Despite its image, Canada remains a gated nation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/08/2017 (2999 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This week Canada’s immigration minister, Ahmed Hussen, is in town to discuss the annual “levels plan” with an invitation-only list of Manitobans. How many will we admit in 2018?

The minister’s agenda speaks of economic needs, international obligations, ability to process and settlement capacity, but is the usual subterfuge aimed at limiting the numbers.

It is an annual exercise designed to give the appearance of consultation, but is of little consequence. Canada’s basic approach to immigration has remained essentially unchanged for a century.

We are — and have been for three generations — a gated nation, restricting immigration deliberately. Current demand to come here is about triple what we allow in each year.

Who we let in, or don’t let in, has changed dramatically over the years. Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum of Human Rights has a powerful gallery that highlights this reality: the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 in which an Asian ship of British Raj citizens was turned back; no Asians until 1947; prime minister Mackenzie King’s denial of landing in 1939 to Jews escaping the Holocaust aboard the ship St. Louis.

Today — and for many years — our approach is no longer openly racist. The rules are much more subtle, but they still achieve a restrictive result. It seems to be what many Canadians want.

Immigration for the past quarter century has been largely from non-traditional sources such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It was in 1991 that we eliminated the Assisted Relative Class from our immigration categories so that these more recent Canadians can no longer sponsor their families to come here.

The economic and political elites have maintained their grip on the nation, but Canada has paid a heavy price. Had we kept to the vision and policy of prime minister Wilfrid Laurier in the early years of the 20th century, today our population would match that of Japan, be 11/2 times that of Germany and double that of the United Kingdom.

Instead Canada is small and largely irrelevant on the world stage, although there are many Canadians who see us as tiny-perfect and like it that way; a kind of Switzerland to the planet.

But the blunt reality is that we are defenceless in a dangerous world.

Our military size ranks us only 74th among nations.

The U.S. military is 22 times ours in size. We couldn’t even begin to defend our borders.

One of history’s great ironies is that the most significant wave of immigration in early days was the arrival in 1783 of the United Empire Loyalists, the refugees from the American Revolution. Today we depend on the U.S. to protect us.

When one reflects that the state of California has a population four million larger than all of Canada and yet could fit into the bottom two thirds of Manitoba, one can see how we have compromised our birthright in this vast and promising land.

In 1900, the U.S. had a population lead on Canada of 71 million people. Today, it leads by 290 million. The U.S. opened its gates to the world and built the mightiest nation on the planet. Canada has cautiously tiptoed along the immigration path; the consequences are still to unfold.

This is the real backdrop for Minister Hussen’s tour.

Tom Denton is a writer and speaker on immigration-related issues.