4946 words.
“Canada is a nation of immigrants”.
This quote comes not from Justin Trudeau but Hugh Keenleyside, a Deputy Minister in the King government who oversaw immigration as part of his portfolio. Dr. Keenleyside was speaking in 1948 to a crowd who would have received this phrase as something preposterous. According to the landmark study “The Least Possible Fuss and Publicity: The Politics of Immigration in Postwar Canada, 1945-1967” 1 by Paul Evans, most Canadians at the time did not identify as immigrants, nor were they inclined to accept newcomers. During this time, Prime Minister Mackenzie King had taken a public hardline stance against immigration, especially from the Orient. As it turned out, Keenleyside’s message was much more indicative of not only where things were headed for Canada, but also the government’s clandestine intentions.
The idea that Canada was ever popularly regarded as a nation of immigrants is a piece of revisionist history that stands in opposition to the wealth of recordkeeping we have at our disposal. In most cases, Canadians were roundly opposed to non-White influxes and the sentiment of “populate or perish” as it related to immigration.
In February of 1947 the Prime Minister’s Cabinet commissioned a report on a general immigration policy with the purpose of avoiding discrimination on racial grounds, and was written by the Interdepartmental Committee on Immigration. May 1st of that same year saw King deliver a speech wherein he declared that there was no “fundamental right” for anyone to immigrate to Canada, specifically addressing the “special problem” refugees presented in the wake of WW2. This wave of migration was pushed primarily by the new United Nations. King’s response gave the impression that this issue would be dealt with in the future, incrementally and with caution. Only days later his administration launched what is widely regarded at the time to be the largest refugee initiative in Canadian history. King publicly maintained his anti-immigration stance while his administration was implementing exactly the opposite.
This separation between public officials addressing their constituents and the true goals of the state apparatus would become a largely ignored trend over the proceeding decades.
This is not to say that Mackenzie King was lying about his personal views, but he was certainly not up front with the pressure Canada was experiencing. As an example, the postwar “displaced persons” program was launched against King’s approval. It is worth stating that the displaced persons in question who were brought into Canada from 1946-1951 were mostly of European extraction. The backsliding of the PM on this issue would very quickly be pivoted to the benefit of non-Europeans, as King himself warned:
“There is going to be a great danger of the U.N. refusing the idea of justifiable rights of selected immigration with racial and other discriminations.”
The collective force of the United Nations, which King could not repel, only brought to fruition an argument vocally stated by Liberal backbench MP David Croll in 1945. Croll, a Russian Jew representing a riding filled with his kin, criticized existing policy by quipping, “we have on our statute books at the present time a great deal of racial nonsense.” Croll suggested that Canada must live up to its “obligations and responsibilities” and that the Canadian government should purposefully turn towards countries other than those from which it had traditionally sourced immigrants. These arguments found the most support from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation MPs – political predecessor to the NDP – whose ridings had many immigrants and found this adhering to their self interests.
This article will cite sources that are almost exclusively supportive of immigration. This material will be juxtaposed with public polling to demonstrate the contrast between Federal undertakings and the will of Canada’s citizenry. Most polling was pulled from the <Odesi> data portal, which is ran by the Ontario Council of University libraries. To save space, I will not be describing legislative changes in detail or the resultant demographic damage of such lawmaking. The focus of this article will be from the years immediately after WW2 to 1976, the year in which a new Immigration Act eliminated all vestiges of racial discrimination in immigration policy (though a case could be made that 1967 regulations had already done so).
Sudden Demands for Growth
According to Mildred Schwartz in “Public Opinion and Canadian Identity,” 2 1945 saw the largest support for population expansion at 65% approval. Schwartz presumes that those in favour had immigration in mind, rather than increased fertility. This is crucial since according to data gathered by Dr. Duchesne 3, Canada’s population boom between 1941-62 was mostly a result of local natality. In July of 1947 the government acknowledged that support for an influx of “carefully selected” immigrants had increased over the preceding year, a sentiment which purportedly existed as far back as 1944 according to Professor WJ Waines. That said, after large-scale immigration was undertaken during this period, public support for the policy dropped drastically, with a disapproval rate of 67% by 1960.
