The Post editorial board: The Liberals have made a mess of immigration ... Now Harper's Conservatives must clean up!

March 14, 2008

There are credible arguments that Canada needs a great deal more immigration than it allows now in order to secure its future prosperity. And there are credible arguments that Canada could do with a lot less. An honest person can defend either position. But here's one that can't be defended: that Canada should accept far more immigration applications than it ever intends to process. For two decades or more, the backlog of immigration paperwork has been growing, and waiting times for acceptance lengthening, without any serious attempt to shrink the gap. The Conservative government now finally intends to do something about it, while continuing to keep overall immigration at or above current levels. And the Liberals, who are mostly responsible for creating the problem, are not happy.

Family-class immigration may be the closest thing to a core principle that the Liberal Party of Canada possesses. It is universally acknowledged that the long chains of humanity that the family reunification regulations pull into Canada, free from official-language requirements and completely outside the points system imposed on economic-class immigrants, are a key to guaranteeing both the continued growth of the party's voter base and the loyalty of existing supporters who hope to transplant networks. The Liberals fear that any cap on applications will end up being applied more firmly to the family class, since the Conservatives are openly seeking to make immigration conform better to the labour market needs of Canada. It is hard to blame them, given their interests, for being afraid -- assuming their interests don't include what is actually best for the country.

That includes recent immigrants and low-skill Canadian workers, who face the toughest wage pressures from continuing mass immigration. In recent years it has become clear that the Liberal bargain with new Canadians has had a diabolical quality: They are let in the door, and no one warns them about the millions who will storm through it behind them, competing for the same work. In 1980, according to census figures, Canadian immigrants who had been in the country for 10 years enjoyed full wage parity with the Canadian-born. The same measurement in 1990 showed that they were earning 90% as much as natives. In the year 2000 it was 80%.

The math is easy to do, it's fixing the problem that requires some mettle. The Conservatives have pumped large amounts of money into helping immigrants use their professional and technical credentials here, recruiting foreign graduates of Canadian post-secondary schools, and building a better infrastructure for official-language education.

But what we get from the Liberals are the same platitudes we have been hearing for generations: complaints of veiled racism, and phony appeals to the mass immigration of a bygone age when unskilled labourers could homestead unbroken land or make a living supplying muscle power to technologically backward industries.

Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua had the chutzpah to say yesterday that "family reunification ... attracts many skilled workers to come here." The skilled workers we need are, practically by definition, in the economic category -- and their wives and children are officially counted in it, too. Mr. Bevilacqua presumably means to say that some of the best and brightest are attracted to Canada because of the chance that family reunification offers them to bring their parents, grandparents and dependent relatives here in the future.

If so -- and it is probably true -- then those newcomers might not offer such a good deal to a generous welfare state that will allow their older family members full eligibility for Canadian social benefits, old-age support and health care without contributing a lifetime of taxes to the treasury. And there is evidence that the sponsorship arrangements under which family-class immigrants come to Canada often fail, leaving provincial treasuries on the hook for heavy social service obligations. Maybe the Conservatives do intend to discriminate in favour of the immigrants more interested in founding new Canadian families than airlifting their existing ones here. And maybe it's about time.

Immigration to Canada Made Easy!