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

If you dare suggest there’s something wrong with Canada’s immigration system, someone will soon call you a racist. The fact is, whether you favour high immigration or none at all, we are not doing a very good job of it right now.That was the starting point of my conversation with John Weissenberger, former chief of staff to Harper-era Immigration Minister Diane Finley and author of the recent C2C Journal essay “The Other Right to Choose: Can we reverse the Trudeau Immigration Fiasco.” (A condensed version headed 'Can we reverse the Trudeau Immigration Fiasco?' appears in the Western Standard this weekend.) Weissenberger has seen the system from the inside, and he knows exactly where it went off the rails..For nearly fifty years after former prime minister Lester Pearson’s government introduced the points system in 1967, Canada selected economic immigrants — roughly half of total intake — on objective, transparent criteria: education, language proficiency in English or French, occupational skills that matched Canadian needs, and age. The other streams were family reunification and a smaller humanitarian/refugee component. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.As a young New York Times writer once observed, Canada’s policy was “ruthlessly smart.” It produced net contributors who could hit the ground running..Weissenberger’s own family story illustrates the point. His father, a teacher in post-war Germany, was rejected until he listed himself as a labourer — exactly what Canada needed. The system was blunt, but honest: Canada chose people who could help build the country.Then came 2015. Within a year the Trudeau government had dramatically expanded targets from about 250,000 to 400,000-plus annual permanent residents. They loosened points criteria, fast-tracked low-skill workers and students, and presided over an explosion of non-permanent residents — temporary foreign workers, international students, and asylum claimants — that reached 3.2 million by late 2024, or 7.5 percent (!) of the entire population of Canada! Oversight collapsed. Fraud and “non-compliance” became routine. Universities turned foreign students into a cash cow while the Auditor General documented massive integrity failures..Worse, the courts got into the act. Ontario judges struck down Harper-era rules limiting citizenship by descent, potentially creating millions of overseas “Canadians” with no attachment to the country. Judges and prosecutors began shaving sentences to avoid deportation, treating immigration status as a get-out-of-jail card. As Weissenberger notes, the Charter-era philosophy of “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” – even for known terrorists – has real consequences.Economist Garett Jones’s research, cited by Weissenberger, drives home the deeper point: values such as trust, frugality, and respect for the rule of law – and their opposites – persist across generations. “Full assimilation is a myth.” A rigorous points system doesn’t just select skills; it selects for people more likely to succeed and integrate..Weissenberger is clear-eyed about demography. Canada’s fertility rate is 1.25. Immigration is necessary. But the right number must be tied to housing, health care, jobs, and social cohesion — not elite fantasies of “unlimited capacity.” Provinces like Alberta, watching Quebec’s existing powers, are right to demand a referendum on numbers and benefit access.The fix is straightforward: restore a disciplined, adaptable points system that puts Canadians first, tighten asylum vetting, caps temporary residents, and enforces tracking. No more “Hotel Canada.”Watch the full interview at 7:00 p.m. tonight. Weissenberger has been there, done that — and he knows what needs to be done to get it right again.

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

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