How Canada Got Immigration Right, and Then Wrong with Tony Keller

In the first of three 2025 McGill Max Bell Lectures, Tony Keller explores how Canada’s unique immigration history made modern Canada. This country has always wanted immigrants, but for most of history it chose them based not on education and ability, but race and national origin. Beginning in the 1960s, however, Canada revolutionized immigration, opening it to anyone from anywhere without discrimination, putting an increasing emphasis on skilled arrivals, and taking in relatively more immigrants than most developed countries, all of which was popular with Canadians.

How did Canada achieve this success? And what went wrong after 2015?

The lecture will be followed by a discussion hosted by Martha Hall Findlay, Director of the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

Tony Keller is a columnist with The Globe and Mail. Over a career of more than 30 years, he has been editorials editor and member of the editorial board for The Globe, editor of The Financial Post Magazine, managing editor of Maclean’s, and a news anchor at BNN (now BNN-Bloomberg). Born and raised in Montreal, he is a graduate of Duke University and Yale Law School. He won Canada’s National Newspaper Award for editorial writing in 2016.

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