By Riley Donovan

In opinion poll after opinion poll, Canadians say Prime Minister Trudeau’s immigration target of 500,000 permanent residents per year is too high. In a poll released in November by Abacus, a resounding 67% of respondents said the target is too high. Strikingly, a majority of both native-born Canadians (68%) and immigrants themselves (62%) felt this way.

Why is the federal government refusing to budge on an immigration target that is overwhelmingly opposed by the Canadian public? I have been trying to answer this curious question for some time. My research points to the existence of a powerful immigration lobby made up of the same corporate entities which stand to benefit from an expansion in our nation’s population.

In December, Druthers published my article on the Century Initiative, an influential lobby with the stated aim of increasing Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100 through large-scale immigration. This organization is just one piece of a much larger corporate pressure campaign for mass immigration.

We can find out more about this campaign by investigating where the Century Initiative receives its funding. This information can be found in the “Thank you to our supporters” section of their 2022 annual report, where we find a veritable Who’s Who of the key players in the Canadian corporate sector:

Finance

• Bank of Montreal
• Scotiabank
• TD Bank
• Power Corporation of Canada: A management and holding company with a revenue of $69.56 Billion CAD in 2021. It has holdings in insurance, retirement, wealth management and investment management.

Business

• AGT Food and Ingredients: Headquartered in Regina, AGT is one of the largest pulse-processing companies in the world. It was founded in 2001 by Murad Al-Katib, who is a board member of the Century Initiative.
• Business Council of Canada: An advocacy group composed of CEOs of Canada’s leading companies. The President and CEO of the Business Council of Canada is Goldy Hyder, a board member of the Century Initiative.

Individuals and Family Foundations

• Dominic Barton: Co-founder of the Century Initiative with Mark Wiseman, former Global Managing Director of McKinsey
• Willa Black: Vice President, Corporate Affairs for Cisco Canada. Cisco is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate based in California. Black is also a board member of the Century Initiative.
• Lynwood Family Foundation: Lynwood’s President is Sarah Milroy, and its secretary and treasurer is Tom Milroy, who is also the Vice Chair and Treasurer of the Century Initiative. Tom Milroy is the President of TOSA Investments Limited, which directly and indirectly provides financing for affordable housing projects.

The corporate sector has a clear vested interest in the astronomic population growth fuelled by Prime Minister Trudeau’s open-door immigration policy. As our population skyrockets by a record-setting 3.2% per year, the pool of consumers, renters and mortgage-holders grows tremendously. The expansion of the labour force through immigration also places a downward pressure on Canadian wages, reducing corporate expenditures on salaries.

The same phenomenon which is enriching the corporate class is contributing to the impoverishment of the vast majority of citizens. As the GDP (total economic activity) expands, GDP per capita (GDP per person) declines. As rent and house prices spike, tent cities sprout along the streets of many communities. Overcrowding in schools, emergency rooms, and public transit is becoming unbearable.

With enough pressure from citizens, this intolerable situation can be corrected. To counter the monied interests profiting from mass immigration, we need to create our own pressure campaign, a mass movement of citizens of all backgrounds who have had enough of the country being sold out for the profit of the few.

First on the agenda will be reminding our Members of Parliament that they serve the Dominion of Canada and her people, not the corporate and banking sectors.

Riley Donovan is an independent journalist and founder of dominionreview.ca
You can find him on X: @valdombre