The Trudeau government’s plan to bring in close to one million new immigrants within the next three years should be of serious concern to Canadians. Next year alone, the numbers are expected to reach 310,000 but to that total must be added approximately 900,000 temporary foreign workers and foreign students who will be living in Canada. Since most of the newcomers will be settling in three of our major cities, the pressure on infrastructure and local services will be extreme.

Canada’s current immigration policy is based on myths. All of our political parties, most of the news media, big business interests, the banks and land developers favour large-scale immigration and justify this on the grounds that immigration helps our economy, strengthens the labour force and alleviates our aging problem.

In fact, only about 15 to 17 per cent of the annual flow consists of immigrants selected because they have skills, education and experience. Because of the pressure to get high numbers, few of these workers are seen or interviewed by visa officers. The selection is done by a paper review. The remainder of the movement is made up of the spouses and children accompanying the workers, family members sponsored by relatives in Canada, immigrants selected by the provinces (who do not have to meet federal selection criteria ), refugees and humanitarian cases.

The truth is that the government has lost control of the immigration program by abandoning its traditional role of selecting our immigrants and controlling their numbers. Canadians have been brainwashed into believing we are doomed if we don’t keep immigration levels high. We are also told that our immigration policies are acknowledged to be the envy of the world. These arguments are wrong.

There is no evidence that immigration is essential for economic growth. The 1985 MacDonald Royal Commission Report concluded that immigration did not contribute to economic growth and, in fact, caused a decline in per capita income and real wages. In 1989, a two-year study by the Department of Health and Welfare supported the MacDonald report and stated there was no argument for increased population growth and that immigration was not the answer to the aging of the population. In 1991, the Economic Council of Canada reached the same conclusion.

A more recent study by Prof. Herbert Grubel of Simon Fraser University and economist Patrick Grady found that in the year 2002 alone, the costs in services and benefits received by the 2.5 million immigrants between 1990 and 2002 exceeded the taxes paid by these immigrants by $23 billion. It is not surprising that this study has received little media coverage in Canada.

Studies outside of Canada have come to the same conclusion about the economic value of immigration. In Britain, a report by the House of Lords in 2008 warned that the government’s plan to admit 190,000 immigrants per year would achieve little benefit and would seriously affect the availability of housing and the quality of public services. The report also criticized the government for misleading the people by justifying immigration levels when they provided no economic benefit, were not needed to fill labour shortages and did not help the state’s pension fund.

Perhaps the most insidious argument still being advanced by government and other advocates of mass immigration is the belief that we need immigration to provide the workers needed to replace our aging population. This argument is obviously flawed if, as in Canada, the immigration movement has a similar age structure as the receiving country; then, immigration does not help the aging problem – indeed it may well exacerbate it.

In 2009, a study by the C.D. Howe Institute found that to offset our declining birth rate and maintain the ratio of five taxpayers to support the benefits of one pensioner until 2050, our immigration levels would have to reach 165.4 million. And in that single year, 2050, the annual movement would have to be seven million immigrants. The study recommended that raising the retirement age to 67 would be much more effective.

Sadly, we have allowed our political parties to use and exploit immigration for political purposes – with all parties competing for the ethnic vote by calling for increasing numbers. This is a cynical approach, patronizing to immigrants and damaging to the country. It is time for comprehensive reform.

James Bissett is former head of Canada’s immigration service  (1985-1990).