Vital Role of Immigrants

Honourable senators, I would like to begin by thanking Senator Loffreda for launching this inquiry into the contribution of immigrants to Canada and also for chairing the Senate Immigration Working Group.

Some 95% of Canadians trace their heritage to immigrants or are immigrants. To keep this discussion contemporary, I will focus primarily on Canadians who are immigrants, having arrived here in their own lifetime.

I will highlight the role of a few individuals and then make some observations about a group of immigrants: people who work in health care and senior care.

Yoshua Bengio is a computer scientist who is recognized as one of the three godfathers of artificial intelligence, or AI. Professor Bengio was born in France. His family emigrated to Montreal in the 1960s. He built his academic career in Canada. He received the Turing Award, an honour regarded as the Nobel Prize in computing, as well as the Order of Canada and several others. I had the pleasure of awarding him the King Charles III Coronation Medal last year here in this chamber.

Professor Bengio founded Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, a world-renowned AI research centre that trains and attracts the top scientists in the field. He has been a strong advocate for more responsible and ethical AI, as well as for AI security.

At a time when many of his peers have gone off to join the big‑spending American AI companies, Professor Bengio has been here carrying the torch for Canada, putting us on the map — alongside another godfather of AI and immigrant to Canada, Geoffrey Hinton — when it comes to the forefront of technological advancement.

Next I want to talk about John Menezes, a first-generation immigrant who came to Canada with the same hope shared by many newcomers: to build something meaningful in a country that rewards hard work and perseverance. He founded Stratejm, a cybersecurity company based in Mississauga. He grew it from a start-up into a nationally recognized managed security services firm.

Over the years, the company has employed dozens of highly skilled Canadian professionals and helped protect critical infrastructure, hospitals, enterprises and public sector organizations across the country from cyber threats.

In 2024, Stratejm was acquired by Bell Canada — a powerful example of how an immigrant-founded, homegrown company can scale, create jobs, strengthen national security and ultimately become part of one of Canada’s most established corporations. It reflects not just his business success but also the broader contribution that immigrants make to Canada.

Dr. Theresa Tam — a name that will be familiar to all of us — served as Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer until June 2025. Dr. Tam was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Great Britain, where she trained as a doctor at the University of Nottingham.

In Canada, she undertook further study at the University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia, where she specialized in pediatric infectious diseases. She held senior positions at the Public Health Agency of Canada before being appointed Chief Public Health Officer in 2017.

In this role, Dr. Tam was instrumental in our pandemic response through which she became a familiar name to many. She was the steady expert voice that calmed a nation through that unprecedented crisis.

Colleagues, I want to tell you about a hard-working middle-class family here in Ottawa. It is a story that is very illustrative and exemplifies the roles that many immigrants in Canada take.

Masuda and Feroze Anwar came to Canada from Bangladesh in the early 1970s. Masuda has spent many years as a public servant at the Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA, and then at Global Affairs. Feroze built the trendy and popular Zuni Grill in the south end of Ottawa, a restaurant the whole family worked to make successful and popular. Their son, Tariq, is an IT specialist who is also known in the local Ottawa music scene. Their daughter, as her friends will tell you, is passionate about senators: first, with respect to the hockey team, about which she has loud and strong opinions; and, second, with respect to the Senate of Canada, about which she is professional and shares no opinions. She is today one of the most senior public servants in Ottawa. She is, of course, Shaila Anwar, the Clerk of the Senate of Canada.

My final example concerns Canadians working in the health care industry. It is an observation based on personal experience.

My mother lived in a retirement home in the northeast end of Toronto for some eight years, until 2022. It was a home with about 100 residents. I want you to think about some of these figures: Over the eight years she was there, I would estimate that about 10% to 15% of the residents or clients were immigrants. The staff, on the other hand — from the kitchen staff, to the food servers, to the front desk receptionists, to the senior management — were, at all times, upward of 95% immigrants. Put clearly, if it were not for immigrants, that seniors’ home could not exist and those 100 residents would not have had the retirement residence to live in.

Keep in mind that many of these workers, such as the food servers and personal support workers, for the most part worked part-time and were called to duty when needed. Servers may have had an early morning breakfast shift for three hours and then another shift at lunchtime or even dinnertime. Housing and rent being fairly expensive in Toronto, most were not able to live nearby. Some would pick up shifts at a nearby Tim Hortons to make ends meet, where they would be paid even less. Remember COVID? During that time, senior care workers were not permitted to work anywhere else, and yet they went on serving seniors day in and day out.

They always did their work with strong positive attitudes despite their paltry pay. They took their work seriously. With 100 residents, they took care of 100 particular needs: food, beverages and the things people liked and did not like. They called the residents by their names, but, more often, they called them “dear,” “darling” or “my love.” These personal support workers who were paid a very low wage, who made Canada home, served up food and care. More importantly, they served up love at all times to our seniors.

