In the waning days of the last Parliament, Canada’s CEOs publicly called on the country’s political parties to keep immigration off the table in this fall’s election campaign.Their wish came true, more or less, until this week.With Alberta Premier Jason Kenney bursting into the suburbs around Toronto on the weekend, and the presence of People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier at the English-language leaders’ debate on Monday, what had mostly been a discussion at the riding level finally emerged nationally.But the worst fears of the business community have not materialized.Rather than degenerating into an anti-immigrant brawl with racist overtones, the discussion has been rational and measured for the most part, with Bernier’s opponents labelling his call for lower immigration levels as irrational and intolerant.Canadian business leaders had looked at the anti-immigration sentiment developing in the United States. They looked at some of the backlash in Canadian politics as thousands of asylum-seekers walked across the border from the U.S. And they looked at the state of their workforces, their need for labour and the projections for growth going out a few years into the future.They didn’t like what they saw.“We are 10 years away from a true demographic pressure point,” Business Council of Canada president and CEO Goldy Hyder told reporters in April. “What I’ve said to the leaders of the political parties on this issue is, ‘Please, please do all you can to resist making this election about immigration.’ That’s as bluntly as I can say it to them.”Business leaders and many economists argue that Canadian immigration levels need to rise if the economy is to grow fast enough to support a burgeoning number of seniors into retirement. Without increased immigration, the workforce won’t expand, and the number of people depending on that workforce for benefits and supports will be in ...
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