Though population expansion was justified in the sparsely populated West for reasons related to economic and national security, a loose survey of recent Canadian history reveals how population expansion can come from within. For example, from 1815 to 1851 the population of Lower Canada blossomed from 330K to 890K without immigration as the driver. Quebec’s population similarly reached almost 4 million by 1950, and the baby boom from 1941 to 1962 brought Canada’s total population from 11.5 million to 18.5 million. The national narrative is that the only growth possibly comes from a rapid influx of immigration, whereas the greatest influx of population growth in the previous century was due to naturally rising birth rates.
Most interesting of all is how the Canadian state lacks interest in natural birthrates entirely, even in Aboriginal communities. There is no narrative that exists in academic culture or media that pins population growth to the health and vitality of a group, even for groups that are routinely pushed as essential to Canadian identity, a benefit no longer afforded Euro-Canadians.
“2/3 of Canadians opposed immigration from Europe”
“’Japanese first and the Jews second’ in response to the question, “what nationalities [would you] like to keep out of Canada?’”
The goal of a European Canada was historically espoused by every Prime Minister from confederation up to and including Louis St. Laurent. However, the pressure that King experienced would be even more taxing on the subsequent St. Laurent, especially after the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed in December of 1948. As English writes:
“In the aftermath of fascism and the Holocaust, the tide [of pressure to accept the UNUDHR] was too strong to resist.” 4
The King and St. Laurent governments chose to avoid potential backlash by hiding their immigration projects from public and press scrutiny. Specific policies were circulated internally to bureaucrats without official announcement. Of course, some major developments could not be hidden, such as the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act during the King administration – despite his reservations against Asiatic migration – and was another result of UN influence. Conservative Party MP Davie Fulton expressed his faction’s solidarity with King in opposition to both UN obligations and Asian expansion. Bi-partisan consensus within Canada, however, could not stop international forces.
By the 1950’s, public opinion on migration remained divided, and as a result the government studiously avoided publicizing its activities. In fact, following the passing of the 1952 Immigration Act, Walter Harris, Minister of Citizenship, and Immigration said of public sentiment in 1952 that Canadians “generally agreed” with his government’s immigration policy. This claim was simply false. Canadians were not supportive, and they had not been informed of nearly all the changes taking place. How could they agree with policies they had not been told about?
“Canada does not need immigrants”: 55%
The two immigration objectives of the St. Laurent years were:
1). Achieving yearly immigration numbers through a defined program while “avoid[ing] public scrutiny”.
2). Spinning the nature of immigration, when it was described to Canadians, as purely economic and away from anything political.
In 1954 Minister Pickersgill (who took over for Harris) asserted that immigration policy since 1947 had a “primary purpose [that was] social rather than economic,” which demonstrates that the second objective was obfuscation.
The St. Laurent administration used several tricks to stifle criticism of its policies in parliament, including pushing back debates on immigration targets to the end of the summer sessions in 1953 and 1954. Though the Conservative Party complained of their approach, Minister Walter Harris rightly assumed that the objections were all talk, as “the opposition had no substantive quarrel with the basic tenets of the Liberal government’s immigration policy.” It was a bold callout, one that would reveal the working relationship of both parties in the succeeding years.
Smaller: 49.4% Larger: 44.2% About right: 6.3%
*When those who answered “larger” were asked to specify “From what countries would you like to see people come from to live in Canada?”, the majority of those who did so chose European countries. 53% did not specify.
Minister Pickersgill gave a radio interview affirming that the government was “not going to permit any mass immigration” from Asia and the British West Indies. In spite of this declaration, he rolled back Black immigration restrictions the following year, allowing workers from the Caribbean to arrive in Canada as domestic workers. The Negro Citizen’s Coalition leader Donald Moore opined that this was “the first time that Negro migration of any kind to Canada has been planned”. This was a point of pride for Pickersgill, who described the motion fondly in his memoirs, describing the program as allowing increased Caribbean immigration in future years and was an example of a “series of significant changes” the St. Laurent regime put into place by mid-1955. He did so contrary to the opinion of officials, such as Immigration Branch Director C.E.S. Smith who wrote in January 1955 that “the Canadian public, apart from certain minority groups, is not willing to accept any significant group of Negro immigrants.”
