...which is an important use-case for IQ tests: figuring out raw intelligence, before training.
Discussion
But how could you do that at age 12+ in a country with a highly functioning education system?
Have you ever taken an IQ test? They're designed to test reasoning irrespective of education.
Oh yes. They are intended to, and I'm not claiming they're useless. I used the word 'dodgy' intentionally. I'm just claiming they'll naturally be biased by formal education, though they try not to be.
And?
This whole conversation is in the context of immigration. The people that you say IQ tests have a bias against – smart but uneducated people – shouldn't be allowed into Canada in the first place because they fail to meet the educational requirements for immigration!
What IQ tests will do is provide a secondary defense to educational transcript fraud. They check if someone actually is intelligent enough to be an improvement to the Canadian population.
Of course, IQ tests will inevitably say that hardly any people from many minorities should be allowed onto Canada... Which is exactly why there's so much opposition to IQ.
"IQ tests as a secondary defense to educational transcript fraud". Sure, I guess that works. Might not be the best way to check, but used in that way it's better than many other options. What really matters is how the test are organized and conducted.
(Though it does depend on what the immigrant is claiming to be qualified in - if, as some countries like Australia has done in the past, you are taking in immigrants qualified in service oriented fields, then IQ is maybe not the point.)
Indeed corruption in educational qualifications outside of the "western world" (speaking incredibly vaguely) is a huge problem (and unlike most westerners I speak from direct experience).