The Power of Immigration – Linking Canada’s Past, Present and Future Prosperity
On February 4, 2020 Senator Omidvar rose in the Senate Chamber to support an inquiry on the importance of immigration to Canada. In her remarks, Senator Omidvar discusses the historical significance of immigration, as well as challenges that still must be overcome to integrate immigrants in Canadian society. She concludes on a hopeful note that the inquiry will help shape and inform immigration policy moving forward. Watch the speech and read the full transcript below:
I am pleased to launch an Inquiry into the link between Canada’s past, present and future prosperity and its deep connection to immigration. And I am particularly pleased that my colleagues from across the various groups in the Chamber will be joining me in this. I know that they will include Senators who have lived experience as either first or second generation immigrants, but also others – as I make the case that links Canada, nation-building and immigrants together.
Let me start with a journey through yesterday and today to tomorrow.
Imagine this is 1896. Canada is a young nation; its population is a mere 3.6 million. On July 11, Sir Wilfred Laurier becomes Canada’s Prime Minister and one of his first promises is to settle the western prairies with immigrants who will farm, harvest and secure the west. This comes not only from a desire to grow and thrive, but also from a lingering fear that without people in the west, Canada is vulnerable to the growing might and spread of the US.
Sir Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior is charged with turning that promise into reality. He does so with remarkable foresight and success, multiplying many fold the number of immigrants. He succeeds beyond anyone’s imagination. Under his watch, more than three million people arrive in Canada, largely from continental Europe. He brings in communities from Eastern Europe who are cold weather farmers- Ukrainians, Scandinavians, Romanians, Doukhobors, Mennonites, and others from the Austr0-Hungarian farmers. There is an outcry, that these immigrants – not from Great Britain or the US, do not share the values and culture of the Canada of the day. Sir Sifton defends his position by extolling the virtues of “stalwart peasants in sheep-skin and a stout wife and a half dozen children” who could not only withstand the extremes of weather but turn these vast tracts of land into prosperous farming communities.
How right he was. They not only turned into successful farmers and Canadians but also into nation-builders. Many years later, in the 1980s it was the descendants of these very same early settlers, who were the force behind multiculturalism.
But as always, there is nuance. Canadian history is always complicated. As Sir Clifton had the vision to settle the west it came at the expense of the original inhabitants, the indigenous people. We cannot and will not forget the impacts of the decisions of our early leaders had on the indigenous people and how those impacts continue today.
Even as we were building our nation through smart immigration policies on the one hand, we were also falling deeper into sentiments which today can only be considered racist. Consider the Head Tax on the Chinese workers who were building the railway from east to west, and later the internment during the Second World War of Japanese Canadians, and the turning away of the St. Louis which carried Jews looking for sanctuary from the horrors in Europe – None is Too Many.
As Canada comes out from beneath the shadow of the two great wars, immigration gears up again. We welcome war brides, British orphans, 20,000 children of Canadian soldiers from the UK and of course refugees and displaced people pouring out of Europe. But, anti-Semitism succeeds in keeping many Jewish refugees out of the country and we also continue to express a race-based preference by limiting immigration to source countries from Europe. As the Cold War begins to dominate political discourse, we at first grudgingly and then more full-throatedly welcome refugees and immigrants from Hungary. In time, the families of the Dutch, the Germans, Italians, Poles and Ukrainians arrive thus securing their place in Canada as communities of significance and scale.
But It is not until 1962 that we turn our back on discrimination as a feature of the immigration system and turn to a system that is blind to place of origin. We introduce a points system to rank potential immigrants for eligibility not against race or country of origin, but against language, skills and education.
Canada has also done something else that is significant by signing in 1969 the UNHCR convention on refugees. We open our doors not only to the political refugees fleeing Hungary and other European dictatorships, but also refugees fleeing political upheaval in Uganda, Chile, and yet later from the Serbo-Croatian conflict, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Syria.
Today, Canada has one of the most robust immigration systems in the world. This is grounded not just in the support by Canadians for immigration, but also reflected in how we arrange the machinery of government. We have a department and a Minister dedicated to immigration, as opposed to a department within another Ministry, as do the US, Germany and the UK. We have clear criteria, which continue to evolve, change and improve. We invest in integration at all three levels of government. It is a system that I describe as high-touch, and generally delivers against the policy objectives of the government of the day.
Whilst the system is not perfect, it has earned the admiration of many other jurisdictions in the world. The OECD has signaled to the world that Canada’s system in immigration and inclusion is the best in the world and indeed worthy of emulation. As the rest of the world descends to a certain kind of nativism and populism, we stand out as an exception.
As for the immigrants themselves, it is not easy. From my own experience, I can share that my biggest challenges were (a) struggling to cope with the weather and (b) learning and navigating the rules and norms of the Canadian personality. There are many, the written ones are easy, it is the unwritten ones that are hard to navigate. If I had time, I would share some of these stories with you. But we are encouraged to keep our eyes on the prize: we know we must work hard, and we know that even if our lives will be difficult, our children will succeed. I do not want to sanctify immigrants. We are like most other people, some are good, and some are bad, some work hard and others don’t. But in the aggregate and over time, immigration has been incredibly good both for Canada and for the immigrants.