Pickersgill acted against political and public opinion, doing all he could to, in his words, “make incremental adjustments to the rules, and to the nation’s ‘fundamental character.” Here we see justification for radical action permitted through the interpretation and deployment of specific terminology. While the immigration was shocking and discombobulating, Pickersgill could in good faith deny it was “mass immigration.” As long as changes are made with incremental shifts with the selective interpretation of clauses and national spirit, anything is possible and the perpetrators can deny treachery.
While bringing in East German refugees to fill farm quotas in May of ’56, he temporarily dispensed with normal security screening procedures entirely. The Minister waved off his colleagues’ hesitation by saying “no publicity would be given to such action, of course, and the risk of getting planted communist agents in this short period seemed rather small.” Just ten years earlier, the Gouzenko Affair had ignited awareness of Communist infiltration and Soviet spy networks in Canada. A Macleans article from 1946 titled “Backstage at Ottawa. Why Did They Spy?” indicated half of those accused in the resulting trials were either Jewish or married to Jews, indicating an ethnoreligious angle beyond ideological or political influence.
Minister Pickersgill was more than aware of public sentiment at the time, closely monitoring his corresponce to gauge the citizenry’s opinion, even stating during an April 1955 cabinet meeting (via transcript): “On the whole, the majority of the population was against immigration most of the time.” Additionally, a March 1956 memo sent to the Minister noted that Canadians were split on the matter of immigration and that they “show[ed] greater unanimity when given a chance to vote on discriminatory immigration”. The memo referred to a then-recent poll as follows:
Approve: 59% Disapprove: 24% No opinion: 17%
When one examines the overtly unpopular policy prescriptions undertaken by Harris and then Pickersgill, the only explanation for such actions is ideological motivation. Evans lends insight:
“Both Harris and Pickersgill had seen something of the world – Harris through his military service and Pickersgill during his student days and his travels with prime ministers. Both understood that negative public opinion regarding ‘others’ could be overcome, and so the process of transforming the race-based components of immigration policy – removing barriers based on race, and replacing them with occupational or educational criteria – began during their ministerial tenures. It is therefore inaccurate to conclude (as some scholars have done) that the ‘point of departure’ for this process of change occurred at some ‘indefinable moments, buried deep in the Diefenbaker era.’”
Why would these well-to-do men of European descent bring about their own people’s destruction? Anecdotal evidence for such change is best analyzed through the transformation of now-infamous Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. As a student, he was an ardent Quebecois Nationalist and an antisemite. After graduating high school, Trudeau Sr. enrolled at Harvard, where a profound shift occurred; he was indoctrinated into staunch anti-Hitlerian sentiment. He then attended school in Paris – there becoming infatuated with Freudianism – until studying at the LSE under Harold Laski, a notorious Jewish communist, remaining one of the PM’s lifelong influences. We are all aware of academia’s takeover in the post-war years, and it seems that Western elites were perhaps the first subjects of such intellectual experiments.
The Diefenbaker Demarcation
The Conservative term from 1957-1963 was a confused one, which ultimately did not produce a new immigration act, but did lead to an Order in Council in 1962 that eliminated almost all racial discrimination from immigration criteria. Prior to its passing by the nominal Conservatives, very few non-Europeans were admitted to Canada.
That notion of politicians’ personal beliefs divorced from policy would dissipate in the era of Diefenbaker, a man whose anti-racism was central to his identity. Diefenbaker’s first speech of his federal campaign promised a “vigorous immigration policy,” though the press did not cite immigration as a campaign issue to take note of after he won. Pickersgill noted previously that while some Conservatives, like Fulton, had called for discrimination against non-British immigration, Diefenbaker often took an opposite stance while he was an MP.
Diefenbaker’s story is again emblematic of how this subversive process occurs. For example, he told his Cabinet that coloured immigration could be resisted if it were on the grounds of adaptability to Canada’s way of life rather than overt racism. This was after he had returned from a Commonwealth conference with the full intention of assuring the non-White peoples of the Commonwealth of reasonable advancement and equal opportunities. When Acting Minister Fulton, in 1957, recommended a yearly immigration target of 150K, the Cabinet assented, but only after being told the number would not be released to the public.
