November 17, 2005
VOLPE LIED! VOLPE LIED!
And politics and immigration continue to mix very well indeed.
James Travers in the Toronto Star shows that the immigration minister is playing very fast and loose with statistics about the economic success of recent immigrants to Canada.
Most questionably Volpe is tripling family re-unification for parents and grandparents: poor economic performers (grandparents? who'd a thunk it) and the most likely heavy users of the collapsing health care system (my thought, not Travers'):
With a winter election looming and Liberals desperate to hold the ethnic vote, Immigration Minister Joe Volpe is telling fanciful stories about the success of immigrants that just don't fit the facts. Volpe, who also happens to be Paul Martin's Ontario political boss, is promoting the notions that new arrivals are doing rather well and that Canada is ready to throw its doors open to a swelling new crowd.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Documents circulating through select government departments and obtained by the Star reveal disturbing results suggesting a ruling party concerned more with national interests than electoral advantage would put immigration increases on hold...
The grim statistical fact is that it now takes more than 10 years to catch up, and some new immigrants, particularly those in the most politically sensitive family reunification class, are too often left behind forever.
Worse still, the newest Canadians are driving big-city despair. In Toronto, immigrants increased poverty levels by nearly 3 per cent, reversing all gains made by non-immigrants, a pattern repeating in Montreal and Vancouver.
No matter what Volpe claims, the bottom line is that in major urban centres, the ones that attract most new arrivals, low-income rates rose between 1990 and 2000 for one big reason — increases in immigrant poverty. Across the country, more than 35 per cent of those who had lived here five years or less by 2000 were earning low incomes...
If it weren't for politics, Volpe's peculiar policies and pronouncements would be baffling. In April, he announced Ottawa would triple the acceptance of parents and grandparents, one of the most politically attractive but worst performing groups, and then in a series of media leaks promoted what was expected to be a well-received 40 per cent jump in overall immigration...
...internal documents make it clear Liberals are throwing money at a problem the government doesn't fully understand.
Questions about why immigrants fare so poorly outstrip answers. Equally worrying, there is no reason to believe that Ottawa has any immediate hope of matching applicant skills to labour market demands or channelling immigrants to regions that current residents are abandoning.
In Question Period November 17 the Conservatives asked not one question about this, no doubt for fear of being labelled racist rednecks.
Also in QP a Conservative suggested the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Andy Scott, should take his finger out of his butt (Keeseekoose Education Fund theft). Liberal blogging language reaches the House of Commons. The Speaker simply moved quickly to the next questioner, obviating any reply by Mr Scott.
Update: There is an excellent column in the Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 18, "Immigration crisis in France is a warning to Canada", by James Bisset who was head of the Canadian Immigration Service, 1985-90.
Sadly the text is not free online.
An excerpt: "Immigration has become one of those subjects that ordinary Canadians are not allowed to talk about. To do so runs the risk of being branded as anti-immigrant or even racist. Our House of Commons immigration committee studiously avoids asking any economists or demographers to appear before it, fearing that to do so might expose the committee so some of the facts about immigration."