The Ben Mulroney Show - It’s time to totally overhaul Canada’s immigration system

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Guests and Topics: -It’s time to totally overhaul Canada’s immigration system with Guest: Michael Bonner, Senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, former senior policy advisor to a federal immigration minister If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Snacks, delivered. Fresh fruit, delivered. Grocery delivery on repeat for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at pcexpress.ca. This is the Ben Mulroney Show, and thank you so much for listening to us on the radio, on streaming apps, or it may very well be that you listen to us in podcast form

on Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music, and now you can find us in video form on YouTube. So wherever you find us, we say welcome and we say thank you. So if you're a long time listener of the show or you may pop in every now and then, you know that the broken immigration consensus is something that we try to focus on a lot on this show because when it worked,

it was something that helped us build this country into one of the best versions of itself. And now that consensus has been broken. We were promised that the numbers of new Canadians and new people brought into Canada was going to be significantly pared back. So when I read that Canada took in 817 new immigrants in the first four months of 2025,

well, that was a WTF kind of moment for me. And so here to talk about that is somebody who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, Michael Bonner, the senior fellow at the aerosol foundation for public policy and former senior policy advisor to the federal immigration minister. Michael, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I mean, this was a, this number is huge. 817. Now is it new immigrants? Are these new Canadians, people who will be staying here? Or could this possibly be an inflated number due to temporary foreign workers who come

in and say, work the fields in our agricultural sector? It's temporary foreign workers. That's the majority of it. And the majority would be very unlikely that they would be doing mostly agricultural jobs. The problem with the temporary foreign worker program is that it's become effectively a business model abused throughout our economy, especially in the hospitality sector. And it's used to keep wages artificially low. It builds in structural unemployment and underemployment, especially amongst young people. And it doesn't really have any, you know, it basically it keeps wages artificially low

effectively like a kind of subsidy from the government, which, you know, really has no business continuing. But what happened, Michael, to the government's mea culpa under Justin Trudeau in the dying days of his government, where they admitted pretty much that they had, for lack of a better expression, screwed the pooch. And they were going to be walking back a great number of their policies and they were going to right size the number of people coming into Canada and figure it out and course correct. This doesn't seem like a course correction.

This seems like an explosion of new people entering Canada. Yeah, not at all. And screwing the pooch may as well have been the motto of the Trudeau years. But no, I mean, you raise an important point, when is our government going to take this issue seriously? This is not economic growth. It doesn't benefit the economy and it doesn't employ Canadians. The whole thing about the, you know, elbows up crowd and buy Canadian and so forth, you know, where did that go? Why not hire a Canadian? Yeah, yeah, good point.

This is a fundamental structural problem that we have, you know, built into this country that was greatly exacerbated under the Trudeau years. Their excuse was to stave off a recession after COVID. And maybe we avoided one. Some people say we might be on the verge of one now or possibly in the middle of one. But economic know, economic growth and productivity haven't been great. And one of the reasons is this constant churn of temporary low wage, low skilled labor. Well, Michael, I want to jump in because the churn suggests that those who come in eventually leave. But in all the conversations I've had about our immigration system, be it temporary foreign

workers or permanent residents or immigrants or refugees, we simply don't have the bodies or infrastructure in place to ensure that everybody who is supposed to stay for a determined amount of time leaves when they're supposed to. In fact, a lot of them disappear through the seams that we never see them again. And they just make their way through sort of the the black market economy being paid in cash under the table and they stay here for an indeterminate amount of time. Yeah, well, I mean, they're supposed to leave. Yeah, they're supposed to. And yes, and as you say, many of them don't. And there are now, there's not such a huge number that it's probably beyond the resources of the government and the CBSA to keep track of them all.

There are reports that some sort of go underground. They apply for asylum under, I would say, sort of dubious circumstances or citing sort of doubtful claims. But yeah, churn might not be the right word. I mean, it's become a kind of addiction that is sort of recycled. People are effectively used to subsidize the low end of the Canadian economy. And this is extremely bad for us. We're talking about the kind of jobs that a young student might have originally, you know, once upon a time, have taken to get a foothold into the labor market. The kind of the kind of job working at a coffee shop, you know, like Tim Hortons or whatever, where you know, you

want your kid to get an experience serving his, you know, serving your neighbors in your local. And learning discipline and learning to be to take orders and learning that you got to show up on learning. It's about learning responsibility in the in the workforce. And learning discipline and learning to take orders and learning that you gotta show up on learning. It's about learning responsibility in the workforce. And those jobs do not exist for sort of the young Canadians at this point. I did wanna fold in an article that we talked about

on this show last week that you authored for the hub.ca entitled, it's time to totally overhaul Canada's immigration system. And I'm, you know, on good days, when I'm optimistic, Michael, I believe that crisis breeds opportunity. And is there any way we can look at the mess that is currently our immigration system and see opportunity and see a chance

