The 1967 Points Reform

The 1966 White Paper on Immigration

Before explaining how the points reform came to be, it is important to first explain what a white paper is as it played a major role. A white paper is a government policy document that sets out a problem, proposes options, and recommends a course of action. Essentially, it is a formal statement of intent and a basis for public and parliamentary discussion rather than a law itself.

With this context, the 1966 White Paper on Immigration was tabled in Parliament on 14 October 1966 by Jean Marchand, then Minister of Manpower and Immigration in the Lester B. Pearson Liberal government.[1] It argued that Canada should shift from subjective, nationality-based selection toward an objective, skills-and-need-based system. The paper ultimately recommended that immigration selection be more closely tied to the country’s economic and labour needs and proposed clearer criteria for admission (i.e. education, skills, employment prospects, and language ability).[2] This would happen while tightening some informal routes that had admitted unskilled labour. In sum, the White Paper laid out the policy framework that made a formal points system both plausible and politically defensible.[3]

Although the White Paper itself did not create new law, it triggered a sustained period of parliamentary scrutiny, committee review, and public debate that shaped the final regulatory response. [4] As a result, legislators used the White Paper on Immigration as the basis for drafting the 1967 Immigration Regulations, which incorporated many of its core recommendations into a points-oriented system for evaluating applicants.[5] It also, to a degree, set up a standard of accountability and transparency where members of opposing parties could push that government to propose real legislation. This push was notably done in this period by the New Democratic Party of Canada.[6] The proposals were contested as critics warned that prioritizing economic criteria could undermine family reunification and humanitarian commitments, while supporters argued the reforms would reduce overt discrimination by removing nationality as an explicit selection factor.[7]

Thus, the 1966 White Paper acted as the catalyst for the 1967 reforms and continued to shape debates about Canadian immigration, especially over fairness, family reunification, and whether admissions should serve social or economic goals.[8]

The New System

The 1967 reforms did not emerge as bureaucratic but rather as the culmination of a deliberate effort to replace subjective, nationality-based selection with a supposedly neutral, skill-and-need-oriented mechanism.[9] Additionally, the reforms translated the White Paper’s arguments about labour-market alignment into concrete administrative instruments that could be justified politically and defended administratively.[10] That translation mattered because by converting broad policy goals into a set of measurable criteria, the government aimed to reduce the space of prominent bias discretion that had permitted nationality and race to shape admissions.[11]

Furthermore, implementation relied on the executive’s regulatory power rather than new primary legislation, a choice with important consequences for both accountability and practice.[12] Rather than wait for a new Act of Parliament, the Pearson government used Order-in-Council authority to amend the Immigration Regulations (P.C. 1967-1616), delegating the detailed mechanics to the Department of Manpower and Immigration.[13] That decision allowed relatively rapid rollout but also left the detailed architecture of selection (i.e. what counts, how much it counts, and who assesses it) within the hands of the bureaucracy. The practical effect of that delegation was twofold. First, it made the points rules administratively enforceable across Canada’s missions and ports of entry, which was evidently important as the change would not be effective without mass acceptance.[14] Secondly, it preserved room for officials to exercise bounded discretion, particularly over borderline or exceptional cases, so the reform was never a pure mathematical decision.[15]

At the core of the reform was a routinized scoring apparatus (i.e. the “Norms of Assessment”) that re-ordered selection factors into a summative score. The Regulations set out specific assessment factors (i.e. education and training, occupational skill and labour demand, arranged employment, age, language ability in English and/or French, relatives in Canada, destination and local opportunities, and personal character) and required officers to convert documentary claims into points against those headings, with applicants who met the pass mark deemed eligible as independent immigrants.[16] This system made the standards transparent, allowed government spokespeople to claim the removal of explicit nationality criteria, and created a defensible metric for arguing that admissions served national economic objectives rather than ethnic preference. Yet the scoring system also embodied choices (i.e. how many points for which factor, what counts as “arranged employment,” how to verify language proficiency etc.) that reproduced substantive policy judgments under a veneer of objectivity.[17]

Importantly, the when and where of the reform reinforced its national reach and immediate prominence. The Order-in-Council is dated 16 August 1967 and was put into administrative effect that autumn, changing how overseas visa officers and in-country caseworkers evaluated applicants from October 1967 onward.[18] Because the change operated through the federal regulations it applied across Canada’s foreign missions and domestic ports of entry, effectively standardizing selection practice nationwide.[19] That timeline is important as regulatory change implemented quickly after the White Paper meant that the rhetoric of “ending discrimination” became embedded in day-to-day casework at exactly the moment Canada was poised to receive new waves of applicants from previously under-represented regions.

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[1] Daniel Meister et al., “White Paper on Immigration, 1966,” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, accessed August 8, 2025, https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/white-paper-on-immigration-1966#:~:text=The%20White%20Paper%20on%20Immigration%20was%20tabled%20in%20Parliament%20in,and%20long%2Dterm%20economic%20interests.

[2] Meister et al., “White Paper on Immigration, 1966.”

[3] Robert Norman Thompson et al., “IMMIGRATION: INQUIRY AS TO PRODUCTION OF WHITE PAPER,” On the orders of the day:, Lipad, October 16, 1966, https://www.lipad.ca/full/1966/10/13/3/#2438939.

[4] Thompson et al., “IMMIGRATION: INQUIRY AS TO PRODUCTION OF WHITE PAPER.”

[5] Meister et al., “Heterosexism in Canadian Immigration Policy, 1952-1978.”

[6] Robert Norman Thompson et al., “IMMIGRATION: TABLING OF WHITE PAPER ON GOVERNMENT POLICY,” Tabling, Lipad, October 14, 1966, https://www.lipad.ca/full/1966/10/14/1/.

[7] Thompson et al., “IMMIGRATION: INQUIRY AS TO PRODUCTION OF WHITE PAPER.”

[8] Meister et al., “White Paper on Immigration, 1966.”

[9] 3 Chang. Immigr. Pattern Emergence Visible Minor., “Department of Justice Canada: Cultural Diversity in Canada: The Social Construction of Racial Difference.”

[10] Meister et al., “Heterosexism in Canadian Immigration Policy, 1952-1978.”

[11] Meister et al., “Heterosexism in Canadian Immigration Policy, 1952-1978.”

[12] Roland Michener, Immigration Act, Immigration Regulations, Part 1, Amended, nos. RG2-A-1-a, with Jean Marchand, Volume 2380 (Library and Archives Canada, 1967), Library and Archives Canada.

[13] Michener, Immigration Act, Immigration Regulations, Part 1, Amended.

[14] Meister et al., “Heterosexism in Canadian Immigration Policy, 1952-1978.”

[15] Jean Marchand et al., “MANPOWER AND IMMIGRATION COUNCIL: PROVISION FOR APPOINTMENT OF MEMBERS, ADVISORY BOARDS, ETC.,” September 25, 1967, https://www.lipad.ca/full/1967/09/25/22/#2502344.

[16] Michener, Immigration Act, Immigration Regulations, Part 1, Amended.

[17] Marchand et al., “MANPOWER AND IMMIGRATION COUNCIL: PROVISION FOR APPOINTMENT OF MEMBERS, ADVISORY BOARDS, ETC.”

[18] Marchand et al., “MANPOWER AND IMMIGRATION COUNCIL: PROVISION FOR APPOINTMENT OF MEMBERS, ADVISORY BOARDS, ETC.”

[19] 3 Chang. Immigr. Pattern Emergence Visible Minor., “Department of Justice Canada: Cultural Diversity in Canada: The Social Construction of Racial Difference.”