Mike Moffatt: My remarks to the federal cabinet on housing, immigration, and the temporary foreign worker program 

Really quite striking how academics like Moffatt, Skuterud, Worswick and other have changed the discourse around immigration, focussing on selection criteria, productivity and impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure.

Another further indication that immigration is not a third rail issue, and Moffatt speaking to Cabinet and sharing his remarks on the conservative outlet The Hub is a further illustration:

..On population growth, yesterday’s temporary foreign worker reforms are welcome news, but Canada must go much further. The TFW program, particularly the low-wage non-agricultural stream, suppresses wage growth, increases youth unemployment, creates the conditions for the exploitation of foreign workers, and reduces productivity, as it disincentivizes companies from investing in productivity-enhancing equipment. The low-wage stream should be entirely abolished, and the other streams should be substantially reformed, including creating a system of open permits.

Population growth targets, including both permanent and non-permanent residents, and housing growth targets, should all be incorporated into the annual release of the Immigration Levels Plan. The targets must be aligned, to ensure population growth does not outpace homebuilding, which will require substantial reductions in the permanent resident target over the next few years.

Like most economists, I support a robust immigration system and believe the current targets are achievable in the long run. In the meantime, however, we need to give ourselves time to allow homebuilding to catch up to past population growth, requiring a substantial reduction in the permanent resident target back to the levels of a decade ago.

We should be clear that this is not about blaming immigrants for Canada’s issues. Rather we must recognize that when we invite people to our country, we need to ensure that we have in place the conditions for them to succeed. We do them no favours, and us no favours, by setting them up to fail.

And we should be clear that we are setting people up to fail, particularly Millennials and Gen Z. Rents on new leases in Halifax are up 75 percent in the past five years. It should come as no surprise that the 2024 World Happiness Report found that Canadians under the age of 30 are the 58th happiest in the world. They are being denied a path to middle-class prosperity.

We can and must do better. Thank you for having me here today.

Source: Mike Moffatt: My remarks to the federal cabinet on housing, immigration, and the temporary foreign worker program