context. There are also an entire industries of unscrupulous consultants, lawyers, and advocacy groups that exist to exploit and profit off the same, who have been entirely successful in disincentivizing the Liberals from fixing the system. There's also the problem of the high degree of authority the Minister of Immigration has to change and approve entry paths into the country without Parliamentary approval. Said differently, small scale tinkering around the edges will likely only migrate the overall problem of unchecked inflow to another stream of entry, and more exploitation.
That's not to say that program reform (or elimination) isn't a valid course of action to discuss. But things are so bad now that even bigger, bolder, more transformational action is likely needed, and any programmatic changes should to be considered in that context.
I am presently convinced that nothing short of wholesale reform of the entire system, starting with the process by which the federal government sets and counts immigration levels, will fix the mess the Liberals have created. With millions of people currently in Canada with temporary permits about to expire, the government must urgently entirely rethink the criteria by which people are allowed to stay and enter the country - and then consistently enforce the same. Overall immigration levels need to be drastically reduced and the problem of millions of people with no legal reason to be in Canada must be addressed head on, for there to be any future hope of program or system reform.
Having only been officially on the job for a couple of days, I will consult with stakeholders and our newly expanded Conservative caucus and appointed Shadow Ministers on how they feel we should hold the government to account on this issue. Immigration policy affects all of their communities and files, and not necessarily in a homogenous way. However, what I will be pitching to them as a starting point are the following principles - which the Conservative Party has already generally established as our macro-level position on immigration.
As a first principle, the government must be forced to take action on something that they've already acknowledged, that present overall immigration levels must be massively and immediately curtailed. What is the correct number to allow you to enter the country, you ask? Whereas academics and special interest groups have recently often the loudest voices on that front, the reality is that the lived experience of millions of Canadians have been ignored. And many of those Canadians, grappling with job losses, soaring housing costs, and lengthy healthcare wait times, believe the ideal immigration number is far less than what it is now, zero—or even negative. It falls to the Liberal government to justify any figure they propose by first validating these concerns - which have been long ignored - and addressing the systemic strains exacerbated by high immigration. Every parliamentarian must hold the government accountable on this front, demanding decisive action and transparent data.
As a second principle, the Liberals must be made to acknowledge that the immigration system is so strained that simple tweaks are insufficient and sidestep the core issue: Canada's capacity to absorb newcomers successfully. Fraud, abuse, and massive backlogs now plague every immigration stream, with the unifying problem being unchecked inflow coupled with countless people living in the country without legal status. Without significantly reducing overall immigration, massively tightening temporary resident permit criteria, and promptly removing those with no legal right to remain, the pressure on the system will simply shift elsewhere—such as illegal border crossings leading to work permits or temporary residents with expired permits claiming asylum. The bureaucratic dysfunction underpinning Canada's immigration system cannot be resolved while piling on more entrants, while unscrupulous actors manipulate the system, visa standards stay lax, asylum backlogs grow, and deportations are delayed.
Finally, parliamentarians must to have the courage to address head-on the uncomfortable questions that underpin both of these principles (of which there are many and will be the topic of future columns), while remaining compassionate. Every policy decision made on this file has a human face and story - for newcomers and long-standing Canadian citizens alike. So, the Liberals must be made to rethink the criteria and circumstances in which we will allow people into the country, but also when we won't, and then held to account to strictly enforce those rules. Only then can our systems and processes make sound and expedited decisions on when to allow or deny someone entry, remove them, and prevent profiteers from profiting from failure.
Solving these challenges is integral to virtually every other area of government policy - from the economy to health care, housing, and more.
Failure is not an option. So giddyup, back in the immigration saddle again.