The government is expected to announce near-record immigration levels for 2006 on Friday, along with a new immigration policy that enables the minister to impose a cap on applications.

Government sources told the Canadian Press that 429,000 newcomers came to Canada last year, the highest total since 1911. The sources said that includes 251,000 permanent residents, as well as temporary workers and foreign students.

The new legislation would give the immigration minister the authority to cap applications if the waitlist becomes too long.

"It would give the minister the authority to manage the size of the backlog and set limits," Immigration Minister Diane Finley said. "It takes three to six years for someone to even get their application looked at — let alone processed."

Immigration wait times have surged more than 20 per cent since 2004, according to statistics released by the opposition. The current backlog includes more than 800,000 prospective immigrants.

Finley blamed the previous Liberal government for allowing waiting lists to grow more than 15-fold since 1993.

"That's not fair to [immigrants], it's not fair to their families, and it's not fair to the employers that want to hire them. We have to fix that. It's not going to be fixed overnight," she said.

The legislative change is among a host of other recent reforms designed to reduce wait times.

One is creating teams who can be transferred to process files from countries or immigration categories where the wait is longest.

Another is allowing Canadian officials stationed abroad in quieter posts to process paperwork filed in immigration hot spots.

The government is also creating a new category of immigrant — the Canadian Experience Class. Under that category, temporary residents such as highly-skilled workers and foreign students would be allowed to remain in Canada post-graduation while they apply for permanent residence.

The idea, Finley said, is to keep the best and brightest from giving up and heading elsewhere while stuck on Canadian wait lists.

Opposition parties denounce cap plans

But the opposition zeroed in on the legislative change that would allow the government to cap applications.

With Canada facing a declining birth rate, an aging population, and labour shortages, they suggested the government should hire more immigration staff instead of reducing applicants.

"By 2011, 100 per cent of Canada's labour force growth will come from immigration," said Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua. "Why does the minister believe that shutting the door on immigration is the answer?"

The NDP's Olivia Chow called the approach "short-sighted and wrong."

"We need to increase the target number of immigrants into the country to one per cent of the population — or 330,000 people — in order to renew our workforce and drive our economy," Chow said.

"Instead of allowing families into Canada, the Conservative government seems intent only to bring in massive numbers of temporary foreign workers who are vulnerable to mistreatment and
abuse."

Finley would not say whether she intends to use the new power to cap immigration applications, saying that the budget bills need to pass first.