Canada’s immigration policy aims to promote economic development by selecting immigrants
with high levels of human capital, to reunite families and to respond to foreign crises and offer
protection to endangered people. Economic-class immigrants, who are selected for their skills,
are by far the largest group. The immigration system has been highly successful and is well run.
Outcomes are monitored and policies adjusted to ensure that the system’s objectives are met. A
problematic development, both from the point of view of immigrants’ well-being and increasing
productivity, is that their initial earnings in Canada relative to the native-born fell sharply in
recent decades to levels that are too low to catch up with those of the comparable native-born
within immigrants’ working lives. Important causes of the fall include weaker official language
skills and a decline in returns to pre-immigration labour market experience. Canada has
responded by modifying its immigration policy over the years to select immigrants with better
earnings prospects, most recently with the introduction in 2015 of the Express Entry system. It
has also developed a range of settlement programmes and initiatives to facilitate integration.
This chapter looks at options for further adjusting the system to enhance the benefits it
generates.
