OTTAWA - With nearly one million job vacancies across the country, Canada is turning more squarely towards foreigners to address its labour shortage and has set record-breaking immigration targets for the coming three years.

Canada’s immigration minister Sean Fraser announced the new policy on Tuesday.

It aims to attract a total of 1.45 million immigrants between 2023 and 2025.

The new policy comes as the country hit another demographic milestone last week, when the census agency announced that more than one in five Canadians is an immigrant.

The attitude of Canada’s government towards immigration is a stark departure from those of governments in Western countries such as Sweden and Italy.

Newly elected parties in those countries are seeking to curtail immigration and are blaming immigrants for crime and disorder.

“Look, folks, it’s simple to me: Canada needs more people,” Mr Fraser said during a news conference near Toronto on Tuesday. “Canadians understand the need to continue to grow our population if we’re going to meet the needs of the labour force, if we’re going to rebalance a worrying demographic trend, and if we’re going to continue to reunite families.”

Some of the concerning trends, Mr Fraser added, include an ageing population and a looming wave of retirements.

Census data released in April showed that the number of people nearing retirement in Canada is at a record high.

“If we don’t do something to correct this demographic trend, the conversation we’re going to have 10 or 15 years from now won’t be about labour shortages,” Mr Fraser said. “It’s going to be about whether we have the economic capacity to continue to fund schools and hospitals and public services that I think we, too often, take for granted.”

Canada has long pursued a strategy of recruiting immigrants to make up for its ageing native-born population and low birthrate, a strategy that has broad public support.

The nation shows preference to immigrants who are skilled workers in fields where the country has critical labour shortages – including healthcare, manufacturing, engineering and the trades.

In a recent survey by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, a non-profit polling firm, 58 per cent of people contacted said they supported more immigration, and 69 per cent of respondents disagreed when asked if Canada was taking in too many immigrants.

Still, about half of those surveyed also believed that newcomers were “not adopting Canadian values”, suggesting public support could become more volatile.

The government is aiming to attract 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025, according to its Immigration Levels Plan.

The number of immigrants sought for 2025 represents a 23 per cent increase from Canada’s latest record of accepting 405,000 newcomers last year.

While travel restrictions during the pandemic temporarily slowed immigration, Canada continues to be the fastest growing country in the Group of Seven major industrialised nations, according to census data collected last spring.

New data published last week by the national census agency revealed that 23 per cent of Canada’s population are immigrants, the highest proportion since Confederation in 1867, when the first four provinces unified to form Canada.

Statistics Canada is projecting that in about two decades, immigrants could make up 29 per cent to 34 per cent of the population if present-day immigration patterns continue, and if Canada’s birthrate falls below what is necessary to maintain the current population.

Since the early 1990s, Canada has maintained high immigration, attracting an average of about 235,000 newcomers per year, according to 2016 census data. NYTIMES