A new ministry should be held responsible for ensuring we’re letting in people who will further our economic interests, and that infrastructure can keep up

Canadians deserve an immigration system that serves the national interest. This is exactly what we once had when most Canadians agreed with the economic and cultural arguments in favour of immigration.

For a long time, Canada avoided the sort of backlash seen in many places abroad. But the economic argument for immigration has collapsed during a time of stagnant wages, housing shortages and high youth unemployment. Likewise, cultural arguments about diversity and multiculturalism have given way to doubts about our ability to integrate newcomers.

Now, half of Canadians believe immigration harms the country. And according to a 2024 survey by the Environics Institute, 57 per cent of Canadians agree that too many immigrants “are not adopting Canadian values.”

In response, the Trudeau government began to reduce immigration targets and tinker with eligibility requirements. It was especially wise to reinstate caps on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which many employers abuse to keep wages artificially low.

But Canada’s immigration system requires fundamental reform, with a sharp eye on integration — both economic and cultural. This reform will become increasingly urgent amidst a backdrop of deglobalization, domestic protectionism and falling birth rates.

Other countries will be motivated to hold onto as much of their own populations as they can, so we cannot count on a large and mobile cohort of educated professionals and low-wage workers for much longer. Canada must remain open to immigration, but immigration cannot be our only source of economic and population growth.

The federal government should begin by ending easy access by immigrants to the lower end of our labour market in nearly all sectors of the economy. That means phasing down and eventually eliminating the TFWP, except in limited areas such as seasonal agricultural work. High-wage, high-skill immigration should continue, but in lower numbers.

Meanwhile, governments should use incentives (tax credits, etc.) to encourage businesses to invest in domestic skills training and develop their workforces. Business, government and post-secondary institutions must work together to integrate domestic and international students into a general industrial strategy.

This means creating a pipeline of engineers, researchers and scientists for jobs in areas such as high-end manufacturing, robotics, batteries and advanced engineering. In short, we must gain much better control of immigration and ensure that it serves the national economic interest.

To make it all happen, Ottawa should create a new “population” ministry, formed out of every existing federal ministry and department that deals with immigration, housing, the labour market and family formation (such as Employment and Social Development Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation).

Of course, this is no small task and would take time. But the main policy areas (immigration, housing, labour, parental benefits and population growth) must be viewed as a single system, and a single ministry must be held accountable for the success or failure of future reforms.

In consultation with the provinces, this new ministry would be required to keep immigration at a manageable level, taking into account the state of infrastructure, housing and integration services, along with labour market needs. Artificial Intelligence could be a useful tool in helping predict labour and housing shortages before they happen.

This consolidated ministry would favour high-skill, high-wage immigration above all other categories. And, like some other countries, the ministry would be required to publish total immigration numbers, along with all other relevant population and labour-market information, as part of every federal budget, to ensure maximum transparency.

This ministry would also work with the provinces to develop pro-natal strategies to stabilize or, ideally, reverse the decline in domestic birth rates. This should be informed by successful policies implemented by our peers abroad.

Incentives could include cash bonuses, tax breaks, awards, more generous leave and other signs of public esteem for parenthood. Meanwhile, governments across the country must remove regulatory hurdles and revisit post-war mass production and prefabrication, in order to increase the supply of new housing.

Canada’s immigration policy has failed Canadians. But if properly managed, a new population policy, which includes immigration, can be a powerful force for nation-building and help create and maintain a prosperous and orderly society in an increasingly uncertain world.

Michael Bonner is a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, a former senior policy advisor to a federal immigration minister, former director of policy to four Ontario ministers and the author of “Repairing the Fray: Improving Immigration and Citizenship Policy in Canada.” Photo: iStock.