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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.