Nativism Vs. the Open Door

Attitudes towards large-scale immigration from Europe varied considerably among classes and social groups in Canada, ranging from strong nativist sentiment, involving opposition to further immigration, to the "open door" view, which encouraged it. The strongest pro-immigration lobby consisted of employers in labour-intensive industries like mining, railway construction, lumbering and farming. Their need for unskilled labour dominated the shape of federal immigration policy. For example, Avery points out that railway companies demanded:

a flooding of the labour market with the type of Italians and other itinerant workers who would be hired cheaply and thus keep costs down. In short, the railway companies become the outstanding spokesmen for an open door immigration policy .... The mining and lumbering companies aided and abetted the efforts of the railway companies in seeking to keep the immigration door open. Corporate unity on this issue reflected economic interdependence.

61 On the other hand, nativist sentiment was concentrated labour unions, churches and business circles in urban areas with immigrant communities. For example, labour unions asserted that while immigration policy was ostensibly aimed at importing agricultural workers, the new immigrants were really intended as a source of cheap exploitable labour for industry. It was charged that they drifted into urban areas and crowded the labour market, giving employers an excuse to lower wages and offer poor working conditions. As well, labour spokesmen severely criticized the common employer practice of breaking strikes through importing vulnerable and misinformed immigrant workers as 'scabs'.62

For their part, churches, and middle-class elements opposed immigration for social and cultural reasons. Avery points out that:

Many Anglo-Canadians were. ..disturbed by evidence of social deviance among immigrant workers. The ethnic ghettos, which quickly sprang up in the major Canadian cities and almost all single-enterprise communities west of the Ottawa River, were increasingly thought of as a breeding ground for "filth, immorality and crime."63

Racist sentiments were frequently expressed. For example:

During the 1910 Session of the House of Commons the member for West Huron, E. L. Lewis, introduced a private members bill calling for the restriction of immigration from the area of Europe south of 44 degrees north latitude and east of 20 degrees east longitude in order to prevent Canada from becoming a "nation of organ grinders and banana sellers."64

The most potent source of anti-immigrant sentiment was to be found among businessmen in urban centres with large immigrant communities, such as Winnipeg, who feared a threat to established values institutions in the increasing numerical strength of immigrant groups. 65 Of particular concern were manifestations of immigrant radicalism. Avery observes that there were "increasing public pronouncements from prominent citizens which warned that the continual influx of European immigrants would threaten the stability of Canadian society".66
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