CALGARY — Past comments on immigration from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new Governor General, Louise Arbour, are resurfacing after her appointment to her new role on Tuesday.The 79-year-old Montreal native — who is set to succeed Mary Simon in the role she’s held since 2021 — is a former Supreme Court justice and United Nations (UN) Commissioner for Human Rights.Arbour has had a decades-long career in international law, including prosecuting war crimes and, at one time, serving as the UN’s Special Representative on International Migration from March 2017 to December 2018.Her past remarks on global migration are now receiving renewed attention at a time when Canada and other Western countries are grappling with the effects of mass immigration amid growing economic pressures and shifting public sentiment..During a debate with Reform Party UK’s Nigel Farage in 2016, Arbour condemned rhetoric about Muslims being an “existential threat” to Western democracy, saying Canada would welcome all peoples regardless of faith, and stating the country had a "special obligation" to offer asylum to those fleeing war-torn countries like Iraq and Syria."I am aware of the fear that an influx of foreigners will transform our social fabric in an undesirable way, but the reality is our social fabric is changing anyway in this interconnected world," Arbour said.In a September 2017 interview at an International Peace Institute event, Arbour argued that many of the claims by people opposed to mass immigration were “at odds with facts,” including accusations that workers being imported from third-world countries were stealing jobs from those in developed countries.“If you look at demographic changes, there is no doubt that the West is going to need, at all skill levels, to import human resources,” Arbour said at the time.“So we might as well start now putting in place cooperative models that will decrease irregular migration and increase legal pathways for people to come, so that states know who they are, where they are, and what they’re doing in the country.”.In a separate interview with France 24 in 2018, Arbour again acknowledged growing political resistance to mass immigration but described those attitudes as “demonstrably misguided” and warned they could harm countries adopting a nationalist stance.“I think there is a real challenge in combating a perception that is at times completely hostile to this entire enterprise. This is the reality,” she said.“It’s going to take considerable political leadership and therefore political courage for decision-makers to push back against mythology, stereotypes, and negative attitudes that are completely disconnected, not only from reality, but from the very best interest of a lot of these people whose attitudes today make them walk into a wall.”She added that negative attitudes towards migration in many Western countries in the “short to medium term” would be “completely self-defeating.”.Also, in a keynote speech at the UN on September 21, 2018, she stated that migration is “a fact of life… to be managed,” which closely mirrors the logic behind former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 declaration, “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”), made before her government’s decision to admit over 1 million asylum seekers into the country, which sparked major political backlash across Europe during the height of the migrant crisis.Her appointment comes amid ongoing debate in Canada over immigration levels that are being seen as increasingly unmanageable by critics from multiple sectors.Recently, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced it was giving permanent residency applications to up to 33,000 workers who have lived for at least two years in rural and remote communities.While the policy is designed to support sectors facing labour shortages — such as agriculture — it has faced significant criticism amid the growing housing crisis and youth unemployment, which sits at 13.8% for Canadians aged 15 to 24.
