Diane Francis: The Liberals’ unsustainable immigration plan

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Remember that promise last spring by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister that Canada would allow 400,000 immigrants a year into Canada for the next three years? This followed increases that have taken place since 2015 despite worrisome unemployment levels.

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Canada’s unemployment rate is high, at 7.5 per cent, compared to four per cent in New Zealand and 4.6 per cent in Australia. This is at least partly because Australia and New Zealand have been preoccupied with retaining the living standards of their existing populations by trimming immigration. In 2019, for example, Australia lowered its immigration target to 160,000 per year.

Few Canadians know where that 400,000 figure came from, but the background to this policy provides another example of Trudeau’s questionable policy-making. Like his pledge to plant two billion trees, this one is also thoroughly unjustified.

This immigration target arose from a 2011 weekend gathering of Liberal friends at a lavish Lake of Bays cottage in Ontario’s Muskoka region, which is owned by Dominic Barton, former head of McKinsey & Company and now Trudeau’s ambassador in China.

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They called it the Century Initiative. It’s supporters include: former finance minister Bill Morneau, who resigned because of the We Charity scandal; former innovation minister Navdeep Bains, who left office after the 2020 China vaccine debacle; Mark Wiseman, the ex-Canada Pension Plan Investment Board chair who went to BlackRock and left for violating its “relationship at work” policy; and some other prominent Liberals.

The Century Initiative advocates for “policies and programs that would increase Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100,” according to its website. That would mean increasing the population of the Greater Toronto Area from 8.8 million to 33.5 million, expanding Metro Vancouver from 3.3 million to 11.9 million and cramming another 7.8 million people into the Montreal area.

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The 400,000 immigrants-per-year announcement was the beginning of a tsunami of immigration that the Trudeau government had in mind, thanks to its Muskoka brain trust.

The Century Initiative website is complete with studies that support a tripling of Canada’s population, along with a road map to achieving that end. Interestingly, cheap child care for all is a pillar of its proposed scheme to increase Canada’s size and influence.

Hardly anyone would disagree that Canada needs immigrants, but such a flood is not justifiable.

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The Conservative platform, by contrast, welcomes international talent, offers refuge to human rights defenders and those who are fleeing persecution, and also reunites families.

But it proposes to improve credential recognition, replace the parents and grandparents lottery program and give priority to those providing child care or family support and those who are proficient in Canada’s official languages. It also would allow family members to live here without status for up to five years as long as they purchase health insurance, as is the case in Australia and New Zealand.

In 2016, Barton was asked about the 100 million immigrants goal in an interview with The Canadian Press. “It’s a big number — to me, it’s more of an aspirational number,” he said. “It would obviously change the country considerably. It’s a different path … but I don’t think it’s crazy. It costs a lot of money. If we have more immigrants, we want to integrate them, as well.”

So, like two billion trees, this year’s sudden target of 400,000 new immigrants represents another government scheme sprung on Canadians without their consultation and, frankly, without justification.

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