Could a piece of the pie be divided equally?
By Vincent Nguyen | May 16, 2025 10:39am PST
Immigration has been a hot topic for a lot of Canadians in recent years. Many have questioned and blamed former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for what Canada is today, but with his resignation and now a new leader and voice at the helm, Harvard magna cum laude Mark Carney, along with a mostly new cabinet team under him, I thought it’d be a good time to discuss what’s been on my mind lately with regards to immigration in Canada.
Coming from someone who lives day-to-day in this wonderful country and what I see locally as a Canadian, born and raised in Vancouver, I hope I can enlighten someone out there as to why this topic of immigration and demographics (that comes along with it) has gotten me concerned recently for I would say over the past few years and how I think it should be fixed.
On May 2nd 2025, PM Mark Carney held his first press conference after a historic election win (with a voter turnout rate that hasn’t been seen in the last 30 years). In his introductory remarks he reiterated his stance as a strong leader for the Canadian people by saying, “As I’ve been clear from day one of my leadership campaign in January, I’m in politics to do big things, not to be something.” […] “I will work relentlessly to fill that trust.”
Carney then went on to briefly talk about immigration and what his plans will be by saying, “We will return our immigration to sustainable levels by capping the total number of temporary workers and international students at less than 5% of Canada’s population by the end of 2027.” And then continued by adding, “At the same time, we will work to attract the best talent in the world to build our economy. Canada has what everyone wants. We’re a confident nation that celebrates our diversity, that believes in and practices free speech, that respects the rule of law, that has a vibrant democracy.” (Note the bold texts)
With that said, capping the total number of immigrants for Canada is certainly a good start, but in my opinion it’s still not enough.
So what more could be done?
Okay, I want you to imagine somebody, an imaginery person if you want, travelling to a core Anglosphere country for the first time (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States), where the population in these countries are expected to be ethnically diverse, at least in the metropolitan areas or major cities of these countries. Now, once this person arrives in the country and takes a stroll around the city, they begin to notice that something is a little off, that there only seems to be people from one ethnic group around and the majority of them are foreign-born (non-natives).
What are the odds that this person (or anyone else in this situation) might be thinking to themselves ‘Am I really in AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US or did I hop onto the wrong plane?’
This is definitely true for many metropolitan cities in Canada at the moment, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks this way (in regards to the imaginary traveller).
I know I speak for a lot of Canadians by saying that it’s almost like we despise how there are many cities in Canada containing one ethnic group that vastly outnumbers every other group by a wide margin.
You look at cities like Brampton in Ontario (~52% South Asians), or both Surrey and Richmond in British Columbia (~38% South Asians) (~65% East/Southeast Asians or ‘Asians’), and it’s just something that can’t be ignored or very hard not to think about. We could do a lot better as a country and in our immigration system.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this commercial from Expedia (video below), which is a popular platform that lets you book flights and accommodations; But after watching it, I couldn’t help but to think how funny it’d be if these Japanese women went to Nashville only to realize that everyone in that dance hall was Chinese or Punjabi, or even more strange if the majority of the people in the state of Tennessee were Chinese or Punjabis.
My point is that there’s a level of normality that is naturally expected when you travel somewhere, and when you go to a place like Nashville (or Tennessee as a whole), it’s just expected that you’ll see a good sizeable amount of the White population living there to be dressed in country-inspired fashion with those iconic looking cowboy boots and hats.
The same thing should be expected of Canada with respect to diversity (instead of the country-inspired fashion in Nashville).
As a matter of fact, based on a lot of comments I’ve seen through various social media platforms recently, many Canadians (and even tourists) share the same sentiment on the disparity of overpopulation of ethnic groups.
I remember a while back I saw a couple posts on social media that, let’s just say consisted of some critical comments about both my hometown of Vancouver and Canada as a whole.
The first one was on Instagram, where an American woman travelled to Vancouver for vacation, and after her trip she made a comparison about how Vancouver was very similar to Seattle except with more Asians, which is true (~38% are Asian).
Here’s another one below with an actual link that I was able to find. It was on TikTok with highlighted captions in Spanish that read, “When you live in Vancouver and sometimes you don’t know if you’re really in Canada, or if you’re in China or India” inferring the lack of diversity. There’s also a few comments in this specific post that mentions how Toronto is similar as well.
Overall, these posts that you see above and others like it couldn’t be further from the truth and the sentiments are widespread across this country.
As an Asian-Canadian, born and raised, I don’t even look at posts like these as being racist because the word racist implies that there’s hatred to a certain race, which isn’t the intention here. I think people in general just have a level of expectation of what places should be like or is supposed to be, which is understandable, fair, and I fully agree 100%.
My personal view on this is that I wouldn’t like it myself if I had to move and live within a community or city where the majority was overly populated with Asians because I’d feel as though people of other ethnic groups would get sick and tired of seeing so many of us around, so unless we’re talking about living abroad somewhere in Asia, then of course it’s to be expected and normal, but anywhere else in countries like the core Anglosphere countries, I’d just rather see a reasonable amount of Asians around but not an overwhelming amount, or at the very least, I wouldn’t mind being the token Asian guy (haha).
Maybe I’m ignorant in regards to this, but I never understood how immigrants would just move to a new country to live in a community or city with many of their own kinds around (unless they’re a refugee without any other options).
Even here in my hometown, I rather be living and working in communities where my neighbours’ and coworkers’ bloodlines and ancestries are from different continents of the world. That no race really stands out from the rest because that’s what I believe Canada should represent — diversity.
