Not different to what Skuterud, Worswick and others have been pointing out over the past few years and more:
By overseeing one of the most dramatic immigration surges of modern times, Canada has cratered housing affordability, kneecapped productivity and concealed the true state of its economic growth, according to a new profile by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The OECD is a club of 38 countries that effectively comprise the developed world. Every two years, each member state receives a comprehensive “economic survey” prepared by OECD economists.
Canada’s most recent survey — published just last week — focuses in particular on the issues of housing affordability and worker productivity, two areas in which Canada now ranks among the worst in the developed world.
And in both instances, the OECD fingers record-high immigration as having made the problems worse.
“Rapid population growth has exacerbated previous housing affordability challenges,” reads the report, adding the blunt recommendation that “housing supply should keep pace with immigration targets.”
Similarly, the OECD warns that Canada has been packing millions of new workers into its labour force without any comparable increase in “productivity-enhancing investment.” With the economy thus remaining relatively stagnant, Canada’s workers are receiving an increasingly small share of the overall economic pie.
On top of this, the report notes that while Canada used to prioritize high-skilled immigrants such as doctors and engineers, its migration flows are now mostly comprised of low-skilled workers.
“The skill composition of recent immigration, which included many students and temporary workers, has also likely reduced average labour productivity,” it reads.
The OECD’s own stats have long shown that Canada is an outlier in the realm of housing affordability. The OECD’s most recent tally of the “price to income” ratio of Canadian housing shows that it is the highest of all their member states save for Portugal.
Over the last 10 years, Canada has also been one of the worst performers in OECD rankings of GDP growth per capita.
From 2014 to 2022, Canada’s rate of per-capita GDP growth was worse than any other OECD country save Luxembourg and Mexico.
Across those nine years, the average Canadian saw their share of overall GDP rise by just 0.6 per cent per year.
Canada’s “GDP per capita growth has lagged in recent years, particularly compared to its close neighbour, the United States,” wrote the OECD.
In the U.S., GDP growth per capita from 2014 to 2022 was nearly three times higher than Canada, at 1.7 per cent.
The report isn’t entirely downcast on Canada’s economic future. In a summary, the authors declare that Canada’s economy is “resilient” and endowed with “robust public finances.”
But the document is one of the first outside sources to detail the unprecedented surge of Canadian migration overseen by Ottawa in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Canada’s population grew rapidly, by 3.0 per cent in 2023 and 2.6 per cent in 2024. This is much faster than in other OECD countries such as the United States or countries in Europe,” it reads.
About six times faster, in fact. In 2023, the average OECD country grew by just 0.5 per cent.
This worked out to about one million newcomers entering Canada each year. At the beginning of 2022, the Canadian population stood at about 38.5 million. Now, it’s at 41.6 million, an increase of more than three million.
It’s a surge in voluntary population growth like few in history. Although other OECD members have experienced comparable population surges, at least in the short term, they’re usually the result of war or other displacements.
The report also confirms a phenomenon that Canadian analysts have been warning about since 2023: That Canada has been in a “per capita” recession for several years, with overall GDP only seeming to grow because of rapid population growth.
The injection of three million people has seemed to increase GDP, simply because all the newcomers are paying rent, buying groceries and increasing the amount of money circulating in the economy.
But on an individual basis, the average Canadians’ wealth and purchasing power has only been dropping.
The OECD report highlights this disparity with two duelling charts. On a measure of “real GDP,” Canada is able to keep up with the OECD average perfectly. But when ranked by “real GDP per capita,” Canada’s economic performance suddenly falls dramatically behind.
“GDP growth has been supported by high population growth,” according to a subtitle.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has recently highlighted the issue of diminishing Canadian productivity, saying in a speech last week that it was making “life unaffordable for Canadians.” Carney’s proposed remedy is to reduce internal trade barriers and embark on a series of “nation-building” projects.
The OECD noted that Canada has backed off the peak highs of its immigration intake, writing that the Liberal government “has adjusted and recalibrated its immigration targets … and population growth has since begun to slow.”
Nevertheless, even under these new figures, Canadian immigration is set to be far higher than its pre-COVID levels.
Canada’s 2025 immigration targets are still set to bring in more than one million newcomers this year, mostly in the realm of non-permanent residents. Under the federal government’s latest Immigration Levels Plan, this year will see 395,000 new permanent residents, 305,900 new international students and 367,750 new temporary workers.
Multicultural Meanderings 