Western Standard - HANNAFORD： Once, we did immigration right – and we can do it right again

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:21.240 of the Western Standard. It is May the 14th. Welcome to the show.

00:00:30.040 If you say there's something wrong with Canada's immigration system or its policies,

00:00:35.720 there will probably be somebody nearby ready to call you a racist. Well, the fact is,

00:00:43.480 whether you're for immigration or against it altogether, we are not as a country doing a

00:00:49.960 very good job of it. With me today is somebody who understands the big picture. That's John

00:00:57.880 Weisenberger. He was Chief of Staff to a Harper-era Minister of Immigration, Diane Finley. He has some

00:01:09.240 ideas on what went wrong and how to fix it because he's been there and done that. John, welcome to the

00:01:16.120 program. Thank you, Nigel. Pleasure to be here. Good to have you. John, once Canada selected

00:01:23.640 immigrants primarily on their ability to contribute financially to the success of

00:01:29.480 the country and upon their ability to fit in, to be culturally appropriate, if you want to

00:01:36.680 call it that. In fact, in a recent article of yours, you referred to a US observer who said

00:01:44.440 that Canada was ruthlessly smart. Can you enlarge on that a little bit and how that contrasts with

00:01:52.600 the last 10 years when quite clearly the Trudeau government replaced objective points-based merit

00:02:02.520 with some other set of considerations? Right, so the system you're referring to,

00:02:09.240 kind of known colloquially as the point system was brought in in the 1960s and it was meant

00:02:17.280 to be kind of an objective way of selecting through the the hundreds of thousands of people

00:02:27.400 who have applied and wanted to come to Canada so again as you mentioned that was done using a set

00:02:34.520 criteria that again would select for quote-unquote better suited candidates

00:02:45.920 or applicants. So we had criteria like level of education, language proficiency

00:02:51.500 that would be in French and or English, skills in terms of you know what

00:03:00.380 particular occupation they had and how that would match with Canada's economic needs.

00:03:05.720 Now, what the viewers should know is that that only applied to about 50% of the immigrant

00:03:15.740 stream coming in.

00:03:17.100 So that was called the economic stream.

00:03:18.840 Then you had family reunification.

00:03:21.140 So people applying for relatives to come over, people who are already here, and then a smaller

00:03:27.020 refugee stream.

00:03:27.920 But still, the economic stream would be the most significant and the most impactful in terms of the Canadian economy.

00:03:35.580 Well, I can certainly speak to that.

00:03:38.240 When I applied to come to Canada myself, I told them who I was and my professional attributes.

00:03:44.160 They weren't that interested.

00:03:45.040 And then I said, I put me down as a farm laborer.

00:03:47.580 They said, oh, okay, you're in.

00:03:49.040 Because they wanted farm laborers, you see.

00:03:51.060 It's so much for this business to be the best and precious business.

00:03:53.620 Yes.

00:03:53.960 and so i ended up on my uncle's run spent the first summer as a cowboy my horse knew more

00:03:59.800 about it than i did but right it was not a bad way to enter canada i think that really has been the

00:04:06.280 um has that not been the experience for so many people that they they come here and they do what

00:04:10.760 they got to do to get started well it's interesting you say that because i i mentioned in the article

00:04:16.520 uh i lead off with actually the story of my father who had a similar experience

00:04:20.600 after the war when he applied the first time he marked down teacher

00:04:25.600 because he had been trained as a teacher prior to the war.

00:04:28.580 But he was rejected because Canada didn't need teachers.

00:04:32.280 And then the second time around, he asked people,

00:04:34.840 and they said, well, you know, put down laborer

00:04:36.820 because Canada needs laborers,

00:04:39.400 which apparently was the case with you as well.

00:04:43.300 Oh, no, Calvary is still trade.

00:04:43.960 Right?

00:04:44.920 And when he put down laborer, he got in.

00:04:47.760 Okay.

00:04:48.760 Well, yeah, so the system sort of worked.

00:04:50.600 But look, it's not working now.

00:04:53.760 I mean, in your article, this article, I think you published this in C2C,

00:04:57.900 but you're putting these thoughts out elsewhere,

00:05:01.060 and I think you're going to be running something here in the Western Standard on this as well.

00:05:04.840 So you know that the Trudeau government, there was a real change there.

00:05:10.840 You were with the Harper government, and you did things a certain way.

00:05:15.300 What was it that the Trudeau government actually changed?

