The conservative party has yet again gained support of the liberal opposition on an issue the parties were not able to agree upon in the past. This time the issue is immigration reform. Liberals are afraid of provoking an untimely election and are compelled to agree with proposals of the Harper government, in spite of publicly condemning them.

The immigration reform empowers the Minister of Immigration to be more selective and give preference to certain categories of immigrants as well as issue instruction on specific cases. Opponents of this bill claim that these changes would lead to discriminative practices. It is interesting to note that the opposition does not mention the interests of Canada in light of these changes. Meanwhile, the main idea behind the reform is allowing the Minister of Immigration to select classes of immigrants that correspond with the needs of the country. It is not surprising that there is a degree of apprehension based on increased authority of the Minister; if the Minister of Immigration is able to reduce certain categories of immigrants that become an unnecessary burden to the economy but are at the same time of interest to some political parties then those political parties will lose the support of corresponding electorate. The consequences of this reform will be clear in the future.

Recently, Statistics Canada published a report stating that success of new immigrants is affected by a multitude of factors; country of origin is listed as one of the more significant factors. It is interesting to note that this statement is not supported by concrete data that enables the reader to determine which countries bear more adaptable and successful immigrants and why. For now these questions remain unanswered.