“Canada does not need immigrants”: 64%
“Canada should continue to restrict the admission of nonwhites”: 52%
YES: 31.9% NO: 68.1%
- APPROVE: 27.3%
- DISAPPROVE: 69.4%
It could be argued that Diefenbaker’s confused immigration regulations mirrored not just a negotiation with the public sentiment, but something deeper in the Prime Minister’s psyche. He at once revered Canada’s British founding and the Commonwealth, but was also vehmently anti-racist to his core. His battle against discrimination likely emanated as a backlash against anti-German sentiment experienced in his formative years, as explored in Denis Smith’s “Rogue Tory: The Life and Legend of John G. Diefenbaker.” 5 Even the idea of a checkbox to identify one’s ethnic origins on the Canadian census offended Diefenbake’s sensibilitiesr; he would have liked to do away with it entirely.
Writes Smith:
“In his ideal Canada, there would be no distinctions of race or national origin, no hybrid collection of minorities, visible or invisible, but instead a ‘united nationality’ of equals.”
This attitude of Diefenbaker’s culminated in the 1960 Bill of Rights, which is something he had advocated for in Parliament since at least the 40’s in the aftermath of the Gouzenko Affair. Interestingly, two of the major proponents of the Bill of Rights were Jewish Conservative advisor Eddie Goodman and then-lawyer Bora Laskin who would become the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice under Trudeau Sr. Laskin, however, criticized the Bill of Rights saying it did not go far enough.
APPROVE: 27.3% DISAPPROVE: 69.4%
CONTINUE RESTRICT: 57.6% FEWER RESTRICTIONS: 38.6%
Noted author Valerie Knowles has acknowledged that the Bill of Rights necessitated the 1962 Order in Council much in the same way that Mackenzie King’s hand was pushed by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. This time, it was the Prime Minister’s own doing.
The actual abandonment of a “White Canada policy” in 1962 was inspired by officials, as the public had not protested or otherwise denounced such a blueprint, as explained by Freda Hawkins in her landmark study “Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared.”6 Minister Ellen Fairclough and her Deputy, George Davidson, believed themselves hard-pressed to pass a new Immigration Act; they settled instead for the anti-racist Order in Council. The two were not influenced by popular demand or a push by parliament. Rather, they saw existing legislation as impossible to reconcile with membership in the UN, or the existence of what was known then as The Multiracial Commonwealth.”
In the Spring of 1963, enthusiastic commentator David Corbett wrote in International Journal:
“The Conservatives’ immigration policy has probably been in advance of public opinion in several respects. Reform through change of regulation gives less opportunity to die-hard opponents of cosmopolitan immigration than would a full-scale national debate and a new Act of Parliament. It might be very difficult politically to obtain as liberal terms in formal legislation as it has been possible to adopt by order-in-council and ministerial regulation.”
“Recent trends therefore support the inference that the government means to administer the new Immigration Regulations in such a way as to bring more Africans, Asians, and other non-Whites into Canada as immigrants each year.”
The article shows a certain pomposity on Corbett’s part. When he says “in advance of public opinion,” he means to say the Order is more enlightened that popular sentiment. “Gives less opportunity” to immigration skeptics than “national debate” can be interpreted as preventing discussion and not allowing those in opposition a chance to weigh in, is presented as a self-evident good. The implication is that it is merely forward-thinking, with the populous slow to evolve. We can be almost certain that Corbett’s progressive peers on both sides of the political aisle echoed his opinions.
Lester Pearson’s administration did not see much change to immigration in the way of policy. His 1967 Order in Council on immigration did close some racial loopholes left over from 1962, primarily concerned with family admittance for certain non-White immigrants. This is accepted by many modern Canadians as elementary, but there was a time when it did not rationally follow that a newly landed immigrant should expect to bring in both their immediate and sometimes extended family.
What was once a fair assumption was converted to a wild prejudice due to muted legislative action. If you can, by degrees, remove the floor from beneath someone’s feet, you can blame them for finding themselves in a hole, which they must have always had good reason for being in otherwise why would they be in it?
YES: 21.3% NO: 78.7%
The 1976 Immigration Act
The governments of the 1970’s and 1980’s had a different approach to policymaking, with transparency ostensibly being the new normal. Regular reassurance from leading politicians as to the benefits of artificial population expansion was deemed essential to satisfy public concern. By this point, the Canadian public had already been primed to accept that the phenomenon of immigration somehow occurred irrespective of the designs of those in power.
