Overheated immigration system needed ‘discipline’ infusion: minister

OTTAWA — An “overheated” immigration system that admitted record numbers of newcomers to the country has harmed Canada’s decades-old consensus on the benefits of immigration, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said, as he reflected on the changes in his department in a year-end interview.

The system, he said, needed some discipline to get the country back on track.

Over the course of 2024, Miller moved to cap the number of student visas, reduced the number of permanent residents it plans to admit, made it harder to get a working visa and paused most private refugee sponsorship applications.

All of that came as record immigration levels pushed population growth up over three per cent in 2023, twice what it has averaged over the previous decade.

“There’s no shying away from the fact that there’s some stuff that I think we could have gotten better. I think there’s a lot of good that has happened as well,” Miller said.

This interview took place on Dec. 11, before Chrystia Freeland’s resignation as finance minister and deputy prime minister upended Canadian politics. Miller, who was named immigration minister in July 2023, kept the role in a shuffle Friday.

Miller said the souring of public opinion on immigration is rooted in a number of factors, including high rates of asylum seekers, the high cost of housing and political movements in the western world.

This climate created the challenge for Miller over the last year, to “infuse some discipline” into the immigration system.

With an aging population and birthrates below replacement levels, Miller said that immigration is essential to ensure a strong labour force to help pay for key programs like health care.

“We still need immigration, but we do have to be able to say to Canadians that we’ve been listening to them and react accordingly when we see that things get overheated,” Miller said.

In the minister’s eyes, this includes bringing in more economic immigrants to bring down the average working age of Canada’s population.

The increase in the number of temporary workers is among the biggest issues that have emerged since the pandemic. Initially, the goal was to use the program to fill holes in the labour market but the program grew so quickly it opened the door to fraud and exploitation of workers.

The government recently moved to make it harder for an employer to have a permit approved, and low-wage applications will be refused in geographic regions where unemployment is above six per cent.

Labour market impact assessments, necessary paperwork to help bring in a worker from overseas, also are worth a valuable 50 to 200 points in Canada’s points based express entry system for permanent residents. CBC recently published an investigation that uncovered those assessments being sold, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars.

“It’s being gamed and I think recognizing that there’s fraud that comes under different forms. I have a particular role in making sure that people aren’t leveraging that to get, for example, permanent residency,” Miller said.

On Dec. 19, Miller announced those points will be removed from labour market impact assessments as part of a suite of measures tied to increasing border control in response to president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threat on Canadian products.

That change includes having temporary residents exclusively apply online to extend their stay, in an effort to end a practice known as “flag-poling.” This is when someone crosses the U.S. border from Canada, only to turn around and go back to the border for quicker processing of the application at a port of entry.

The government will also introduce legislative amendments to allow them to suspend or cancel immigration documents, including visas, when deemed to be in the public interest. Miller used mass fraud as an example.

Trump is threatening both Canada and Mexico with 25 per cent tariffs on all American imports from those two countries, unless they increase border security to stem illegal crossings and drug trafficking.

“I find it, the rhetoric that we’ve heard in the U.S. to be unfortunate. It’s not one that I will ever espouse, but also, we need an immigration system that doesn’t look like it’s being abused by folks trying to game the system,” Miller said.

“And I think that is something that we are seeing increasingly with false asylum claims sometimes from certain countries.”

There are roughly 250,000 asylum claims waiting for processing by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. The highest number of claims in 2024 came from India, followed by Mexico.

Miller said he is looking at introducing further asylum reforms in the next month to “streamline” the system and deal more quickly with illegitimate claims.

But bringing in further reforms on a sensitive area amid a heated discussion on border politics may be easier said than done. For Miller, it’s about trying to strike a realistic balance to commitments under humanitarian laws and what Canada can handle.

“What we can’t do is fall victim to our base instincts. We need to rise above and look at this in a way that is rational, that looks at these people as human beings, without being naive about the ability of the Canadian government the ability of Canada to absorb the numbers of folks that come in here,” Miller said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2024.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press