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Note: This conversation was recorded on February 13, 2025. Some policy announcements, including changes to settlement sector funding, have been made since the recording. The themes and principles discussed remain relevant.
Jonathan Oldman is the CEO of Immigrant Services Society of BC (ISSofBC). Together with thousands of newcomers each year, and in partnership with a diverse range of local communities, ISSofBC has fostered belonging, inclusion, and success for over 50 years – building a stronger Canada for all. He is also a founder member of The Canada We Believe In coalition, a group of 200 civil society and business / labour groups calling for a renewed and positive vision for Canadian immigration.
Jonathan is an immigrant himself, born in the UK before coming to Canada as a temporary foreign worker, permanent resident, and finally, as a citizen.
In his episode, Jonathan and I chat about:
How social media accentuates the extremes and makes it nearly impossible to reach the people in the middle
Why calling a system "broken" is a pejorative that shuts down problem-solving
Why immigration success should be measured through population goals, skills gaps, newcomer investment, humanitarian work, and the country's global brand, not just annual arrival numbers
What Canada stands to gain if it gets immigration right over the next decade, and what it stands to lose if it doesn't
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Chapters
0:00 We have to attract people still
0:36 Intro
8:43 Immigration concerns come from across the community
12:42 Scapegoating immigrants is a familiar historical pattern
14:23 The overcrowded bus analogy
25:22 Why the stretch audience matters most
31:05 Post-pandemic overcorrection and the course correction
40:29 Why leaders across sectors want a bigger conversation
46:34 Change only moves as fast as the speed of trust
51:12 The immigration system isn't broken.
55:45 How should we actually measure immigration success?
59:45 If Canada gets this right, what does the next decade look like?
1:02:52 Outro
Some takeaways
If you have an overcrowded bus route, you increase the capacity of your transit system, not ban passengers. We need to adopt a similar heuristic when planning or having the Canadian immigration planning conversation. The question isn't whether we need people. It's whether we'll build the infrastructure to support them. For newcomers navigating a new country, the infrastructure they land in shapes their entire immigration journey.
The immigration system isn't broken. A broken system is one that's in total disarray, in pieces. Every day, settlement workers provide newcomer support by helping people find homes, jobs, language skills, networks, and belonging. That's not a broken system, it's one that's under strain and needs to be improved or optimized. The word "broken" is a pejorative that shuts down problem-solving and opens the door to dismantling. And the people most eager to use it are often the least interested in repairing it.
We need to measure immigration by what it builds, not just how many people arrive. Jonathan wants immigration success measured through skills gaps filled, investment brought in, population strategy, humanitarian contribution, and Canada's global reputation. Not just total arrivals and population rates. He draws a parallel to how we're slowly realizing GDP alone doesn't capture a country's real wealth and wants the same rethinking applied to how we measure immigration success. If we measured immigration through those lenses, the public conversation would probably change from "did we bring in too many" to "are we building the country we want to be." That could help change how we think about the Canadian immigrant experience.
We need to spend more time talking to the stretch audience. Jonathan splits public opinion into three groups: intuitive supporters, implacable opponents, and the bigger uncertain middle. The middle fundamentally understands immigration's importance but is being pulled by louder voices. The people who care most about immigration are posting on LinkedIn for the converted or fighting on X with the immovable. Neither reaches the stretch audience. The newcomer challenges that concern the middle group are real. Jonathan says settlement organizations and advocates need to spend far more time thinking about how to engage that middle group in communities, through direct conversation, through explaining the system, and through listening to their concerns.
Unless you're indigenous, every Canadian has a relationship to immigration somewhere in their history. Jonathan's family was in the UK for only three or four generations. Before that, they were refugees from Eastern Europe, fleeing religious persecution. Most of us have lost touch with that reality. And losing touch with our own immigrant stories makes it easier to view current newcomers as something separate from ourselves. The work of reconnecting Canadians to their own immigration histories, not as a guilt exercise but as a fact of Canadian identity, might be one of the most underused tools in rebuilding public support. Cultural diversity in Canada isn't a recent experiment but one on which the foundation of this beautiful country has always stood on.
Links
Where to find Jonathan:
The Newcomers resources:
Read the piece on how language is choosing our immigration policies
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