Is Canada Ready to Discuss Its Immigration Future?

Is Canada Ready to Discuss Its Immigration Future?

Canada likes to think of itself as an immigration “superpower.”

In reality, Canada forfeited its immigration superpower advantage more than a decade ago. That is when strategic drift began to set in and core planning functions, like annual immigrant target-setting and risk management, became untethered from the enterprise of nation building.

The situation worsened during the three-year COVID-19 pandemic. The overreliance on mass immigration to jumpstart Canada’s economic recovery created massive backlogs across all immigration programs, slowed application processing times, and invited endemic abuse of the country’s generous refugee determination system. Even though immigration-driven population growth was five times higher than the OECD average in 2023, Canada’s GDP that year increased by a meagre 1%.¹

The same year, an internal organizational review prepared by a former deputy minister of Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) assessed that the system was indeed “broken.”² Crucially, some of the people interviewed for the report stated that department-wide planning at IRCC was either limited or had totally disappeared. Think about that for a moment.

Many of the core assumptions which have guided immigration policy thinking through decades of election cycles, national security crises, and humanitarian emergencies are no longer tenable. The federal government’s unilateral decision to raise both immigrant and non-immigrant levels to historic levels in the post-pandemic period has undermined IRCC program integrity and increased Canada’s national security risk exposure.³ “Gateway” cities like Toronto and Vancouver are struggling to cope with the unexpected infrastructure demands and large numbers of newcomers to Canada are emigrating. Unsurprisingly, public confidence in Canada’s beleaguered immigration system is wavering for the first time in generations.

Oblivious to these strategic warning signs, IRCC remains committed to incremental program changes. Canada’s federal immigration department also lacks an effective strategy to restore the country’s damaged reputation. The newly appointed Immigration Minister, Lena Diab, has provided little indication that systemic policy improvements are forthcoming. So far, Minister Diab – the seventh immigration minister in ten years – has made few public engagements apart from a cross-country tour with key stakeholder groups to discuss annual immigration target levels.

Minister Diab’s diffidence is perplexing. Migration-related security threats were highlighted at the G7 Summit which Canada hosted in Kananaskis (Alberta),⁴ the most recent meeting of the Council of the Federation in Huntsville (Ontario),⁵ and the migration-security nexus received special attention in the latest CSIS Public Report.⁶ Managed migration will be more, not less important to all government levels in Canada moving forward.

The federal immigration minister should anticipate multiple competing policy priorities in the year ahead. Representing IRCC on two federal cabinet committees, the National Security Council and Secure and Sovereign Canada,⁷ the immigration minister will be responsible for commenting on the quality of intelligence reporting that is produced specifically for the federal bureaucracy and demonstrating how IRCC can advance Canada’s strategic interests, both domestically and internationally.

An equally important IRCC planning priority will be preparing detailed contingencies to deal with a sudden surge of asylum seekers and inadmissible foreigners crossing the border into Canada to avoid deportation from the United States. The Trump administration is aggressively pursuing a mass deportation program and building the infrastructure to expedite the removal of up to 1 million foreign nationals annually. To achieve this goal the U.S. deportation program is building new capacity in three critical areas (arrests, detentions, removals). In fact, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is logging in 2,100 arrests per day which is about 70% of its goal.⁸ Therefore, it is plausible that ICE will reach its deportation target within the next year.

In these uncertain times, IRCC must prepare for multiple plausible scenarios including an irregular migration surge during the economically vital tourism season that could be disruptive for Canadian border towns and host cities of the 2026 FIFA World Cup (12 June to 7 July).

Restoring the country’s global immigration advantage is crucial if Canada is to prevail as a welcoming democracy and to prosper as an economically competitive G7 member country. Designing a “fit for purpose” immigration system has never been more important for Canada’s national and economic security. However, it is unclear if Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is capable of rising to the challenge.

Success won’t be achieved through piecemeal policy adjustments or by simply working harder. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the world is more dangerous and unpredictable. Second, IRCC is experiencing a workforce reduction of 3,300 employees over three years that

apparently was decided by management without the benefit of a strategic review.⁹ The timing of IRCC’s “brain drain” couldn’t be worse.

What Canada urgently needs is a robust national policy discussion about how best to put immigration to work for the benefit of the entire country. In fact, it’s been more than 25 years since a federal immigration minister organized a nation-wide policy discussion. In the late 1990s, Immigration Minister Robillard led an intensive consultation process and commissioned a forward-looking policy document, “Building on a Strong Foundation for the 21st Century: New Directions for Immigration and Refugee Policy and Legislation.”¹⁰

If the current immigration minister is unwilling to engage in a “top-to-bottom” immigration policy discussion then let’s jumpstart the conversation informally.

Grant Duckworth is the owner of Vancouver Strategic and Integrated Research (VISR), a management consultancy, and the author of “How Canada Forfeited Its Immigration “Superpower” Advantage And What To Do About It” (May 2025).

1. David Williams, “Canada’s Poast-Pandemic Economic Recovery Was the 5th Weakest in the OECD,” (4 November 2023). https://www.bcbc.com/insight/canadas-post-pandemic-economic-recovery-was-the-5th-weakest-in-the-oecd/. 

2. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, “Organizational Review Report” (February 2023).
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/committees/cimm-oct-24-2023/organizational-review-report.html.

3. Vancouver Strategic and Integrated Research (VSIR), “Has the Time Arrived for An Immigration Reset in Canada?” (11 October 2023). https://vancouverstrategicresearch.ca/has-the-time-arrived-for-an-immigration-reset-in-canada/.

4. G7 Leaders’ Statement on Countering Migrant Smuggling (16 June 2025). https://g7.canada.ca/en/news-and-media/news/g7-leaders-statement-on-countering-migrant-smuggling/.

5. Council of the Federation, “Premiers Discuss Building a More Prosperous and Safer Canada,” (23 July 2025). https://canadaspremiers.ca/premiers-discuss-building-a-more-prosperous-and-safer-canada/.

6. Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), CSIS Public Report 2024 (March 2025). https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/scrs-csis/PS71-2024-eng.pdf.

7. Prime Minister of Canada, Cabinet Committee Mandate and Membership (13 May 2025). https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/cabinet-committee-mandate-and-membership#secure-sovereign.

8. Ted Hesson, Tim Reid, and Nicole Jeanine Johnson, “Inside ICE, Trump’s Migrant Crackdown is Taking a Toll on Officers,” Reuters ((27 Augst 2025). https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/inside-ice-trumps-migrant-crackdown-is-taking-toll-officers-2025-08-27/.

9. Catherine Morrison, “Canada’s Immigration Department Will Slash 3K+ Jobs in Coming Years,” The Canadian Press (21 January 2025). https://globalnews.ca/news/10969852/immigration-canada-ircc-job-cuts/; Emma Weller, “Canada’s Immigration Department Cutting Roughly 3,300 Jobs Over Three Years,” CBC News (22 January 2025). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ircc-immigration-citizenship-canada-job-cuts-1.7436881.

10. Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Building on a Strong Foundation for the 21st Century: New Directions for Immigration and Refugee Policy and Legislation (1999). https://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/Ci51-86-1998E.pdf.