Who was Clifford Sifton?

Sir Clifford Sifton (March 10, 1861 to April 17, 1929) was Sir Wilfrid Laurier's federal Minister of the Interior from November 17, 1896 to February 27, 1905. Sifton designed and led an aggressive immigration recruitment programme that brought about 1 million immigrants to settle the Canadian prairies between 1896 and 1905, transforming Western Canada. Sifton's immigration policies completed the third pillar of Macdonald's National Policy (immigration to populate the prairies and fuel the railway and tariff economy).

Sifton was born in Arva, Canada West (Ontario) and grew up in Manitoba where his father was active in Liberal politics. He trained as a lawyer and served as Manitoba's Attorney-General from 1891 to 1896, where he was a major figure in the Manitoba Schools Question. After Laurier's victory in the 1896 federal election, Sifton joined the federal Cabinet as Minister of the Interior, a portfolio responsible for immigration, the prairie provinces, natural resources, and Indigenous Affairs.

Sifton's immigration programme aggressively recruited European farmers, particularly from central and eastern Europe. His famous description of the ideal immigrant (in his 1922 Maclean's magazine article) was 'a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen children'. The Sifton policies welcomed Ukrainian, Polish, German, Hungarian, Russian, and Scandinavian farmers, alongside the more traditional British, Irish, and American immigrants. Special arrangements were made for unusual group migrations, including the Doukhobors (about 7,500 from Russia in 1899) and the Mennonites (about 8,000 from Manitoba colonies, joined by additional waves from Russia, the United States, and Europe).

Recruitment methods were aggressive. Sifton's Department posted thousands of agents in Britain, continental Europe, and the United States to promote Canadian immigration. Pamphlets in numerous languages were distributed widely. Free homesteads of 160 acres under the Dominion Lands Act of 1872 were the central inducement. Immigrant census results: Canada's population grew from about 5 million in 1896 to 7.2 million in 1911. The prairie population grew from about 250,000 in 1891 to 1.3 million in 1911. Sifton resigned from Cabinet in February 1905 over disagreements with Laurier on the Alberta and Saskatchewan school settlement (Sifton thought Laurier had given too much to Catholic interests). He served as a Liberal MP until 1911 and then as Chairman of the Commission of Conservation from 1909 to 1918. Sifton is sometimes called the architect of modern Canadian immigration. The federal Department of the Interior offices on Wellington Street in Ottawa now bear his name.