Speaking notes for the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Announcement related to open work permits

Delivered Friday, December 2, 2022, in Edmonton, Alberta

Thank you so much. Look, thank you, Randy, and thank you, everyone who has taken the time to join us today. It’s good to be back in Alberta. We spent the last couple of days here. And, for those of you who may not be aware, this is a province I called home for about 5 years, before I got into politics.

Thank you for the land acknowledgement as well. You mentioned that Canada is a country that’s been built on immigration. If it weren’t for the support of Indigenous Peoples who’ve called these lands home since time immemorial, the earliest settlers would not have succeeded in developing communities that so many of us now call home. Immigration is not something that we do in Canada—it’s who we are. It’s who we’ve always been. My family happened to arrive about 250 years ago, not 10 to 15 minutes from where I live today, on a vessel that came from Scotland to Nova Scotia. And, those stories of people coming for economic reasons, coming for humanitarian reasons, coming to be with loved ones, have helped build the country that we know and love so much today.