CANADA’S 1978 IMMIGRATION BILL
In the mid-1960s, only a trickle of South Asians settled in Canada each year, and the bulk of those were Sikhs or Punjabis. After 1967, the numbers began to rise, with annual East Indian immigration reaching the 23,000 range by 1974, according to a 1978 study in Canadian Public Policy. In Toronto and Vancouver, those increases prompted a xenophobic backlash. In 1967, 80 per cent of immigrants to Canada came from Europe. By 1974, that figure had fallen to 40 per cent. The Trudeau government knew it had to address the unrest. Immigration officials closed a loophole permitting newcomers to apply for landed immigrant status while visiting Canada. Ottawa, notes Myer Siemiatycki of Ryerson University, set up a joint Senate-House of Commons task force to travel the country, collecting feedback. Dozens of East Indian organizations and individuals made deputations to the task force, marking one of the first instances of a newcomer community mobilizing politically. The 1978 study says these lobbying efforts fell on deaf ears. Nonetheless, the task force members realized they had to defuse an evidently volatile situation. Siemiatycki points out that the result — a law passed four decades ago this year — established three formal categories of newcomers (economic, family, and refugees) and the use of annual target immigration levels, all of which remain pillars of Canadian policy. The initial target was about 100,000 people. Canada today accepts about 300,000 newcomers a year, equivalent to 1 per cent of the population.