Which Canada should we be putting first?

When I heard about the Canada First Patriot Rally in Toronto, it struck me as hilariously misconceived. Christie Pits Park — the centre of one of the most diverse areas in Toronto and the site of a famous 1933 anti-Nazi riot — is a comical venue for protestors to air their grievances with the immigration system.

Unsurprisingly, they were outnumbered by pro-immigration counter protestors by at least 10 to one, according to Toronto Today, a local news outlet.  

But even stranger than the protest’s location was its premise. Despite their grumblings, the protestors already have most of what they want. 

The Liberal party — in its late-Trudeau and early-Carney forms — has already enacted many of the crackdowns the “Canada First” protestors chanted for. 

Blaming immigrants for rising housing prices and unemployment, protesters called for less immigration, but the Carney government has already cut rates. They plan to admit 21 per cent fewer permanent residents over the next three years compared to 2024, a massive shift in government policy after decades of expansion. 

This change in both public and government sentiment marks the collapse of a core tenet of Canada: our pro-immigration stance. 

Immigration has been a long-standing divisive issue for many countries, but until recently, Canadians had an overwhelmingly positive view of it. 

A 2018 Pew Research Center study found that, among the world’s top 10 migrant destination countries, Canada viewed immigrants as a strength more than any other country. But by 2024, almost 58 per cent of Canadians said the country accepts too many immigrants — up 31 percentage points from just two years prior.

The national souring on immigration came as the job and housing markets tightened, leaving some Canadians in precarious economic situations — all while welcoming more immigrants than we had in years. This primed an “us vs. them” mentality for some. 

Protestor Lorrianne G. told Toronto Today, “All of our Tim Hortons are no longer owned by white people.” 

But anti-immigrant sentiment affects more than Tim Horton’s; it stokes racism, hatred and violence towards individual immigrants. 

From 2020 to 2023, as the immigration consensus began to collapse, rates of police-reported hate crimes against South Asian people nearly doubled, and hate crimes against Muslims increased by over 2.5 times.

Last year, Waterloo, Ont. resident Ashwin Annamalai was harassed by a woman on the street who said “Indians are taking over Canada” and told him to “go back to India.” 

In an interview with the CBC, he said, “I’ve lived here since 2018 and just until even the end of 2023, I’ve never experienced things of this magnitude before.”

Racism like this is horrible and must be met with whole-hearted opposition, but sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring the factors that led to it will only allow more racism and violence to flourish in Canada.

The blame obviously doesn’t fall on immigrants themselves, but rather on the system’s architects: the Trudeau and Stephen Harper governments. Between the first quarter of 2006, when Harper took office, and the first quarter of 2025, when Trudeau left office, Canada added almost 5.9 million immigrants to its population.

This increase was a short-sighted economic injection, intensifying today’s housing and employment crises and the breakdown of the immigration consensus. 

But when immigration is at its best, Canada is at its best.

Immigration is both the practical and moral backbone of Canada. Immigrants have driven our economy, culture and population throughout history. A commitment to immigration affirms Canada’s commitment to acceptance, cooperation, multiculturalism and nation-building.

Canada should accept as many immigrants as possible — but that’s the key phrase: as possible. 

Canadians, both newcomers and those already here, suffer from the economic strain caused by immigration beyond our capacity. Future immigrants — and the country at large — suffer from the short-sighted pendulum swings in policy and sentiment. 

Canada will always be a country of immigrants, which is why it’s imperative we rebuild our national immigration consensus. We need lower rates of immigrants, not because it’s politically convenient, or because the immigrants aren’t white, but because building an equitable and functional system for immigrants is the core of building a functional Canada for everyone. 

While counterprotestors outnumber the protestors at Christie Pits, reactionary anti-immigrant sentiments will continue unless we build a compassionate and equitable immigration system.

We can’t put “Canada First” by rejecting the people and principles Canada is built on.