Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has labelled federal immigration policies as “out of control” as a way to explain the province’s fiscal deficit.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Bill Waiser is a Saskatoon-based historian and distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan.
Immigrant-bashing is rearing its ugly head again in Canada. Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre is railing against health care costs for asylum seekers. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, meanwhile, won’t “demonize” Alberta separatists who threaten the existence of the country, but will single out reckless Liberal immigration policy to justify the province’s eye-popping deficit projection. Then, in early April, Ms. Smith took the first steps toward asserting more provincial control over immigration.
Sadly, blaming immigrants is nothing new. Nor is it something that Canada imported from the United States. Canadians do just fine on their own, especially whenever they feel threatened by immigrants or want someone to blame for any number of problems.
That certainly happened in Western Canada in the first half of the 20th century.
In the early 1900s, Western Canada was promoted as the “last best west.” Hundreds of thousands of immigrants were actively encouraged to come to Canada and turn pioneer Prairie homesteads into commercial farms. The response was overwhelming, especially because Canada aggressively advertised in continental Europe and tapped into “non-traditional” sources of immigrants. People came for the promise of greater opportunity. They came to escape persecution and oppression. They sought to leave behind discrimination and racism. They wanted to avoid compulsory military service and seek out peace.
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It would be a mistake, though, to assume that non-Anglo-Canadian immigrants were welcomed, even though they proved resilient farmers. Some immigration critics claimed that “foreigners” were threatening the Anglo-Canadian fabric of the country. Others openly questioned whether their integration into the larger society was desirable, let alone possible.
Nor did it matter that the number of central European settlers was dwarfed by those from Britain and the United States. They stood out because they were different – dressed differently, spoke differently, worshipped differently, even cooked differently (with garlic!) One newspaper likened the new immigrants to a “grand ‘round-up’ of European freaks and hoboes.”
Frank Oliver, the fiery Liberal MP for Edmonton, was more scathing. He accused Clifford Sifton, his predecessor as federal minister of the interior, of populating the West with “scum.” A Ukrainian, Oliver maintained, was “only a generation removed from a debased and brutalized serf.”
For many, a more selective, more restrictive immigration policy was urgently needed, especially because non-Anglo-Canadian immigrants were popularly associated with poverty, crime, ignorance and immorality.
Jump forward to the 1920s, and the same heated anti-immigrant rhetoric enlivened public debate across the West.
Under the federal 1925 Railways Agreement, the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways were empowered to recruit agricultural immigrants from central and eastern Europe. Over the five-year period of the agreement, more than a third of a million continental European immigrants entered Canada.
The surge in immigrant numbers provoked a nasty backlash. The issue was even debated by academics.
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In a paper read before the Royal Society of Canada in 1926, E.H. Oliver, the first professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan, questioned the place of continental Europeans in Prairie society. “We need the artist, the poet, the thinker, the musician, and composer quite as much as the sewer-digger and the track-layer,” he observed. “It is high time we encouraged these people to bring their best to us.”
What Oliver and other commentators didn’t appreciate was that there were poets, thinkers, and musicians among the people who decided to make Canada their home. But outright prejudice effectively prevented them from realizing their true potential at the time. Today, many rightly complain that the Trudeau Liberals made a mess of Canada’s immigration program. But why blame recent immigrants who struggle to find a meaningful place in Canada?
They too face roadblocks, both real and unspoken, that limit their opportunities and hence their ability to contribute to the larger society. They did not leave behind another life on another continent just to become Amazon delivery drivers or fast-food servers.
Indeed, Canadians need to realize that these new immigrants are not any different from immigrants a century ago. Like earlier waves of immigrants, they have come to Canada for a better life – if not for themselves, then for their children and their children’s children.
And if we’re going to build a better Canada, build a better tomorrow, then we need to do it together. Blaming immigrants is not the way forward.