Should Canada establish free ports?

[Machjo]

Effectively what it would mean is that all of Canada's cities with a maritime port such as Vancouver, Halifax, Toronto, Montreal (yes they have ports to the Great Lakes and the Saint Laurence Seaway connecting to the Atlantic Ocean), and a few other Canadian cities would become free economic zones, so open to free trade, open migration for work, etc.

Inversely, the rest of Canada would accept no new immigration at all.

Businesses outside of any free port that need workers could just try to poach Canadian citizens from the free ports by offering them higher wages.

Businesses in the free ports would have no excuse for labour shortages since they could higher the most qualified candidate from the world over.

People who want to bring a family member to Canada could not sponsor them anymore, but they could freely enter a free port and stay as long as they are financially self-sufficient. So if a family member will support them, no problem. But they still couldn't leave the free port without a visa except to go to another free port or leave Canada.

We might even say though that anyone born in a free port obtains citizenship of that free port and not Canadian citizenship unless one parent is a Canadian citizen.

But anyone not born in a free port cannot become a citizen of the free port.

Besides, since anyone could go and work there anyway, he'd have no need for citizenship except to collect social security. The principle here would be if you're financially self-sufficient, please come, otherwise go home.

Culturally, this would allow those who want to live on a more old stock community to just move out of a free port while diversity would be concentrated in those ports.

[The_Squid]

Sounds like a recipe for massive slums.

[PIK]

Lets get the pipelines going 1st.

[Machjo]

Sounds like a recipe for massive slums.

Any Canadian who doesn't like the slums would still be welcome to move to the free ports.

[Bonam]

Effectively what it would mean is that all of Canada's cities with a maritime port such as Vancouver, Halifax, Toronto, Montreal (yes they have ports to the Great Lakes and the Saint Laurence Seaway connecting to the Atlantic Ocean), and a few other Canadian cities would become free economic zones, so open to free trade, open migration for work, etc.

Inversely, the rest of Canada would accept no new immigration at all.

Businesses outside of any free port that need workers could just try to poach Canadian citizens from the free ports by offering them higher wages.

Businesses in the free ports would have no excuse for labour shortages since they could higher the most qualified candidate from the world over.

People who want to bring a family member to Canada could not sponsor them anymore, but they could freely enter a free port and stay as long as they are financially self-sufficient. So if a family member will support them, no problem. But they still couldn't leave the free port without a visa except to go to another free port or leave Canada.

So what kind of border controls would you set up surrounding all the "free port" cities? Will I have to go through the equivalent of international customs to drive up from Vancouver to go skiing at Whistler?

Why solve a non-existent problem by partitioning Canada?

Why not simply reduce immigration rates to a value that is not culturally, socially and economically disruptive? There is no such thing as a labor shortage.

[eyeball]

Sounds like a recipe for massive slums.

Likely surrounded by ecological slums.