Shared Respect, Accommodation, Commitment

"The current government recognized the existence of this fiscal problem and initiated a series of new policies to reduce it.
"The economic performance of recent immigrants is substantially below that of other Canadians."
"...large-scale" immigration since late 2980 raises "serious concerns" on the effects on "Canadian culture, religious tolerance and national security."
Economist Herb Grubel, Fraser Institute

Once a caucus colleague of Prime Minister Stephen Harper when both were elected in the 1993 election to represent the Reform Party of Canada as Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, Mr. Grubel, now with the Fraser Institute has produced a report emphasizing the cost to Canada of absorbing huge numbers of immigrants, representing roughly a quarter of a million annually.

After accounting for all received data and synthesizing it, his major recommendation is that the sponsorship of parents and grandparents be phased out in favour of an employer-driven formula for the purpose of attracting economic immigrants.

He points out as well that the average income of immigrants and refugees remains at 70% in total income of that of other Canadians. Consequently immigrants pay just over half of the taxes that other Canadians submit through taxation to be absorbed in general revenues.

Universal social benefits accruing to immigrants ranging from education, health and welfare, language training and other "public goods" are largely paid for by the general population. While taking slightly more of social benefits than the general population, immigrants are incapable of paying their share of the taxes that support them.

That poor performance is attributed in part to refugees and parents/grandparents not requiring to pass economic independence tests.

The tests used by government for economic migrants to assess whether they might fulfill Canada's needs while Canada fulfills theirs ensures that a certain level of education, training and language proficiency has been attained for immigration suitability. The categories of refugee and family sponsorship bypasses those requirements.

And even though in the instance of family sponsorships the sponsor is required to guarantee support, often that commitment falls through.

Lina, Bryan and Maria Abril sing O'Canada after being sworn in as Canadian citizens during a ceremony in Thorold on June 14. The three siblings moved to Canada from Ecuador with their father, Eddy, five years ago. (JEFF BLAY/Thorold Niagara News)

Mr. Grubel estimates that net transfers to immigrants who arrived between 1970 and 2004 amounted to $6,051 annually, for a total each year of $20-billion in cost to government and tax-payers. Other economists like Mohsen Javdani and Krishna Pendakur of Simon Fraser University take issue with those figures; their study argued that net transfer to immigrants during that period amounted to $450 per person, about $2-billion a year.

Either way, immigration is costly. And the numbers that are admitted annually are huge, far outstripping numbers that any other country introduces into their geography. Temporary foreign workers and refugee claimants increase the immigration numbers of 250,000+ upwards fairly significantly. Canadians, according to Mr. Grubel, should be able to debate the question of how many people should logically be permitted to migrate to Canada on an annual basis.

Canada has a relatively modest population size, particularly for its geographic space, the second largest on the globe. With a population of 35-million, growth figures of one million every four years seems rather excessive. Introducing a million new immigrants to Canada every four years represents a massive influx in a relatively short period of time. Adjustment, absorption, melding into the framework of an entirely different culture takes time.

Canada's vaunted multiculturalism system which respects the transfer of heritage, custom, religion and culture reflects the values of a free and open, egalitarian society. But bringing in all those qualities wholesale, and by this process encouraging not cohesiveness and the need for immigrants to fit themselves into the values and culture of a welcoming country, results in encouraging alienating group clusters, separate and apart from the mainstream.
This too requires a full conversation between Canadians.

Former immigration minister Jason Kenney famously introduced numerous reforms to the immigration system in an effort to improve the quality of skilled migrants to Canada. At the same time focusing on fraud, improving the efficiency of the processing machinery, and reducing the numbers of refugee claims that were clearly bogus in nature.

Obviously, there is much work yet to be done to ensure the formula of Canada welcoming new citizens and new citizens welcoming the opportunity to begin new lives of opportunity and equality requires a two-sided effort of mutual respect, accommodation and commitment.