When people today sometimes say that we can’t have too many immigrants because they will be a drain on our social services, part of me thinks, “Isn’t that ironic?” If it weren’t for these immigrants — these relatively recent ones — there wouldn’t be many of the social services we take for granted.

Immigrants work at all levels of society, from the most senior to the most junior with the lowest wages. When was the last time you saw a non-immigrant taxi or Uber driver? When was the last time you saw a White person deliver food? Uber and DoorDash exist because there are scads of new arrivals, including those legendary international students who are willing to work those insecure and low-paying jobs so we can get an Uber in a hurry, a package delivered by Amazon or even have a hot Starbucks coffee delivered to our front door from a block away.

Perhaps the Amazon arrow logo should have a tag line that reads, “Packaged and delivered to you by a low-paid immigrant worker.”

I have often wondered what would happen if all immigrants went on strike for just one day. Senator Yussuff, I’m sure, will like the idea of a strike. Sometimes, it’s important to withdraw labour to make a point.

My query was answered in part when the federal government reduced immigration levels over the past few years. The drastic reduction in immigrants available to work caused a gaping shortage for many private-sector employers, as it did for colleges and universities in Canada. International students are the backbone of funding for most of the post-secondary system in Canada, which is a big, complex issue. Suffice it to say, without many of them, universities and colleges have had to reorganize themselves significantly.

Colleagues, if I can shift gears slightly, there are more people on the move worldwide than ever before. According to the United Nations, in 2024, the global number of international migrants was 304 million, a figure that has nearly doubled since 1990. Concerningly, immigration is the main issue shifting the political centre of gravity toward the far right across the world, especially in the developed world. For some, immigration is fundamentally changing their society in ways they find acceptable; for others, it is doing so in ways they find unacceptable. The far right gaining ground not only results in pro-immigration ideas losing out but comes with the rolling back of gender equality, human rights and the fight against climate change.

Canada has avoided this fate so far. It has been a bastion of stability compared to the politics of many of our peers, but we should not consider ourselves immune from these trends. While some measures we considered in Bill C-12 tighten immigration and refugee laws, we can see that as part of a broader context. Sometimes, difficult decisions are made.

Colleagues, I want to focus on a few things before I conclude.

Immigration is and will continue to be a net benefit to society. We will continue to welcome immigrants. If we want to continue to enjoy those benefits, we must ensure that immigrants thrive in society by removing barriers they face to making full contributions to Canada. However, we must be conscious of the need to maintain immigration at reasonable levels so as to not upset what has been a fragile consensus for many years.

As an aside, I will say for the record that I have never been in favour of the proposal of the Century Initiative, an organization that has proposed a population of 100 million Canadians by the end of this century.

Colleagues, the next time you sign up for training in French, your instructor may be an immigrant from Haiti, Djibouti, Lebanon, France or Morocco.

While some fear that immigrants speak only one official language, if any at all, upon arrival and thus pose a threat to bilingualism, my experience over many years of studying French has shown me that immigrants are, in fact, a key driver of bilingualism. Without immigrant French instructors, our efforts to promote bilingualism would be very much in jeopardy.

The next time you arrive somewhere late at night, chances are that your taxi driver will be an immigrant. When you check into a hotel past midnight, the receptionist may well be an immigrant. The next time you call for food delivery at home, the deliverer may be an immigrant. The next time you go for an X-ray, the lab technician will likely be an immigrant. The next time you go to the drugstore to pick up your prescribed medicine, the pharmacist or maybe the pharmacy owner will likely be an immigrant.

These are the platoons of immigrants spread across this country who are advancing the cause of a strong Canada that has the range of economic and social services with which we thrive and that make our daily lives better.

Honourable senators, I, too, rise today to speak to Senator Loffreda’s inquiry on the vital role that immigrants have played and continue to play in shaping Canada’s economic growth, cultural richness and social fabric.

It will come as no surprise to most of you that I will be focusing on economic growth specific to Atlantic Canada. When we speak about immigration, the conversation is often dominated by the larger provinces that have much higher numbers of newcomers. In places like Ontario, with a population of 16 million people, or British Columbia, with 5.6 million people, newcomers make up 30% and 29% of the populations, respectively.

You may have read in the news about some post-secondary institutions abusing immigration programs in some large regions to make more money off international student enrolments, and the crackdown that happened across the board to try to address this issue.

However, it is important to remember that immigration plays a very different role in other parts of the country. In New Brunswick, with a population of 867,000 people, less than the city this chamber sits in, immigrants make up only 6%. I’ll take a quote from David Campbell, an economic development consultant and a former chief economist with the Government of New Brunswick. As he put it:

It’s intellectually lazy and sloppy to look out your window and assume your weather is the same across the country.

So, let’s not forget that when discussing immigration, the situation is not the same in every province, and a one-size-fits-all policy does not, in fact, fit all.