to take it down to the studs and not go back to the consensus that we had a few years ago, but rather build out a new consensus based on a different kind of immigration system purpose-built for the 21st century. Well, I'd like to think so. Look, one of the fundamental challenges that we're going to have in the future is that as the

entire world, as the sort of birth rates of the entire world go down, there's going to be less and less of a surplus population of young, motivated, well-educated, trained people looking for opportunity around the world. I just don't see any way around that. And the kind of business model or like the economic model of immigration that Canada has made use of for the past several decades, I just don't think that's going to be available to us for much longer. So from that perspective also, there has to be a new, some kind of new approach has to be found. And in the meantime, yes, let's by all means try to recruit the best and the brightest that the world can produce and amongst, you know, amongst whom there must be many who would be very happy to live here.

But it's not fair. It's not fair to established Canadians and it's certainly not fair to the immigrants. First of all, to treat people simply as units of economic input and just sort of bring in as many as we possibly can without thinking at all about things like infrastructure, housing, or even just the number of jobs. Now, speaking of jobs, I've got to repeat again, we cannot keep giving privileged access to the low wage, low skill portion of our Yeah, of our labor market. This is a disincentive to businesses to to first of our, of our labor market. This is a disincentive to businesses to to first of all, to hire

Canadians. Yeah, second to invest in skills training to invest in our economy to invest in our people. It needs to be cut off probably not, you know, very suddenly, it needs to be ratcheted down. Yeah. And businesses have to be given every every incentive we can possibly think of to train and hire Canadians. Michael, I thought we had reached that point. I thought the ratcheting down was happening and the fact that it seems to be on steroids right now is exceptionally disappointing and concerning. But I want to thank you for joining us on the show and I hope you come back soon.

An absolute pleasure. Thank you. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for spending time with us. When we say that the previous liberal government broke the consensus on immigration, what that means is statements that we used to be proud to make. Immigration helped build this country, and there are no greater additions to this country than somebody who wants to be here. And multiculturalism is our strength. And all those things, we don't say anymore. And the people who used to be proud of saying them

have been forced, forced into a position of recognizing the new reality that says, we're bringing in too many people. And the people we're bringing in are not subscribing to anything that looks like a singular Canadian identity. And the people who are coming in are taking away jobs from Canadian citizens. I mean, these are things that three, four, five years ago would have been, I would have been allergic

to say they would have been anathema to what it meant for me to be an open-minded, proud Canadian. And yet here we are. And the numbers, and I want to talk about them with you, feel free to call into the Ben Mulroney show. Look, India accounts accounted for 45.8% of the approvals of the 817,000 people that came in in the first four months of this year. It's almost like we're single sourcing new Canadians from one particular place. I thought we used to bring people in from all over the world.

Almost half of them are coming from one country. I kind of have a problem with that. Not, I don't have a problem with people from India. I have a problem with our entire immigration system, single sourcing immigration, which is kind of what this feels like. David, welcome to the show. Oh, my fault.

Welcome to the show, my friend. Hey, not that. I just I was home visiting my family in the East Coast at Christmas. And what happened down there was I'm talking rural Nova Scotia. Yeah, you're an hour and a half away from any major pro tropos. There's no colleges, there's no university that's close by the opening of a brand new Wendy's. And I took my nephews and a couple of my cousins kids in for interviews. Lots of kids were there for the interview. All local kids, month and half opens up later, they brought in workers. Not a single local kid was hired. They were all from India. They did the same thing when somebody bought up one of the other local restaurants, fired all the local kids

and brought workers in. How is this helping Canadians? Yeah well you know our previous guest made a very good point for all those, the elbows up crowd who were talking about buy Canadian. What about hire Canadian? Both jobs for young adults, you start out as an entry level job. Why are we bringing in people for an entry level job? How does that help our tax base? How does that help anything? anything they're gonna be taking far more out of our out of our system. Yeah, then they're ever gonna be putting in Yeah, well, hey David, thank you so much for starting off this conversation with us

We appreciate it and I'm gonna welcome Sean into the conversation Sean You've seen the list of the top ten source countries for temporary residents and it's there's something that sticks out to you Absolutely. Good morning, Ben. Good morning. I think that, you know, post World War two, most of the new Canadians came from Western European countries, highly skilled. You talk about building in quotation marks a country.

We need people that come from places where you can build where they they do the types of jobs, they go into the parts of, I'm from Northern Ontario, a mining community. They had to bring miners last year from Mexico because we do not have those people coming from the Poland, the Germany, the Italy, because they just can't get in here. They don't qualify. I forgot friends from Italy tried to come in. Explain it, why don't they qualify?