00:05:18.240 how quickly did they set about it took them about a year well tackle the first thing first

00:05:25.600 took them about a year and as far as i know they didn't completely abandon the point system so they

00:05:32.820 may have loosened the criteria somewhat and there's evidence they did that specifically

00:05:38.580 in terms of the french-speaking candidates so they loosened that but then they overall expanded

00:05:46.500 the category dramatically from a level of about 250 000 coming in every year to between 400 and

00:05:54.580 500 000 so they almost doubled it so that was really the issue and it wasn't only in that stream

00:06:02.980 one area that again that's mentioned in the article and that's been in countless news stories now

00:06:09.060 is the explosion in the number of temporary permit holders so that would be both temporary foreign

00:06:15.300 workers foreign students etc and the huge influx of asylum seekers for which we have control it's

00:06:23.860 just never shows up at our border so all of those numbers just interrupt you there when somebody

00:06:29.620 says hey take me i'm being persecuted at home do we actually check up on that i mean a lot of these

00:06:35.780 people apparently are not asylum seekers at all they just want a better job right and and we clamp

00:06:42.660 down on that significantly under the harper government for instance we had a situation 0.89

00:06:48.820 we had no visa requirements with mexico so we had a lot of mexican citizens in fact entire mexican

00:06:56.020 families coming here claiming asylum status um even though clearly by their appearance they were

00:07:02.340 not um asylum or valid asylum seekers what our our our policy was what we tried to do because of

00:07:12.020 of course, there are hundreds of thousands of legitimate refugees living in camps all over the

00:07:16.760 world, is we tried to work with the UN to focus on bringing the most needy people in and not just

00:07:24.140 whomever, whoever happened to come to the Canadian border. So you know that the Trudeau government

00:07:33.280 fast-tracked low-skill workers and students while bypassing point rankings. Was this primarily

00:07:41.520 ideological or was there a deliberate political calculus about future voters

00:07:47.240 well i think it was mismanagement primarily uh plus their philosophical view if there is one

00:07:58.900 um i believe is that that more is better so uh better for whom and in what way just

00:08:07.420 well it's hard hard to get in the heads of these people but I mentioned in the

00:08:17.140 article that one of my staffers had a conversation with a UN official ironically

00:08:25.440 an Israeli fellow and he basically told her that Canada in his opinion had an

00:08:32.920 unlimited capacity to take migrants. So that's the view of a certain type of

00:08:39.700 person. It's quite concerning in my in my opinion that it would be someone with

00:08:44.320 the UN since we were you know working with the UN trying to work with them. But

00:08:50.140 I think that's quite prevalent on the on the left side of the aisle is that we

00:08:55.600 should take as many people as we absolutely can take and economic

00:09:00.680 consequences are secondary well that certainly appears to be what happened yes and so uh there

00:09:07.880 it is um still this explosion to 3.2 million uh this is your number i presume you got it from

00:09:16.840 statscan or generation but non-permanent residents is central to your critique like in this poll

00:09:23.000 argument you say well they took all these people uh non-permanent residents well i suppose the

00:09:29.240 theory is they have their own permits who use their visa they go home except that's not being

00:09:35.400 tracked so that's that's been the other scandalous uh a piece of information that's come out in the

00:09:42.520 last few weeks i think there was a parliamentary hearing on it just recently where the minister

00:09:50.440 admitted that there were at least 500 000 of those that they essentially didn't know where they were

00:09:58.520 if they had stayed if they had gone back etc and that they didn't have the capacity to even

00:10:05.240 investigate that so this sounds like an argument for digital id it's a huge it's a huge scandal

00:10:11.320 well it's really well how many would be the right number 3.2 million who you can't track is too many

00:10:19.160 how many that you can track would be about right and sort of keep the mcdonald's open well i mean

00:10:25.720 I think we need to go back to the numbers we had more than a decade ago. As I mentioned,

00:10:32.680 we had about 250,000 in the regular immigration stream. Because we were

00:10:40.520 doing much better and more stringent oversight in the asylum area, we had only about 16,000

00:10:48.280 claimants in 2015 whereas that number has gone up almost well almost I'd say

00:10:58.840 five fold six fold and then on the temporary side the numbers I don't have

00:11:07.480 have them at my fingertips but the numbers were quite a bit lower and there

00:11:12.040 were things like market need assessments that were done that would kind of keep a

00:11:18.100 lid on those numbers the other thing of course they did is they the the Trudeau government that

