In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
There’s a values-based case against Canada’s immigration policy. Conservatives should make it
As former federal deputy minister Tim Sargent set out this week in a DeepDive for The Hub, Canada’s immigration policy has undergone a fundamental shift over the past decade or so. It’s not just that the number of newcomers has significantly increased, but the composition of who is entering the country has changed too.
Our self-image of Canada’s immigration system as being hyper-focused on skills and human capital is no longer supported by the evidence. Among the more than 470,000 newcomers who came through the permanent resident stream last year, only about 40 percent were selected according to economic criteria. The majority were the immediate family members of economic immigrants, family members of those who have already immigrated, or refugees.
And even that only tells part of the story. Non-permanent residents—including temporary foreign workers and international students—are now a bigger share of Canada’s annual population growth. In 2023 alone, nearly 805,000 non-permanent residents were added to the population. Sargent estimates that there are now 2.8 million non-permanent residents in the country—of which just under 2 million are entitled to work.
What’s the upshot here? Less than half of those entering Canada’s much-vaunted permanent resident stream are being selected based on economic criteria and more than two-thirds of the total annual intake aren’t even entering as permanent residents. We increasingly have an immigration system that’s shifted away from the country’s long-term economic interests and towards temporary migration to fill low-skilled jobs and subsidize post-secondary institutions.
The Left and Right have begun to talk about these developments in different ways. Conservatives have rightly tended to focus on the basic economics of an influx of low-skilled labour and its downward pressures—including on employment and wages—on Canadian workers. Progressives, by contrast, have played up the poor conditions and risk of exploitation for temporary migrants themselves.
Conservatives shouldn’t limit themselves to economic critiques here. They should be prepared to make values-based arguments too.