That story is best seen on the campuses of our universities, in the small businesses owned and operated by families of immigrants across the country, in their representation in the ranks of professionals in our country, in their keen, deep interest and participation in the politics of the country. Most immigrants will choose to become citizens as soon as they are able to. One of the most striking indicators is home-ownership. Today, one in every five homes is bought by a newcomer. Even refugees, who typically will lag in success indicators for various reasons, buy homes at a faster pace than Canadian, with a full 65% putting down their money after ten years in Canada.
Another indicator is entrepreneurship. Immigrant-owned firms create more net jobs and have higher growth than businesses with owners born in Canada. From 2003 to 2013, companies owned by immigrant entrepreneurs accounted for a quarter of all net new jobs created in the private sector, while representing just 17 per cent of firms. As such, Immigrant-owned companies were also 1.3 times as likely to be high-growth firms, with annual employment growth exceeding 20 per cent, then were those owned by the Canadian-born.
In Toronto, I have watched this narrative playing out in real time. Whole industries have been saved or created by immigrant entrepreneurs, with cluster economies developing along family and ethnic lines in Toronto: the Korean dominated corner stores, the Somali dominated Dollaramas and of course the overwhelming presence of Punjabis in the airport security and limo industry. And even if they will stand behind counters serving their customers, we know from evidence that their children will overwhelmingly go to university, and become scientists, doctors and lawyers
I would be failing my objective, if I did not share with you not only the good, but the bad and the ugly. Our system is good, but it can always improve. Successive governments have improved it in different ways – the Progressive Conservatives under Minister Kenney reformed the way the immigration queue is managed, and the Liberals reduced waiting times for family reunification. However, there is one problem that is a particularly difficult nut to crack, and that is the inability of many educated and experienced immigrants from gaining entry into their professions. The Conference Board of Canada has estimated that this costs our economy 6B dollars a year. If we could find a way to resolve this sticky wicket, imagine what we could do with that money: perhaps universal child care after all.
Another challenge is Canada’s failure to spread immigrants across our country so that we are truly one big vast multicultural nation and people, and not just a bunch of diverse cities. We need people and their work to grow and stabilize the populations of mid-sized and rural communities, and not just to MTV. Our colleague Senator Ravalia has told us his story of being welcomed and embraced by his community. I personally believe that inclusion might be a little simpler in smaller communities. I am encouraged by the results of the Atlantic pilot which is registering success in attracting and retaining immigrants to Atlantic Canada. Just like Minister Sifton did in settling the west – and so we come full circle. Everything old is new again.
From the good and the bad, let turn to the truly ugly. Racism, both individual or systemic, keeping immigrants who are black at the lowest levels of income and denying people interviews and jobs merely because their names are strange and foreign sounding. Research confirms that bias is deeply rooted into our collective psyches. There is a cost to racism, in particular the cost borne by victims, but the greatest cost is the cost to our collective souls.
From yesterday and today, let me peak with you into tomorrow. By 2035, if immigration is kept at current levels, our absolute population will begin to decline. Also, by 2035, the dependency ratio (which is the ratio of working people vs retired people) will require more and more people to work, pay for the upkeep of senior citizens. In 1971, there were roughly 13 people working to support 100 seniors, but by 2046, we will need close to 40 workers to provide for 100 senior citizens. In addition, our labour market will continue to experience shortages, even if you factor in the upcoming disruption through AI and the gig economy. We will need workers at all ends of the scale – from scientists and professors, to trade workers and yes, we will need those caregivers. Immigration and immigrants will continue to be part of the solution for Canada to thrive, grow and prosper. I welcome three-year plans to manage our immigration levels, but I also look forward to a more aggressive approach to raising immigration levels first to 1 percent of our population.
I want to close with an acknowledgement of the relationship between the only two demographic groups whose share in the population is growing: immigrants and Canada’s indigenous peoples. And yet, there is a huge emotional, cultural, economic and spatial distance between them. I have always thought that Canada has different histories. It is a complex nation, made up of a many constituent and sometimes moving parts, and it seems to me that this history is told back to us differently. The First Peoples history, the history of colonization, the history of bilingualism, the history of the coming together in Canada, the history of immigrant peoples of Canada. Nowhere do all of these narratives converge, and they especially do not come together in the classrooms in our country.
As an immigrant, I knew very little of the history of the colonization in Canada. It only became clear and apparent to me many, many years later. I accept wholeheartedly, former GG Adrienne Clarkson’s observation about new citizens: when we become citizens of Canada, all its glories and all its shame accrue to us. We share in its history and cannot pick and choose the parts that suit our particular narrative.
I look forward to the thoughts of my colleagues on this particular matter and hope that by the end of our deliberations on immigrants as a key contributing factor of Canada’s prosperity, we may well come to a common understanding, not just of our challenges, but also of the solutions.