Peter Copeland: Time for a first-principles reset on immigration

Canada needs dedicated integration laws for immigration, which should not replace fertility, families, and generational renewal.

(‘Behind Bonsecours Market, Montreal’ by William Raphael, 1866.)

The collapse of Canada’s once-strong immigration consensus has come with some stark lessons. As a model built on boundless openness collided with reality, we’ve relearned that societies require shared norms, bonds, and identity.

The 2022–24 surge of immigration did not create the crisis so much as expose the limits of a worldview that treated autonomy, mobility, and diversity as unqualified goods. For decades, policy followed an extreme open-society ideal that downplayed borders, integration, and common culture. The result has been diffuse national identity, declining trust, strained services, and civic fatigue.

A serious reset must start from first principles: what immigration is for, and what kind of society it must sustain.

At present, examples of failure abound.

Canada’s increasing reliance on temporary migrant labour has depressed wages in some sectors and entrenched low-productivity business models. Employers can rely on a rotating pool of precarious workers rather than investing in training or technology. Migrants, for their part, face weak protections and few paths to long-term participation, undermining both dignity and social cohesion.

The postsecondary sector shows a similar pattern. Universities opened their doors to the world and became financially dependent on international students, driving inflated tuition, often low-quality programs, and dubious employer partnerships.

Far from diversity being an outright strength, a 2020 meta-analysis found a robust negative relationship between local ethnic diversity and social trust in the short term. This confirms the obvious: shared norms, customs, mannerisms, beliefs, and behaviours are crucial to the facilitation of everything from basic interactions on the street to broader cooperation, integration, and trust.

Without shared civic reference points, rapid diversification produces parallel communities, now visible in Toronto, Vancouver, and other major cities. Trust data reflect this: Statistics Canada’s general social survey shows Canadians’ general trust of others was stable at around 54 per cent from 2000-2013. This has now declined to levels in the mid-40s. A 2024 University of Waterloo report found only 33 per cent of Canadians now say “most people can be trusted”, unsurprising when the proportion of immigrants as a share of the population (excluding non-permanent residents and foreign-born citizens) goes from 15 to 25 percent as it has from the early 90s to the present day.

Over the last 20 years, Canada has become more fragmented and fragile. Mistrust and loneliness abound in precisely the large, diverse metro areas that receive most immigration.

Demographic avoidance

Immigration has been used to mask deepening demographic decline, even as Canada’s total fertility rate dropped lower and lower over time, to an all-time low of 1.25 in 2024. Immigrants may arrive with stronger family structures, but they eventually adopt the same hyper-individualistic norms that suppress domestic fertility. Relying on immigration to offset population decline signals that marriage, family formation and generational renewal, among the most basic human aspirations, crucial to individual and social well-being alike, are secondary concerns for policymakers.

What’s more, foundational social goods are weakening under relentless autonomy. The Global Flourishing Study shows that marriage, family stability, community ties, religious participation, and purpose are central predictors of human well-being. These pillars are strained by our fundamentalist commitment to openness, autonomy, and individualism, the values animating our immigration system.

Paradigm shift: immigration for integration

These challenges are not merely technical. They are philosophical. Reform must therefore begin with a change in worldview: diversity is only a strength when embedded within a unifying framework.

As Michael Bonner notes, Canada’s original vision that preceded multiculturalism stressed integration, not fragmentation. The Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission mentioned ‘multiculturalism’ only twice and emphasized ‘acculturation into a Canadian way of life’ to achieve ‘unity in diversity’, not diversity without unity. That vision was never fully adopted, and the integration emphasis steadily eroded over time.

Quebec’s interculturalism offers a more coherent framework for cultural diversity and integration than Canada’s multiculturalism. The Quebec Immigration Act and related policies place broad duties on the state to promote integration, but they lack the incentives with teeth we find elsewhere.

We should look to the Danes, who have a fairly restrictive, tightly managed immigration and integration regime. They restrict inflows, especially asylum-seekers and low-skilled migrants, and make long-term residence and benefits conditional on integration, requiring labour-market participation, self-sufficiency, and civic conformity. The rationale is clear: immigration control is essential to preserving the social-democratic welfare state, preventing unfair burden-shifting, and protecting social solidarity, trust, and cohesion.

A renewed framework in Canada would re-establish clear distinctions between temporary and permanent migration, with meaningful enforcement. Immigration levels established through the Annual Immigration Plan would be tied to indicators linked to real absorptive capacity, housing completions, infrastructure, public service capacity, and the fragile but essential resource of social trust. Selection criteria would prioritize integration like the Danes and make long-term residence and benefits conditional upon them.

Multiculturalism would be reoriented toward unity, not fragmentation. Canada should follow the lead of countries with dedicated integration laws, like Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway and France, by embedding integration duties into our Citizenship or Multiculturalism Acts, clarifying the responsibilities of newcomers and governments alike. Immigration would complement, not substitute, a serious national strategy for fertility, families, and generational renewal.

Properly ordered, immigration can be a profound good for newcomers and for Canada. But this requires abandoning the illusion of limitless openness, and recovering a more realistic vision of human nature, shared identity, and the demanding work of integration that a cohesive society requires.

Peter Copeland is deputy director of Domestic Policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.