By Kira Wronska Dorward

President,  The Policy Exchange

In retrospect, Canada is known as a nation of immigrants. However, until the Liberal reforms of the 1970s policy makers preferred to offset an enormous influx of migrants to the country with measures the subtle functions of which excluded those of undesirable ethnic origin, while paving the way for others of notably British or select European heritage. Policy makers were given the power of God to decide who was and who was not eligible to become a Canadian, for reasons subject to the whims of an ethnic oligarchy. Up until the latter half of the twentieth century, this was the accepted status quo on immigration policy.

The abuses of policy makers in this regard are well known to historians today. Beginning with the infamous Head Taxes on migrant Chinese railroad workers in the 1880s, the first half of the Twentieth Century would see the Canadian government make policy decisions designed to hand-pick immigrants of desirable background and economic status, and exclude other groups based largely on the personal prejudices of the ruling elite.

The first Immigration Act in 1869 had merely prohibited criminals and the destitute. A third Act, passed in 1910, was much more specific. Although it did not explicitly restrict any ethnic group, the cabinet was given the absolute authority to prohibit or limit any group it so chose for any reason. The question of who would and who would not be given access to Canada was placed directly in the hands of the executive, with no safeguard whatsoever against the personal prejudices of those in charge.

The enthusiastic application of this reform is evident in the subsequent three decades of immigration history. During the First World War, restrictions on émigrés from enemy countries were enthusiastically enforced. In addition, a fourth Act following the Bolshevik Revolution formalized official guidelines. Fearful of any social unrest, those whom the Canadian government deemed to have subversive ideological beliefs were denied citizenship on those grounds alone. Chinese immigrants were barred almost completely, and during the Great Depression, laws were passed that only allowed those with enough money to establish and maintain a farm to enter the country. This was extended in 1931 to bar all immigration from Continental Europe entirely.

Following the end of World War II and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Canadian government was forced to change its policies to accommodate the influx of displaced people from the Second World War and changing international norms. The 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act gave citizenship to those not born in Canada, and reforms were passed that sought to eliminate racial discrimination in Canada’s immigration policy.

Reforms to immigration policy, including the creation of the Points System, continued through the 1960s. However, the cultural turning point came in 1971, when Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau first announced that Canada would embrace a policy of multiculturalism. In practice, this was followed up by the 1976 Immigration Act which divided potential immigrants into three classes; Family, Independent, or Humanitarian.

By the 1980s cracks in the new immigration system were beginning to appear. An enormous tide of immigrants claiming landed refugee status was creating a backlog of immigration applications. In addition, many already approved immigrants were sponsoring members of very extended families. Since then, problems have continued.  According to the 2006 Canadian census, 43.4% of newly arrived immigrants were not in their prime working years (between the ages of 25 and 54), and among the total group of recent immigrants less than a quarter reported speaking English fluently within the home, with one out of ten not being able to speak either English or French at all. Immigration quotas were being filled by unskilled and uneducated extended-family members where the government should have been giving preference to those who would be an addition to, and not a drain on, society.

In 2008, recognizing the problems with the existing system, the Harper government wrote a reform into the budget bill in an attempt to deal with upwards of 1 million immigration applications, which have created excessively long processing times. In essence, the Conservatives wanted to implement a system that moved away from a first-come-first-serve basis to one that gives immigration approval in conjunction with labour market requirements. Once quotas are achieved, applications will no longer be accepted and failed applicants may reapply for status the next year.  Canadian policy makers are now attempting to establish a responsible and effective immigration system, in keeping with other nations, such as the United Kingdom, that have been consistently refining — and inserting restrictions into — immigration laws since the 1960s (including the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act).

Critics of this reform complain that Canada is making a turn to the pre-WWII era where policy-makers handpicked immigrants based on ethnic preferences. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion calls the reform “unprecedented, sweeping, discretionary power”. Far from unprecedented, however, the reform is a pragmatic reigning-in of control over a country’s population that has grown by 13.6% in recent years, four times the rate of the native population.  According to Statistics Canada, in 2006 the foreign-born population has grown to a fifth of Canada’s total population, the highest proportion in 75 years.

Trudeau created a revolution in Canadian culture, when ethnic differences were emphasized and celebrated, and the bureaucratic discrimination of past decades was all but forgotten. The “nation of immigrants” was replaced in political discourse by terms that, in response to the tide of popular sentiment, emphasized differences of ethnicity. In recent years terms such as “cultural mosaic” have been made fashionable by policy makers catering to a growing population of visible minorities. No longer the other way round, Canadian political agenda is subject to the presence of ethnic groups once considered “undesirable” — if the appetite of some politicians for seal-heart is any indication.

Liberals are once again advocating for a virtual open-door policy towards immigration, claiming that any sort of discretionary system that takes the labour market into consideration is a return to the policies of Head Taxes and enemy aliens. The extremes of Canada’s immigration history indicate that this is not the case. It is in fact the responsibility of policy-makers to take the priorities of the country foremost into consideration, and not be subject to the unrealistic sentiments of certain groups when building an election platform.