Jaeha Jang, Contributing Photographer

Students and faculty gathered on Thursday for a lunch conversation with Marta Morgan, a former Canadian deputy minister of foreign affairs, and Mireille Paquet, an immigration scholar at the University of Concordia.

Topics of conversation included Canada’s immigration history, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration policies and the post-COVID shift in the Canadian public’s view on immigration. Brendan Shanahan, a history professor whose expertise includes Canadian immigration history, moderated the conversation.

“One of the takeaway points I learned from this particular event is the continued importance of the U.S.-Canadian relationship to both developments related to immigration and beyond to both of our societies, the importance of treating that and fostering that relationship,” Shanahan said in a phone interview after the event.

Shanahan began the conversation with a slideshow that outlined the history of immigration to Canada. According to him, after both conservative and liberal governments repealed “overt and racist discriminatory policies” in the 1960s, immigration from various regions made Canada a multicultural nation and nearly doubled its population, despite declining birth rates.

The Canadian public has shown declining support for immigration “more or less in the past couple years,” Shanahan said. He then asked Morgan and Paquet how the trend relates to broader developments and what it means in relation to the U.S.-Canada relationship.

According to Paquet, three trends over the past decade contributed to Canada’s shifting view on immigration: the consolidation of policymaking power in the executive branch, the polarization of Canadian parties and the loss of Canada’s sense of insulation in relation to other countries’ immigration policies. 

Paquet also said that it’s important to recognize that national immigration policy views migrants as resources. She clarified that she does “not think that people are resources.”

According to Morgan, following the Syrian refugee crisis, Trudeau’s government put forth an immigration policy based on “optimism, humanitarianism and growth.” She served as the deputy minister of immigration, citizenship and refugees Canada from 2016 to 2019 and as the deputy minister of foreign affairs from 2019 to 2022, both under Trudeau’s term.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, Morgan said, a significant increase in immigration and the number of temporary workers threatened the Canadian sense of scarcity, contributing to the idea that immigration has “gone too far” and began to affect other areas, such as the cost of living. Trudeau’s government subsequently shifted immigration policy, she said.

During the question-and-answer period, panelists turned attention to the relationship between American and Canadian politics. 

While many Americans talked about moving to Canada during President Donald Trump’s first administration, Morgan said, Canada didn’t see a significant increase in immigration from the United States. “Salaries are lower and taxes are higher” in Canada, Paquet noted.

Morgan said, however, that the University of Toronto has “succeeded in recruiting some pretty stellar U.S. academics from Yale, including Timothy Snyder.” Snyder, who joined Yale’s faculty in 2001, left Yale to take up a position at the University of Toronto beginning in fall 2025.

History professor Jay Gitlin, who is the director of Yale’s committee on Canadian studies, said in an interview that Thursday’s discussion was valuable because immigration is a “huge issue” in the United States and what affects the United States affects Canada.

“Immigration, we all know, is becoming increasingly a global issue, so it’s natural, and we need to hear more perspectives from a different country,” Gitlin said. “So I think it’s very important for Americans to pay attention to other perspectives, and Canada is very accessible.”

Shanahan said it was valuable to hear experienced perspectives from “both practitioner and analyst” and that Morgan and Paquet’s conversation “gelled so well.” 

Vanessa McLennan MED ’27, who said she is from British Columbia, Canada, said she has noticed a negative turn in Canadian discourse about immigration over the past few years. She said it was interesting to hear about the origin of this change.

Thursday’s lunch conversation was the first of three guest events this semester — in a series promoted as “Canadian Voices” –––  hosted by the Macmillan Center’s Committee on Canadian Studies. 

Trudeau served as Canada’s prime minister from 2015 to 2025.