Canada’s past and present were built on immigration. Our future will be too

The story of a country is not often distilled into a single word. Canada is an exception: immigration.

Canada was built on immigration and it will continue to be built, ever more, on immigration. This may be obvious but in these fractured times it is worth stating – and underlining. Without high levels of immigration, Canada faces population decline and all the challenges such stagnation would bring.

Immigration has paid many lasting dividends but of course also came at a high cost, starting with centuries of pain borne by Indigenous peoples.

But, stepping back from challenges past and present, immigration to Canada has built something rare. The Globe and Mail this year marked its 180th anniversary by looking at Canada’s past, good and bad, and our own work, good and bad. The essays aim to illuminate the present through a better understanding our shared past, and also inspire ideas about what are our future can be.

As chronicled in the final anniversary essay, Canada is an unlikely country with a “physical immensity and tiny population,” home to a complicated mix of ethnicities and languages and, perhaps the keystone characteristic, a penchant for compromise. What Canadians have built together is a remarkable and welcoming country, one of the world’s largest economies, and a beacon that every year attracts many talented people from all over the world.

There have been surges of immigration in the past, in the early 20th century and again in the 1950s. It’s been steadily robust since the early 1990s. More recently, Stephen Harper led an increase of immigration. He made mistakes, including an overreliance on temporary foreign workers. Justin Trudeau extended the increase in immigration but Ottawa again made mistakes – much worse this time – with an absence of oversight on temporary migration. It exacerbated pre-existing strains in everything from housing to health care and came at a high cost: a fraying of the immigration consensus.

Ottawa was already reducing temporary migration, from workers to students, and last week the Liberals further dialled back their mistakes, at a high cost: several hundred thousand fewer permanent residents through 2027 than previously planned. Out-of-control temporary migration forced a reduction in the kind of immigration – permanent residency with a clear path to citizenship – that Canada wants and needs.

After a boom, the country’s population is set to decline in 2025 and 2026. This is a necessary correction after an unforced error, yet it will not be pain free. The long-term goal, however, is the right one. Canada has a global competitive advantage, able to attract smart people, for all the reasons people in the past came: opportunity and freedom.

The key policy shift is to refocus on the points system, which should not react to perceived needs today but reward proven attributes such as various skills, education, language and experience. The Liberals, in their interventionism, strayed from a winning formula.

There are nuances. Ottawa estimates that more than 40 per cent of new permanent residents in 2025 will be students or workers already in Canada. Clarity is needed but this space supports a fair shot, within the points system, for any person who is a temporary migrant and made what is usually a hard and expensive journey to get here in the first place.

Immigration will pay off, like it has in the past, benefits that reverberate today. But Canada, like most wealthy countries, has a quickly aging population. Several years ago, forecasts suggested that by 2050 public finances face great strain because there would be just 2.5 people of working age, 15-64, compared with people 65 and older. That ratio was 3.4 to 1 in 2022 and 7 to 1 in the early 1980s.

Based on the latest forecast from Statistics Canada, a Globe analysis shows immigration is bending the aging curve. The 2050 ratio is now estimated at 2.7 working-age people per person 65 and older, rather than 2.5. That gain doesn’t seem like much but it’s a big deal, especially compared with other countries, such as Germany, China and Spain, which are on track to support many more older people.

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Ottawa responded too slowly to rectify its mistakes but last week moved past tinkering. Count it as a turning point. The changes will help start to restore broad confidence in an immigration system that was long embraced by Canadians, respected around the world – and helped to build this country over many decades.