To further prove my point that many Canadians share the same sentiments, here’s another post on Reddit (below) of a video that infamously went viral in Canada, where a lady expressed her frustrations at a Walmart in Brampton Ontario for not having much diversity. She claims that this Walmart in particular is “only hiring Punjabis (Indians)” and then points at all of the other Walmart employees in her vicinity and says, “Look at how many Punjabis are working here”. It certainly raises the question and makes one wonder why they’re only hiring one set group of people rather than having a diversified workforce.
And it’s not just happening in this particular Walmart, but in many locations across Canada as well, along with other establishments like Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, A&W, Best Buy and plenty others that are known for this shady hiring practice.
Take a look at the comment section and you can see that diversity is clearly an issue in Canada, and sadly the cause of it has a lot to do with the immigration system.
With one user saying, “This is true. I work at one [Walmart] in Calgary and 80 or maybe 90% of people that work there are from India. They even hired an international student that could not communicate well in english as department manager and yet there were people there that had worked for 10 years and they’re not getting promoted.”
And another saying, “Tim Hortons in Vaughan. I’m mix Jamaican and Greek. I applied so many times. Never once did they check my application even though I worked in fast food before. A friend of mine who worked at that Tim Hortons who is South Asian and left told me their people only hire their friends and family’s friends to work. Purposely not hiring others. Nobody can complain or else we are called racist. (Now I have a different job) but let’s not act like this doesn’t happen”
Last but not least, “It’s happening with accounting jobs as well. The funny thing is most of these Indians actually buy their degree from back home. Use that to say they have a degree to get points in the Canadian system come here go to a one year college program and now work at half the pay. Canada is f***ed up.”
Again, as someone born and raised in Canada, I’ve seen and experienced enough to know that something has to be done about our immigration system and diversity to prevent the lopsidedness from continuing.
Peace Bridge Border Canada & US, Buffalo and Fort Erie
I think I can speak for many of the people born and raised in the other core Anglosphere countries as well, that although immigration is very important for society, the process to allow immigrants into a country really needs to be looked at consistently and more vigilantly in order to prevent major issues from arising.
Our immigration system in Canada specifically needs to be revised and updated to prevent exploitation and abuse like it has been so far in the past where immigrants from India were misusing visitor’s visas and coming into Canada in record numbers for the purposes of “claiming asylum or finding their way into the U.S.” according to the article, among other schemes. And it’s not just immigrants from India that are doing this, it’s just that in recent years a massive influx of people coming from India has garnered a lot of attention and criticism from Canadians.
Here’s another article about Filipinos coming into Canada through a shady ‘pyramid scheme’, where migrant workers paid thousands of dollars to secure a job in Canada, but were instead working for an agency with many workplace violations to recruit other foreign workers.
At the moment, our immigration system is somewhat of a ‘free-for-all’ where basically an influx of people from one region (a country or proximity countries within a continent) can take advantage of it and would be able to get into Canada illegally via forged foreign documents or other shady methods, leaving out people from other countries of other continents.
What our immigration system really needs is an implementation of a new quota system on top of the current points-based system that was introduced 50+ years ago in 1967. 50+ years ago! It’s time for a major ‘software update’. We’d not only be getting legit and skilled people into Canada with the addition of this new quota, but there would also be an even playing field in terms of getting immigrants from across different countries of different continents of the world rather than only getting those [in masses] from one country or continent. It would be a dual-layered approach to better vet immigrants, and it would certainly keep up with our times and better ensure our diversity.
Here’s how I think the vetting process should be done, but keep in mind my idea is only as good as anyone else’s as I’m not an expert on this by any means:
First and foremost, the federal government should start with a ‘quota phase’ as the first step in a two-step filtering process and look at all of the ethnic groups that we currently have in large quantities of and which ones we have very few of from each country and continent that are living in Canada, and do the same in each province, as well as in each metropolitan area/cities of each province.
Based on these numbers, they can determine which outside countries/continents we should be letting in more of and which ones we should be letting in less of with heavier restrictions; and every year (or several years) it would be adjusted accordingly based on the percentages that has been collected from the data.
For example, in Canada we have a huge population of immigrants from India, the Philippines, and China (in fact they are the top three countries of origin for immigrants moving to Canada), so the number of immigrants coming into Canada from these three countries and other countries within the same continent as them would be restricted to a much lower number as opposed to other countries from other continents for that respectable year or for the foreseeable years, until we get to a point where the number of ethnic compositions more or less breaks even across the board in the future.
Once this new quota phase is done, the second phase with the points-based system that already exist would kick in (age, work experience, language proficiency, and education, along with other new countermeasures to prevent exploitation).
And that’s how the process should work to vet immigrants. Basically, 1) quota phase, then 2) points-based phase, a simple two-step filtering process. This system would really improve our diversity and be better for the people around the world who want to come to Canada.
For clarification, I want to reiterate that Canada shouldn’t be completely restricting any countries like the three mentioned (India, the Philippines, and China), or any proximity countries in the same continent as them, or any other in the future that we might have a large population of, as it would be a cause for discrimination, instead we’d just be drastically decreasing the amount of immigrants allowed from these/certain countries and countries within the same continents on a per year (or multi-year) basis to give other countries in other continents an equal chance at improving our diversity.
To conclude, I think Canada, especially on the federal side of things, have to do a much better job not only to mandate diversity and take action, but also maintain it and keep it in check with vigilant attentiveness; and not resting on our laurels every year to ensure no specific country or continent has an advantage over another. That no specific country can game the system to be able to fall through the cracks.
It sort of reminds me of 9/11 or any other major catastrophe in the world. Don’t treat any process like it’s going to be okay or never going to happen because once something catastrophic does happen, the damage will already be done and it’ll be difficult or impossible to recover and heal those wounds.
In my opinion, Canada is currently in the pre-recovery stages (or even further back) of this immigration mess, but I have some faith now that Carney is leading the way.
Vince 
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