Migrants must spread out: Ottawa
'You will stay in Saskatoon, you will stay in Moose Jaw': Plan would force newcomers to agree to live outside biggest cities for three to five years
Robert Fife, Ottawa Bureau Chief, with files from Jon Bricker
National Post
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Denis Coderre, Immigration Minister, proposes a new social contract for newcomers.
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OTTAWA - Denis Coderre, the Immigration Minister, is proposing a strict immigration policy with the intent of putting a million newcomers in the country's less populated regions by 2011.
It would be the most dramatic effort to channel immigrants since the settlement of Western Canada at the dawn of the 20th century.
Mr. Coderre said he wants prospective immigrants to sign a social contract under which they would promise to reside in the Atlantic provinces, the Prairie provinces or rural areas of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia for three to five years before moving.
In reaction, a spokeswoman for immigrants said the plan seems like something out of "Communist China" and evokes memories of the kind of policies abroad that incited people to leave their homelands and come to Canada.
While Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal have become magnets for people seeking a new life in Canada, Mr. Coderre said this has skewed national population growth. Smaller communities face a severe shortage of skilled workers, such as doctors and nurses.
''We have some major problems in the next five years. We will be in a deficit of one million skilled workers and by 2011, our labour force will depend only on immigrants, so we have to find a way to resolve this problem,'' he said in an interview.
''What we are looking for is to have a way to face the problem of labour shortages and population growth by 2011 ... so I would see it as a good thing to have a social contract with the newcomers, saying you are coming to Canada with your skills but you will stay in Saskatoon, you will stay in Moose Jaw, and I feel it may have an impact.''
Most of the 250,000 immigrants and refugees who come to Canada each year settle in the big cities, putting growth pressure on Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Half of all newcomers stay in Toronto, 15% choose Vancouver and 11% Montreal.
More than 500,000 applicants are awaiting permission to immigrate to Canada. About 60% of them are independent applicants who want to come to Canada in the skilled-worker category. The other 40% are family-class applicants who are chosen for their family ties, not their skills.
The Coderre plan is meant partly to help the Atlantic provinces cope with an exodus of young people.
''Atlantic Canada is looking for ways to face the issue of retention so that will be a great opportunity. Halifax and New Brunswick, you name it, they want [this policy],'' Mr. Coderre said.
"The idea is to use immigration as a regional development tool. It would be a catalyst to be really helpful for the whole economy,'' Mr. Coderre said.
He would not say what would happen to immigrants who renege on the social contract, but a senior immigration official said they would likely be returned to their native land.
''It will be a special permit or visa. You must stay in a community for three or so years. And if you move, you violate the visa and they would send you packing.
''It has a lot of merit. If people do stay for several years, they usually establish a family and set up roots and they won't want to leave. This will be good for the local economy.''
Mr. Coderre said he is convinced many skilled workers in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America would be willing to commit to moving to smaller communities as the price of living in a country with one of the highest living standards in the world and a stable political system.
He acknowledged officials have to determine the social contract for immigrants does not violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Mr. Coderre is to discuss the policy with his provincial counterparts at a special immigrant resettlement conference in October. He expressed confidence the policy could not be successfully challenged in the courts because its goal is to assure regional equality both in population and in achieving a higher standard of living.
''My instinct is telling me because of regional accommodation, it would pass without any problem with the Charter,'' he said. ''What I'm looking for is a new deal, a new social pact with the newcomers and all the partners in the country to have an inclusive immigration policy.''
The Charter's mobility rights clause says the existence of such rights does not preclude any government program that aims to assist a province with an above-average rate of unemployment.
Benjamin Trister, a Toronto immigration lawyer and head of the immigration section of the Canadian Bar Association, said he is confident the policy could withstand Charter scrutiny, providing prospective immigrants were given temporary visas.
He said the government could give newcomers a temporary resident permit "which says you can come here and work, like you basically do now as a permanent resident, but you wouldn't actually be given an immigrant visa. You could only convert that permit into a permanent visa once you have established you have lived in the area you have promised to live."
Under current laws, prospective immigrants on employment authorization are restricted to work in the area where they have found employment, Mr. Trister noted.
''So it is not as if everyone who gets here can benefit under the Charter from mobility rights. So if they do it by way of a temporary resident permit, that would probably withstand judicial scrutiny."
However, he said the policy likely would not survive a court challenge if the government made location conditional after giving people immigrant visas.
Gloria Fung, the Chinese Canadian National Council's immigration committee chairwoman, called the proposal an enormous threat to freedom of movement.
She said it is especially alarming to immigrants who, like her, chose Canada because its citizens enjoy freedoms they did not enjoy in their home countries.
"By proposing this idea, I wonder if our Minister Coderre is suggesting Canada should go the same direction as Communist China," Ms. Fung said.
She also doubted the policy could feasibly be monitored.
The federal government had a similar program after the Second World War, but Mr. Coderre's policy is more far-reaching in seeking to repopulate regions that urbanization has left behind.
The plan is similar in scope to the settlement program for Western Canada that began in 1896 under Clifford Sifton, minister of the interior in the Liberal government of Wilfrid Laurier. The Sifton plan offered newcomers 65 hectares of virtually free land for a $10 registration fee. It was judged a huge success, with the population jumping from 5.3 million in 1901 to 8.8 million by 1920.
The Prairie provinces received 49% of the new immigrants, lured by the promise of cheap land.