00:11:23.620 is is they failed to put a cap on foreign students so universities of course charge foreign students

00:11:32.980 significantly more for tuition so they had an incentive to bring in as many as they possibly

00:11:39.700 could and we've seen several again scandals emerge how that system was exploited the most recent one

00:11:46.500 think was in conestoga college in ontario so these things definitely had serious negative consequences

00:11:54.980 so you you talk also about court rulings uh expanding citizenship claims and we're all

00:12:03.940 familiar with there's a story every week now about so and so you know did a horrible and

00:12:10.740 atrocious thing that should have sent him to jail for a long time but they try to keep him for less

00:12:16.500 get a sentence of less than two years in case it interrupts his immigration process and we're all

00:12:22.340 saying well why would we want this guy you know right this is what they do and they're doing it

00:12:26.820 consistently so do you see the charter or the uh the post 1982 judicial activism that the

00:12:37.220 thought that the charter made possible coming like why would judges have an angle on this

00:12:42.980 Well, they seem to have an angle on just about everything now. But here I think it's

00:12:50.660 more the philosophical underpinnings that we touched on a minute ago. You know, I believe

00:13:01.060 it was Prime Minister Trudeau Jr. who said, you know, a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,

00:13:07.860 up to and including known terrorists.

00:13:12.140 And the current immigration minister has also defended

00:13:15.080 the right of known terrorists to remain in Canada.

00:13:19.300 So again, that gives you an impression of their view

00:13:23.600 that anyone who can come here, anyone can be a Canadian.

00:13:28.140 And that extends, I think, to that judicial ruling

00:13:32.000 that you allude to, where I believe it was an Ontario judge

00:13:36.580 struck down part of our legislation that was legislation that I and my team worked on

00:13:44.980 that would have restricted Canadian citizenship to the first generation of people born of Canadian

00:13:56.080 citizens abroad. Whereas now that's extended through multiple generations. So you can literally

00:14:03.100 have uh someone who had canadian parents uh born in paraguay and they have children and they just

00:14:12.940 continue to be canadian even though they have no attachment to canada and they've never been to

00:14:18.220 canada well who if they've never been to canada are never coming to canada presumably they're

00:14:24.460 not voting in canadian elections or maybe they can um there's a potential racket here

00:14:34.060 Well, I mean, there is the discussion of that happening in the United States.

00:14:39.080 I think that would be a whole, because of the birthright citizenship controversy, right?

00:14:45.800 So, yeah, that's something I didn't explore in the article, but it probably is something to be concerned about.

00:14:52.980 Yeah.

00:14:53.720 So, you pointed out, you quoted a subject expert, Garrett Jones,

00:15:01.460 and they made the argument that values the things we just automatically you know trust

00:15:09.060 frugality rule of law or the complete opposites right uh persist across generations yes and this

00:15:16.100 bears on that that uh what we're talking about at the start we were talking about

00:15:21.080 will people fit in right you know that was one of the things do they have skills will they fit in

00:15:26.100 And that's the 1967 points model.

00:15:28.660 All right.

00:15:29.820 We talked about people fitting in, but what exactly do we do with this?

00:15:37.580 How explicitly can the reformed points system that you're recommending incorporate cultural compatibility?

00:15:46.920 No, that's a very important question.

00:15:49.280 And interestingly, as you suggest, the point system has a rather objective way of finding potentially the most compatible people.

00:16:03.540 Because first of all, if you select on economic need, on skills, you will have people that can come and work immediately and are placed into a workplace where they'll be fitting in.

00:16:16.080 there's the English language or the language requirement and there's

00:16:21.000 education. I think what many of the studies including Professor Jones's

00:16:27.320 study show is that in the low skilled area if you have very large numbers of

00:16:32.200 people they have really have a hard time succeeding economically and and then

00:16:42.840 kind of integrating into the broader society and that tends to perpetuate

00:16:47.700 inter so the economic component tends to perpetuate on the value side I think

00:16:56.340 that's something we understand intuitively you know you look at just

00:17:02.240 say you know I'm from Montreal originally so the Italian community in

00:17:05.760 Montreal huge followers of Italian football soccer right through to the

00:17:11.740 second and third generation. So that's something that persists. And of course, you know, there are

00:17:16.140 other community attributes that persist over time, right? That's just natural. But, you know,

00:17:27.280 besides some of those positive attributes, there may be, let's say, more challenging attributes.

