OTTAWA - The government is set to announce Friday that a near-record number of foreigners was allowed into Canada last year - 429,000 - a total higher than in any year since 1911.
That sum includes 251,000 permanent residents, as well as temporary workers and foreign students, said government sources who released the number to The Canadian Press.
The NDP dismissed the figure as artificially inflated by temporary residents - including "cheap labour" seasonal workers and students - and note the actual number of permanent residents was 262,000 in 2005.
The latest figures will be released on the same day as a controversial piece of legislation, which is designed to cut processing times for some immigrants - but which could also shut out others.
The budget implementation bill will include a legislative change that gives the immigration minister the authority to cap applications beyond a certain limit if the backlog gets too long.
"It would give the minister the authority to manage the size of the backlog and set limits," Immigration Minister Diane Finley said in an interview.
"It takes three to six years for someone to even get their application looked at - let alone processed.
"That's not fair to them, it's not fair to their families, and it's not fair to the employers that want to hire them. We have to fix that. It's not going to be fixed overnight."
Immigration wait times have surged more than 20 per cent since 2004, according to statistics released by the opposition.
More than 800,000 prospective immigrants languishing on waiting lists. Finley blamed the previous Liberal government for allowing waiting lists to grow more than 15-fold since 1993.
The legislative change is among a host of other recent reforms designed to reduce wait times.
One is creating SWAT teams who can be transferred to process files from countries or immigration categories where the wait is longest.
Another is allowing Canadian officials stationed abroad in quieter posts to process paperwork filed in immigration hot spots.
The government is also creating a new category of immigrant - the Canadian Experience Class. Under that category, temporary residents such as highly skilled workers and foreign students would be allowed to remain in Canada post-graduation while they apply for permanent residence.
The idea, Finley said, is to keep the best and brightest from giving up and heading elsewhere while stuck on Canadian wait lists.
But the opposition zeroed in on the legislative change that would allow the government to cap applications.
With Canada facing a declining birth rate, an aging population and labour shortages, they suggest the government should hire more immigration staff instead of reducing applicants.
"By 2011, 100 per cent of Canada's labour force growth will come from immigration," said Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua.
"Why does the minister believe that shutting the door on immigration is the answer?"
The NDP's Olivia Chow called the approach "short-sighted and wrong."
"We need to increase the target number of immigrants into the country to one per cent of the population - or 330,000 people - in order to renew our workforce and drive our economy," Chow said.
"Instead of allowing families into Canada, the Conservative government seems intent only to bring in massive numbers of temporary foreign workers who are vulnerable to mistreatment and abuse."
Finley would not say whether she intends to use the new power to cap immigration applications, saying that the budget bills need to pass first.
The idea of capping immigration applications to combat wait times is reminiscent of a controversial Diefenbaker-era policy.
In 1959, the Tory government also proposed limits to tackle the backlog in applications - a 131,000-person backlog at the time, fuelled primarily by Italians arriving through family sponsorships. The goal was identical: to reduce those applications in order to speed up processing times for more valued skilled workers.
Within one month, the Diefenbaker government abandoned its effort in the face of an uproar from Italian-Canadians and the Opposition Liberals.
Many elderly members of Canada's 1.3-million-member Italian community can still be heard blaming that policy for their lifelong vow never to vote Conservative again.
Some of these voters are staunch social and fiscal conservatives, but their traditional tendency to vote Liberal anyway has served as a historical obstacle to the Conservatives winning seats in Montreal and Toronto.
But Finley called it hypocritical for today's Liberals to complain about the government measure. She noted that they're allowing the budget to pass, and abstaining en masse from voting on it.
"The Liberals created this situation. For them to provide any criticism of it - when they're actually supporting this legislation in the budget - is nothing but hypocritical," she said.
"We're losing out on a lot of talent because it takes too long for people to get processed here.
"Now we've got employers screaming for talent, which is stuck on wait lists."