In New Brunswick, we cannot sustain our population without significant and consistent immigration — not even close. In 2025, Statistics Canada reported a population decrease in the last quarter for New Brunswick, its largest quarterly decline since the 1970s. New Brunswick’s natural growth rate, or births versus deaths, came in at a net decline of 300.

There was also a loss in interprovincial net migration, with more people moving out of the province than coming in. The median age in my province in the 1970s was 24; now, it’s 45. New Brunswick is getting a lot older, and we need younger people to move to our province. If we don’t have a workforce, our economy will stagnate.

Of course, we also want to repatriate more New Brunswickers and retain more youth, but a clear-eyed evaluation of the situation inevitably concludes that immigration will provide our biggest net gain. Economic newcomers help fill labour-force gaps caused by an aging workforce and low birth rates. Demographically, newcomers are typically younger, often with families. They have significant positive economic impacts on our communities. When a new family moves into a community, the priority is usually finding suitable housing, followed by finding a job.

That family adds to consumption and economic activity in that community. They pay property taxes, either indirectly through rent or directly through home ownership. They pay income taxes. They buy food, clothing and transportation. They become involved in social and cultural activities. Perhaps they join a church or volunteer in their community with local organizations. Their children go to the local schools. They start businesses, create jobs, fill vacant positions and bring expertise. They increase the creation of net new businesses and jobs in the city, expanding the tax base for all levels of government, unlocking wealth creation. They make our communities more prosperous.

However, the economic impact is only part of the story. Of course, newcomers add so much more value to our communities than simply economic impact. Learning from their diverse experiences, cultural practices and different perspectives from around the world makes us better, as individuals, as citizens and as communities. Newcomers also bring social diversity and global perspectives; they are active volunteers.

Some may see newcomers as data points instead of seeing them as individuals who each have their own potential and ability to contribute to our culture and economy. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that we approach immigration in a welcoming way and see immigrants for what they are: friends, neighbours and fellow Canadians.

When looking at New Brunswick, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, 89% of permanent resident admissions are economic immigrants, 5% are refugees and the remaining 6% fall into other categories. Perhaps the most important initiative that has helped change the prospects for Atlantic Canada in terms of attracting newcomers to the region was the Atlantic Immigration Program, which was introduced in 2017 by the federal government. Based on the success of the pilot, the program became permanent in January 2022. It is driven by marketplace demand. It works by having designated employers provide job offers to qualified newcomers, while the applicants must have an individualized settlement plan in place for themselves and their families.

To put it in perspective, according to Toward Prosperity: The Transformation of Atlantic Canada’s Economy by Don Mills and David Campbell, between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, over 38,000 newcomers settled in Atlantic Canada. That is the highest number ever to come to Atlantic Canada, and 11 times the number recorded 20 years ago. For example, in 2004, New Brunswick welcomed 761 newcomers, but in 2024, it was nearly 15,000.

We need to focus on both improving the process to attract newcomers but also to be better prepared to receive and welcome immigrants to improve our retention rates. In fact, the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce recently launched a population growth strategy aligned with Atlantic principles. Built upon shared principles adopted by chambers of commerce and boards of trade across Atlantic Canada, the strategy features a dual focus: engaging and retaining our domestic population, and attracting and supporting newcomers from across Canada and around the world.

Two points included in this strategy focus on reducing barriers to employment for international students and skilled immigrants by improving credential recognition as well as ensuring immigrants’ skills are fully utilized in Atlantic labour markets, reducing overeducation and underemployment.

If we are to welcome newcomers, we must ensure they have the tools to succeed and contribute to our communities.

Growing New Brunswick’s and Canada’s populations is foundational to sustained economic growth. It is important to keep the population growth momentum of the previous five years going. Growing the population is required to fulfill our current and future labour needs, but the benefits are far beyond the workforce issue. Stories about newcomers’ successes need to be told so Atlantic Canadians and, indeed, all Canadians can better understand and appreciate the value that newcomers bring to all of our communities.

The government has a responsibility to keep Canadians informed about the contributions of newcomers to our economic growth and prosperity. As Senator Loffreda said in his recent speech on the subject:

Immigration is not a secondary feature of Canada’s success; it is one of its defining strengths. It is at the heart of most policy discussions and decisions in our country.

Newcomers have played and continue to play a vital role in New Brunswick, both economically and culturally. In the face of ever-increasing negative rhetoric and discrimination aimed toward newcomers, we must stay focused on ensuring that we remain a welcoming and supportive place for those who have decided to call the Atlantic region or Canada home.

I thank you all for listening. Perhaps if you take one thing away from what I have said, it’s that one size doesn’t fit all and that we need to consider our regional differences in federal policies in all areas, but particularly as they relate to immigration.

Thank you, wela’lin.

Senator White, I’m sorry to interrupt, can you watch that your card is touching the podium?