00:17:31.920 um say if uh if um a culture or a country um has less trust in government you touched on that as

00:17:41.720 well um has different views of i don't know the banking system or savings etc um i think it's

00:17:50.000 logical to assume that some of those values will persist uh and will um you know take a while to

00:17:58.500 sort out okay we don't have unlimited time john unfortunately um what there's two questions that

00:18:05.180 i do want to address so i want to talk about alberta alberta's planned referendum on immigration

00:18:10.700 numbers and benefits access is a key flashpoint here as we have the for the whole independence

00:18:16.140 debate how far based on your federal experience how far should provinces be allowed to go

00:18:22.660 in setting their own immigration parameters and what constitutional barriers do you see?

00:18:31.780 Well, right now, Quebec already has those powers.

00:18:36.440 So I think it's reasonable for Alberta to seek more control.

00:18:44.040 Now, the other dimension of this, which is interesting, it's not really discussed,

00:18:50.180 is that once you're in Canada, you can move where you want.

00:18:56.480 So the province, I mean, Quebec, again,

00:19:00.040 they will try to select on language capabilities or abilities.

00:19:08.420 So, and there, there's more likelihood

00:19:10.660 that a Francophone immigrant will stay in Quebec.

00:19:13.980 But in terms of Alberta, you know, we can drop down our numbers,

00:19:17.700 But given the fact that we have a vibrant economy, it's more than likely that someone who lands in Toronto or New Brunswick will eventually say, OK, the grass is greener in Alberta and I'll move to Alberta.

00:19:32.520 And we have no control over that.

00:19:33.940 And half of Newfoundland did that one.

00:19:35.900 Yes.

00:19:36.500 Yes, exactly.

00:19:37.480 All right.

00:19:37.900 Well, look, last question, John.

00:19:39.200 This is great.

00:19:40.560 Now, I'm going to read this because I want to get it right.

00:19:43.020 I mean, you acknowledge in your writings that Canada's sub-replacement birth rate, you know, we're not having enough children, and the necessity of immigration, if a future government restored a rigorous point system, but still faced the same global migration pressures, and above all, the low domestic fertility rate, what is the realistic right number of annual immigrants?

00:20:10.420 and how would your cell sustain selection to a public tired of both open borders

00:20:17.200 and also of the inevitable accusations of xenophobia and racism what's the marketing

00:20:24.200 pitch well that's kind of the punchline of the article because demography is something that i

00:20:30.400 think a lot of people haven't wrapped their heads around um and at least superficially it looks like

00:20:39.020 there are competing camps within Canada.

00:20:42.660 So Quebec appears to have decided to put the brakes on immigration

00:20:48.500 in order to allow for, what phrase would you use,

00:20:53.480 cultural continuity, preservation.

00:20:56.320 Whereas several groups, including the Conference Board of Canada,

00:21:01.540 argue for much greater immigration,

00:21:04.740 although interestingly, mainly to support our social programs.

00:21:09.020 So, when it comes down to it, at least on the economic argument, it's, okay, are we willing to adjust our social program?

00:21:21.920 Say you're in favor of lower numbers of newcomers. 0.90

00:21:27.760 Are you willing to adjust what types of benefits you get in terms of social support?

00:21:35.340 If you are, then you can bring the numbers down.

00:21:38.560 But because of, you know, that kind of pyramid scheme aspect of the system, you need to keep having, and the Conference Board of Canada report is very explicit in this.

00:21:50.700 They say, okay, you need a certain ratio of people in the labor force versus, you know, people, shall we say, more our demographic or approaching demographic who are not being, who are being supported.

00:22:04.380 you know it's never occurred to me until this very moment john that the same people who we are now

00:22:10.620 talking about her basically abused the immigration system for political purposes are also the ones

00:22:16.300 that created the necessity for this supply of new uh feeders into the ponzi scheme in the first

00:22:23.260 place decades ago by by making canada into a welfare state wow yeah where's john burke when

00:22:30.780 you need him yes that's right i'm sorry yes yes uh listen it's been great john very nice to have

00:22:36.560 you in here and show you around the john galt studio and the gang here in the western standard

00:22:41.380 who put out this great product we hope to have some words from you soon on the a little more

00:22:46.400 detail on what we've been talking about in the last half hour thank you so much for coming in

00:22:50.520 thank you it's been a pleasure for the western standard i'm nigel hannaford

00:23:00.780 Thank you.

Western Standard - May 17, 2026

HANNAFORD： Once, we did immigration right – and we can do it right again

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