Well, because they didn't they didn't meet the federal government's criteria for coming to Canada. A very good friend of mine wanted to come here. He had a million houses a year with a bunch of guys that work on keyboards? We need people that come from places where they build, where they go into industry, where they do high paying, super productive jobs. That is not what India is going to provide to us. I'm looking at this list. And of the top 10, there's only one country from Europe, and it's war-torn Ukraine that list of sort of the top 10 applicant countries.

And I am not here to rag on any of the countries that are in the top 10, but what happened to the list? What happened to the requirements? What happened to the requirements where there isn't a single European nation in the top 10 with the exception of Ukraine? To your point, it's not ragging on anybody. The balance is completely wrong. There's not a healthy mix. You can't just build a country with computer people.

We need people that, you know, poor cement, build houses, go mining, work in forestry. Sean, thank you so much for the call. I got a few other people I want to get to. And Robert is next on my list. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show, Sean. Working for Forestry. Sean, thank you so much for the call. I got a few other people I want to get to. And Robert is next on my list. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show, Robert. Good morning, sir. How are you? I'm well.

I'm well. So what's your solution to this problem? Well, first of all, one of the solutions is we got to put people coming in from other countries after they've done their education. They have got three months to either leave or have some kind of waiver or something. We've got to stop just being taken advantage of and deny work permits to all these new young students coming in. Well, so let me play devil's advocate for a second. One of the things that made the United States such an intellectual powerhouse

where so many people were starting businesses and going to Silicon Valley is they would get their educations at universities in America where they paid a premium to go. And then once they were in the United States, what the US wanted was they wanted them to stay in America to start their businesses. That's why so many people from China and Japan and various parts of Europe would start companies in the US as opposed to going home and starting that company in their home country. So there is an argument to be made that you bring in the best of the best,

you attract them here, you educate them, you make them feel a sense of belonging here and then they want to start a company in Canada, which will employ Canadians. These are not the best of the best that are coming here. See, that's a different, yes. Some of them are very good, but not all of them are very good. I agree. I mean, if you're coming here on a temporary, to be a student and you do your

undergrad here, I don't know that you're necessarily going to start a successful startup. It's not racism. Our kids should come first. That's the bottom line. Like I said, in the Trudeau government was racist. It didn't like Canadians. It didn't like the other ethnic groups either. Well, I mean, listen, some of the biggest pushback for this explosion in temporary foreign workers and the immigration system writ large is from cultural communities that have only been here for a few years.

So new Canadians themselves were like, hey, I played by the rules and now you're messing with my ability to build my business and to have my kids take advantage of the Canadian dream. So I don't think, I mean, if people who don't look like me are saying it, then I can't imagine that you can make an argument that it is racist. Thanks so much for the call.

And I think it's time to welcome James into the conversation. James, where's the problem as you see it? Where I see it is directly with our government, with the liberal government for the last 15 years. So subsidies is the problem as you see it? Where I see it is directly with our government with the liberal government for the last 15 years. So subsidies is the big issue. We no longer are looking for economic immigrants.

We're just taking everybody and anybody simply for the aspect of if you look on any government website when it comes to any type of immigration, the benefits that they receive is actually atrocious to what Canadians do not receive. Employers are actually told not to hire Canadian or Canadian born citizens. If they do, they lose their subsidies. Now, if we turn around and take these subsidies, just like in Nova Scotia, just like in New Brunswick, We have all these immigrants saying they're not going to leave. They deserve to be here because of the taxes. Oh, they paid a few taxes for a couple of years. Big whoop. But the big issue is they'll start

striking and then the Charter of Rights will kick in when it's not necessary because they're not citizens. They should not qualify for the Charter of Rights. James, thank you so much for the call. That's why it could be an opportunity to take the entire system down to the studs and start again and give Canada back the opportunity to rebuild that consensus on immigration on a healthier footing. We've got time for Adam's call. Adam, very quickly, tell me where you stand.

Well, one of the most interesting political trivias is that no minister of immigration in any Commonwealth country has ever become prime minister. It is an impossible job. After people say the right number of immigrants is zero, then the next group says it's okay if you bring in that group of people, but not those group of people Including as you said people of color who say okay? I'm Indian, but don't bring in the Chinese or I'm Chinese Don't bring in the Indians

You can never win. Well, I got a run. I got a run though. Adam. Thank you so much I think you can win I think Canada for years and decades won with a healthy Immigration system that just got sick because of the Trudeau Liberals and it's time to fix it To celebrate the Days of our Lives 60th anniversary W network and stack TV invite you to enter for a chance to win the ultimate fan experience By watching new episodes of Days of Our Lives, you and a guest could win a three-night stay in Los Angeles, a VIP Days of Our Lives set tour, a helicopter ride over LA, and so much more. Watch Weekdays at One and look for the weekly code word to enter.

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