Immigration’s Narrow Opportunity
How To Balance Goals
One of the great tragedies of the way the Liberals utterly fucked the Canadian immigration system is that there is, right now, an opportunity available to Canada if we’re smart enough to take it.
DOGE, in its blunt force ways, is destroying a lot of institutions that perform duties that might be called psuedo-state capacity - some nominally private employers who rely on government money - as well as gutting wide swathes of traditional state capacity. One of the most clear cut examples of this is health care and medical research, where grant funding is being destroyed, research hospitals decimated, and doctors are thinking of leaving.
This should be an easy answer for Canada - we should make an attractive offer to any and all academics, doctors, researchers, and various other interested white collar professionals that feel increasingly uncomfortable in America. But, given the state of the housing market, hanging an Open For Business sign on the immigration policy door will be very bad for us. So, how should the Liberals manage that?
It’s clear that the problem with the Liberals’ immigration decisions, especially in the early years of the last Parliament, was both in the breadth and type of immigrants allowed in. Yes, there were too many people in general, but there were especially too many students, too many TFWs, and too many people not serving a clear purpose. Any notion of stealing America’s best and brightest would not fail any form of utility test, at the very least.
It would be a policy that would strengthen our universities, help cut hospital and primary care backlogs across the country, and show that Canada can do big things again, especially if we pair better and more immediate credential recognition with the offer to doctors. It’s the kind of policy that’s right up Carney’s alley.
But at a time when the decision to take advice from Mark Wiseman has been a talking point and the Liberals will want to be seen to be tougher on immigration, they’ll have to pair any offer to America’s best and brightest with something to ensure that Canadians don’t think the government is going to return us to the days of unchecked immigration levels. So, here’s a few things the government could promise that would help win the election and allow us to poach top American talent without a backlash.
Eliminate the Temporary Foreign Worker Program Entirely
If I had my way I’d say that the TFW program should die a quick and painless death. It’s exploitative of cheap, mostly brown labour so that mostly white business owners can make more money. There’s no real reason for it to exist, except as a subsidy to corporate Canada. If you’re worried about competitiveness if wages have to go up significantly, just offer a tax credit for hiring unemployed and underemployed young Canadians to positions - the gains in income tax revenues from lowering youth unemployment would offset most of the cost of the tax credits.
On a moral level TFWs are repugnant. They’re exploitative crap that serves to depress Canadian wages and relies on the idea that so long as the people we are exploiting aren’t Canadians it’s somehow fine. It’s not. On an economic level, if you want to reduce the number of 26 year olds still living with their parents, solving youth unemployment is a good start, and boosting wages in the process is also good. Oh, and if we want to solve the crises of male loneliness and online radicalization maybe making it so that young people have the money to go to a bar and not panic that they can’t afford more than 1.5 drinks might be a way to start.
TFWs are a relic of a much worse era. Abolish them.
Promise To Extend Current Immigration Policies Through The Rest Of The Decade
Marc Miller enacted really quite draconian cuts to immigration levels, at least compared to what he inherited, and there’s no reason not to extend those through 2029. There is already some incomplete data showing that rent has levelled off, if not fell, in places where students are a significant part of the rental market, which dispels the idea that demand for housing isn’t a factor in price. So, extend these cuts and give us some time to let the housing market get more in sync with the population.
Whether or not going further is feasible is unclear, but in this case, being more aggressive in cutting numbers is better than being less aggressive. If Carney wins, one of the ways we best set ourselves up for 2029 is by seeing rent down in nominal terms from March 2025 to October 2029, which would of course be an even bigger real term cut. The best way to do that is to make clear that the more stringent regime currently in place will be the ceiling in overall terms in the next Parliament.
Announce A Bi-Partisan Commission Into Sustainable Immigration Levels
One of Justin Trudeau’s great fuckups is handling immigration so badly that it became a political football. And so, the best thing we can do is punt the football into the long grass by saying that we need a comprehensive review to meet the standards of the moment or some bullshit that means that the Conservatives are locked in with us as we decide on what a 2030s immigration policy looks like.
For the good of the country, we need to get this right, because I cannot have Canada be a country where immigration as a general principle becomes a political football. Trudeau fucked it up, but we need to ensure that the basic principle that immigration is good is protected, and that means working with the CPC on a medium term answer on immigration.
The failures of the Trudeau Liberals must not mean that we fail to see the opportunity that Trump has created to poach top American talent. That said, we must ensure we do this within a controlled, and stringent, immigration environment. We must do both. We need to control immigration so we can pounce on opportunities, and if Carney wants to win, he needs to pair offering the best and brightest a home with stringent measures. Let’s hope he does.
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This will be an important discussion to have after the election is over. 💯 to ending the TFW program, it is a horrible abuse.
Linking immigration to housing policy is a good idea, too. Immigration without a settlement plan (and support to the provinces who bear the infrastructure costs in health and social services) is important.
As Canadians we have to realize that there is going to be enormous pressure to accept a large number… millions… of people who will be displaced by climate disasters around the world. We should prepare for that!
Great column Evan. Exploitation to depress wages is certainly a key concern and must be addressed with a TFW program cancellation. Attracting America's best and brightest would indeed be an excellent move. Imagine improving the R&D basis of publicly owned institutions. I recall the value of Connaught Labs before it became privatized years ago. Under the Trudeau regime it seemed that citizenship was devalued. We need to return to adding pride and ceremony as well as a clear set of expectations to new citizens as a part of the process. The potential for positive changes is at hand. May the winner of the election actually put some thought prior to takign actions rather than palying politics. A nation waits.