The early 1970’s under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau saw a series of changes to Canada’s immigration scheme, announced by its multiculturalism policy in the tail end of 1971. Robert Andras took his position as Minister of Manpower and Immigration the following year, and by 1973 he was paving the way to the 1976 Immigration Act with the help of Deputy Allan Gotlieb. Andras and Gotlieb oversaw the 1973 Adjustment of Status Program, which dealt with a crisis of illegal immigration by granting landed immigrant status to 52,000 aliens, a move supported by the national media and all major political parties. Andras did close the program in October, but Conservatives astoundingly clamored for an extension so more illegal immigrants could be regularized. Against the wishes of Conservatives, the extension was not granted. Once more, the precedent was set and the floodgates began to open.
The path to the 1976 Immigration Act began in earnest with the submission of the Green Paper on Immigration Policy, received by the Cabinet in the fall of 1974. Perhaps surprisingly, the first of four volumes were quite candid, having what was described as a “pessimistic tone”. In fact, volume one linked Canada’s multiracial immigration movement to “the problems of urban congestion and incipient social tensions” in urban areas. The media and pro-immigration advocates were displeased with these inferences.
BENEFITED: 42.5% HARMED: 30.7% NO DIFFERENCE: 26.8%
*Canadians were not bought in to the idea of immigration as a boon to society. This is also specifically Commonwealth immigrants, many of whom were White at the time.
ALLOW ONLY THOSE: 69% HUNT OWN JOBS: 23.5%
In March of 1975, a Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House was created to field public hearings on the Green Paper. This Committee was tasked with collecting input and then creating its own recommendations for parliamentary action based on this interfacing with the public.
On the ground, the general public was poorly represented. Proxies of Canada’s Communist Party and other pro-immigration groups often hijacked these public hearings, their disruptive tactics helping activists bully their way through meetings with the end goal of disbanding them entirely. The Committee heard mostly from national organizations, special interest groups, and individuals already involved with immigration initiatives. Martin O’Connell, Co-Chairmen of the Joint Committee, admitted that his group had not reached the general public.
There is some doubt that Committee members had any intention of listening to the public in the first place. They turned their backs firmly on what they categorized as racist mail, or those presentations that contained what they deemed to be irrational anti-immigration briefs. Considering the public (as polling showed) was not happy or at the very least skeptical of expansionism, one could easily imagine any detraction of such policy would be characterized as “irrational” and discarded.
The Green Paper hearings only lasted six months. This was intentional, as Hawkins admits:
“It did not reach ‘the average Canadian’ for one simple reason: because the Minister and Cabinet did not trust the average Canadian to respond in a positive way on this issue, and thought this would create more trouble than it was worth. As a result of this view, they did not want to commit the funds to organized extensive public participation, and made only a minimal effort to mobilize the media on behalf of a truly national debate.” 7
Another issue tackled by the Andras-Gotlieb team prior to the new Immigration Act was the perceived need for a population policy. Prior to attending the 1974 UN Population Conference, Canadian officials were already planning an immigration and population review. They made no mention of this or the upcoming Green Paper at said conference. The stifling of debate along with clandestine population targets run counter to Hawkins’ own narrative that the Canadian government was transparent during this period.
INCREASE: 10.7% DECREASE: 42.8% SAME LEVEL: 46.5%
YES: 29.9% NO: 70.1%
*Thirteen years after racial restrictions were lifted, and amid the furor of multicultural rhetoric, 30% of Canadians still supported a discriminatory policy.
SHOULD BE LARGER: 27.1% RIGHT SIZE: 72.9%
The Special Joint Committee put forth sixty-five recommendations following the Green Paper hearings, with sixty of them ultimately accepted by parliament. This piece of legislation replaced the previous Act of 1952 and built on the message of anti-racism set forth by the regulations of 1962 and 1967.
The final report of the hearings was received well by the government and pro-immigration groups. The press, however, failed to comment on the report, so the Canadian public heard little of it. Why was the result of something intended for popular input left unannounced?
