Coyne: Smith and Poilievre find someone to blame for their problems: immigrants

While Coyne is still in the “more the merrier” crowd, his points on the crass politics by Smith and Poilievre are valid:

…The point bears repeating: we had just as rapid population growth in some years in the 1950s and 1960s, without any of the problems that are now so recklessly laid at the feet of immigrants and refugees. Why? Because we were building more houses: we had yet to tie the housing market in regulatory knots. Because the health care system had not yet been turned into an ossified, centrally planned monopoly. Because we were investing more, growing more, hiring more. 

Those are the sorts of things conservatives, and Conservatives, used to talk about, rather than the crude hack of letting fewer people in: the economic equivalent of bleeding the patient. Ms. Smith and Mr. Poilievre themselves were advocates, not so long ago, of a pro-growth population policy. 

But how much easier it is, politically, when you’re in political trouble, to deflect public discontent, to blame all their troubles on outsiders, to play to people’s fears and whip up their resentments. Just so no one compares anybody to Donald Trump.

Source: Smith and Poilievre find someone to blame for their problems: immigrants