The Trudeau government has sought to break away from the private organization Century Initiative, which promotes a target of 500,000 immigrants per year in order to make Canada a country of 100 million inhabitants by 2100, i.e. twice and a half its current population.
Hounded by the Bloc Québécois in the House of Commons last week, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser said Century Initiative’s position “is not the policy of our government” . The Bloc presented a motion to be voted on Monday asking parliamentarians to reject the objectives of the Toronto organization and the government “not to draw inspiration from them to develop its future immigration thresholds”.
Such an immigration threshold threatens the French language, the political weight of Quebec, the place of Aboriginal peoples as well as access to housing, health services and education, alleges the sovereignist party. We can only agree with him.
Minister Mélanie Joly may accuse the Bloc Québécois “of scaring the world”, the problem is that the federal immigration plan, unveiled this fall, plans to welcome 500,000 permanent immigrants in 2025. It is worth remembering that the idea of substantially raising immigration thresholds came from a working group, mandated in 2016 by the Trudeau government and chaired by Dominic Barton, then world leader of the McKinsey firm. The committee recommended increasing the number of immigrants admitted by 50% to gradually reach 450,000. It was this same Barton who co-founded the Century Initiative.
Since the presentation of this report, the Trudeau government has continued to raise its immigration targets.
The number of immigrants admitted in a year, those who obtain permanent residency, is only part of the story. Statistics Canada calculates the net annual growth of the Canadian population, which takes into account both additions and subtractions, births and deaths, new permanent immigrants and asylum seekers, as well as the arrival and departure of temporary immigrants, workers or foreign students.
For the year 2019, before the pandemic, the federal agency had noted a population increase of 583,766 people, a historic peak, of which 85% came from international migration and the rest from births in addition to deaths. Canada had the highest growth rate of the G7 countries, and more than double that of the United States and the United Kingdom. After a trough in 2020, mainly due to border restrictions imposed during the pandemic, growth resumed the following year. Then, in 2022, it’s an explosion: more than a million people, 96% of whom are migrants, have been added to the population, an all-time record in absolute numbers. This is an increase of 2.7% and you have to go back to 1957 to see a higher rate, obtained thanks to the baby boom and an influx of refugees following the crushed revolution in Hungary. The 2022 jump puts Canada among the top 20 countries with the fastest population growth last year, with nearly all of the countries ahead of it being in Africa. If Canada continues on this path, the objective of 100 million inhabitants will be reached well before 2100. This is neither desirable nor sustainable.
Contrary to Ottawa’s rhetoric, mass immigration does not necessarily reduce the labor shortage. In some cases, it can even accentuate scarcity since new arrivals consume goods and services, notably public services. Population growth necessarily leads to a surge in GDP, but not necessarily enrichment per capita. It goes without saying that economic activity favors companies that can continue to expand, all those who have something to sell and property owners, in short, the property owners. It is not surprising that business people, well represented by the Barton committee, are stepping up the pressure to pursue the Initiative of the Century. But for ordinary people struggling with a deepening housing shortage and skyrocketing rents, the view is not the same.
In the National Assembly, elected officials unanimously adopted two motions last week denouncing this initiative, which “is not viable for the future of the Quebec nation”.
The Trudeau government maintains that its immigration policy, based on dubious premises, is not that of the Initiative of the Century. Now it’s white cap and white cap.