In her time, Hawkins singled out the Jewish community, saying it had “exercised pressure in its own areas of concern in immigration in a very individual and successful way”. This was orchestrated by making direct approaches to senior officials in the department and, on important issues, to the Minister or other members of the Cabinet.
During the mid-20th century Canadian politicians increasingly defined our nation based on the identities of outsiders. It was this period wherein the eventual replacing of old stock citizens with third world immigrants was engineered, something Canadians were generally unaware of, and had expressed strong disapproval of whenever consulted, in the myriad of variations the question was put forward. Systemic apathy by most politicians was taken advantage of by ideologically possessed lawmakers, whom some may presume were, in their own minds, acting in the People’s best interest. Even if this were true, they did constituents a disservice by failing to inform them of the challenges which required an overhaul of immigration management. When they had the opportunity to actively seek outside assessment, it was special interest and/or ethnic groups.
Canada As We Know It
Up until the 1960’s Canada had an explicitly exclusionary immigration policy on paper, yet the groundwork for ethnic replacement was laid in the post-War era in spirit. The King government yielded to international pressure from the UN and turned to softer language when trying to keep out groups such as the Chinese. Activist bureaucrats in the St-Laurent era poked holes in “racist” decision-making, allowing select groups of non-Whites to enter Canada. It took a true anti-racist in the form of Diefenbaker to allow the elimination of racial restrictions despite being labeled a nationalist. We can see in this period what happens when that word “nationalist” is separated from “White,” and what powers are granted the state bureaucracy once identity is not made explicit.
Pierre Trudeau, with the new Immigration Act, oversaw the final turn towards mass influxes of third-worlders into our country. With the proliferation of immigrants and a new-stock of Canadians, the opinion polls which clearly indicated the majority did not desire this change have obviously tilted towards broad acceptance, which was always the intended consequence. Those who believed this transition was inevitable understood that it was only a matter of time until their transparency could be unveiled in victory.
One sees now that the government and media actively lied to the populace, claiming immigration would not fundamentally alter the makeup of the country. While the horrors of mass migration rain down upon us in 2023, politicians simply wave off concerns with denigratory assertions that our predecessors voted themselves into the situation. This is an abject falsehood, and the myth of Canada’s colossal welcome sign is simply a retcon.
Many Canadians, patriotic to their core and possessing long memories, can likely call back to a time when this was assumed. Many Baby Boomers can point to powerful and relatively recent demarcations in the nation’s identity, however once that generation itself passes into history, we will have radically less stock from which to pull these recollections from. Time is now of the essence to reengage what we can with this fading demographic before mythology supplants history entirely.
- 1.Evans PA. The Least Possible Fuss and Publicity: The Politics of Immigration in Postwar Canada, 1945-1967. . McGill-Queen’s University Press; 2021.
- 2.Schwartz MA. Public Opinion and Canadian Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1967.
- 3.Duchesne R. Canada in Decay: Mass Immigration, Diversity, and the Ethnocide of Euro-Canadians. 2nd ed. Black House Publishing; 2018.
- 4.English J. Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau 1968-2000. Penguin Random House Vintage Canada; 2010.
- 5.Smith D. Rogue Tory: The Life and Legend of John G. Diefenbaker. Macfarlane Walter & Ross; 1995.
- 6.Hawkins F. Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared. McGill Queen’s University Press,; 1989.
- 7.Hawkins F. Canada and Immigration: Public Policy and Public Concern. 2nd ed. McGill Queen’s University Press; 1988.
Bro. This is really good work and research. I stumbled on a blood satellite dimes video https://rumble.com/v3ess14-the-black-horse-interview-on-laurentian-elites-and-canadian-politics-blood-.html I was looking for info on something new to me the Laurentian Elite on rumble. Thats what i found. In my experience if something isn’t so well known or worse suppressed theres always some real substance to it… As its likely by design. Although the video had several link in the description it hasn’t really got the attention it deserves. Much like this article. I am Canadian. But now were learning about things that should come as no surprise that Canada isn’t a country it’s a corporation. Maritime law yadda yadda. Big learning curve for me. I’ll be checking out more of your stuff and passing it along to my buddies. Thank you for contributing to my education. Learning a lot about the Jewish influence and the white genocide lately. Never took it that seriously. Real eyes realize real lies cheers