After All We Are A Nation of Immigrants

What our historical standards once were with regards to immigration should be seen as irrelevant to public policy decisions made now

By Robert Stewart, CFP

How fair and accurate is it to call Canada a nation of immigrants? Since I announced my candidacy for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC)—a party calling for more moderated immigration rates—I’ve experienced personally the rebuff of “but we’re a nation of immigrants!” around a dozen or so times. Most recently, I saw it lodged against our party as a whole. With special focus on Afghan-born PPC candidate Mirwais Nasiri, the editorial board of the Winnipeg Free Press alleged that we didn’t appreciate Canada’s essential character of openness and, outside of our First Nations candidates at least, were hypocrites for taking the stance that we do.

At least in the US, where JFK first used the phrase to title a book he published before becoming president, critics have long complained that the argument obfuscates the immigration debate and fails to capture that country’s foundational history. The same thing can also be said for Canada.

As I’ve experienced, the argument seems to take on a magic quality for those who use it. Even the most thoughtful and substantiated scepticism of mass immigration’s effects on the country seems to simply evaporate in thin air. Here are cases in point involving actual (though slightly adapted) exchanges I’ve had recently:

You say automation and roboticization will wipe out a lot of the job opportunities migrants come here for? Yes, but we’re a nation of immigrants.

You say newcomers are hunkering down in ethnic enclaves and not assimilating into the core culture? I see your point, but we’re a nation of immigrants.

You say traffic congestion and housing shortages are getting too much for our urban centres? I agree, however, you’re forgetting that we are, after all, a nation of immigrants.

As the argument implies, since we pursued mass immigration in the juvenile stages of our history, it would be hypocritical for us to stop it now. In no other area of policy, however, do we tolerate such thinking. No one, for instance, argues that energy policy should be dictated by centuries-old practices. Same goes for other policy areas, like abortion, gun control, or criminal punishment. But all questions of public policy are supposed to go through the same rigorous, cold hard analysis, so as to ensure costs and benefits are fully deliberated and properly weighed. Is immigration exceptional in this regard? If so, I see no reason for it.

Then there are concerns about fairness and accuracy. Is it fair and accurate to treat settlers and, say, a 21^st century immigrant on exactly the same terms? The former, of course, worked the virgin land and built the legal and institutional infrastructure which their progeny and later immigrants would come to enjoy. Failing to appreciate this nuance at best discounts the settlers’ hardship, sacrifice and toil, and erases it at worst. It would seem more accurate (and respectful) to describe Canada as a nation of settlers and descendants of immigrants.

To be charitable, it can perhaps be said that Canada’s a nation of intermittent immigration. Several immigration laws in the 1910s and early 1920s, which were pushed by labour unions and activists like NDP-founder J.S. Woodsworth, dramatically increased immigration standards and decreased intake-rates in the process. Until the mid-1960s, Canada kept levels low and selective in order to ensure things like wages and assimilation were kept high. During this 40- to 50-year period Canada basically wasn’t a nation of immigrants.

And regarding French Canada in particular, zero argument can be made that it was built up by immigrants. Scholars have noted that between 1760 and 1960, despite seeing close to a million people leave the region, French Canada’s population soared 80-fold (compared to just 5-fold in Europe); an increase they attribute to “Quebec’s exceptional reproductive rates.”

As for British Canada, up until the 1950s, women were having four children on average. And regarding immigration, its ‚ÄòGreat Wave’ period was 1896 to 1914 when 2.5 million immigrants (including their children) arrived here. As scholars note, however, half of this number were either people coming from the British Isles or were Canadians returning from the US. Hardly diverse sources.

When Kennedy wrote A Nation of Immigrants, he made sure to point out that “[t]here is, of course, a legitimate argument for some limitation upon immigration”, pointing out, for instance, that “[w]e no longer need settlers for virgin lands, and our economy is expanding more slowly than in the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries.” What our historical standards once were with regards to immigration should be seen as irrelevant to public policy decisions made now. Are similar numbers beneficial to the nation today: that’s the question which should occupy the discussion.