Madhany: It’s time to dispense with false narratives and look for real solutions to Canada’s housing crisis

2023/09/21 Leave a comment

Madhany makes the classic mistake of conflating concerns over high immigration levels with being anti-immigration. Most of recent commentary, mine included, cannot be characterized as anti-immigrant as it largely questions absorptive capacity (e.g., housing, healthcare, infrastructure), poor economic outcomes of any recent arrivals and how high levels of both permanent and temporary residents are not improving Canadian productivity.

Moreover, by claiming that this questioning labels immigrants as scapegoats and fanning “the flames of bigotry and hate,” it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, rather than acknowledging high levels are part of the problem and these issues impact upon immigrant and non-immigrant alike.

As an immigrant, a daughter of immigrants, and now the leader of an organization dedicated to helping newcomers thrive, I’ve seen the many ways that investing in the success of new Canadians pays dividends. More recently, however, I’ve seen something more troubling: immigrants, refugees, and international students positioned as scapegoats and blamed for a very real housing crisis. This dangerous discourse needs to stop. The narrative at its root is not only inaccurate—the housing affordability crisis is a complex, systemic issue abetted by poor planning and political finger-pointing—but it is also actively harmful. It fans the flames of bigotry and hate. It also threatens the health of the Canadian economy, in both the immediate and long term.

My family came to Canada when I was a teenager. I remember even then, decades ago, how difficult it was for my family to find an affordable place to live. In Kenya, my dad had been a successful businessman. He was fluent in English and had an impressive accounting background. But as a newcomer who lacked Canadian work experience, he was denied all but the most menial jobs. At one point, he took a job cleaning washrooms at a golf club to support our family.

Even at that early age, I knew there was something wrong: people shouldn’t have to struggle so hard to give their best or build a future in their new country. That knowledge shaped my career and life. Since then, I have dedicated myself to welcoming newcomers. I began as an employment counselor, became a career public servant, and now serve as the managing director and deputy executive director of an organization that, on the one hand, evaluates academic credentials so people can put their skills and talents to work in Canada. On the other hand, we work with scores of Canadian partners to shape policy, design programs, and provide philanthropic funding to eradicate the barriers that keep newcomers on the sidelines, struggling to contribute their skills even to fields like health care, where workers are so desperately needed.

Instead of exploring how we can dismantle barriers for newcomers and all Canadians, we’re seeing increased discourse blaming newcomers for the housing affordability crisis. To be clear: limiting immigration or international student numbers will not fix the housing crisis, nor did rising numbers create it. These issues loomed for decades with no real action taken or effective policy solutions in place to address them.

Others with housing policy expertise have recommended promising solutions to this problem. These include zoning regulations that favour multiplex dwellings in cities; regulation of large real estate investors who, in 2019-2020, owned as much as 29 per cent to 41 per cent of housing in several provinces; and a focus on ensuring the availability of more rental properties in our cities—as well as ways for immigrants to more easily prove their credit histories so that landlords will rent to them. But rather than tackle the housing crisis head-on, influential voices are putting the blame squarely on immigrant communities.

We’ve got to flip the script. Let’s recognize the essential role that newcomers and various cultural communities play in building a brighter future for our entire nation. After all, immigrants will play a key role in ensuring that Canada’s workforce and tax base continue to grow, and that Canada continues to succeed on the global stage. Consider this: by 2030, five million Canadians are projected to retire, and the worker-to-retiree ratio will drop down to only 3:1. Without immigrants, we haven’t a hope of filling 800,000 job vacancies (and counting). Indeed, immigration accounts for almost 100 per cent of Canada’s labour force growth. By 2032, it’s projected to account for 100 per cent of Canada’s population growth.

Recognizing newcomers’ economic value is one thing. Solving our housing woes is another. One potentially viable action plan would be for cross-sectoral Canadian leaders to organize a multi-sectoral roundtable capable of tackling the housing affordability crisis with the nuance and specificity that it demands. Models for this—including the Refugee Jobs Agenda Roundtable—exist and are effective.

Regardless, it is time to dispense with false narratives and look for real solutions. Canada needs immigrants and needs them to succeed. When everyone is welcome, everyone wins.

Shamira Madhany joined World Education Services as managing director Canada and deputy executive director in 2018, after more than two decades of public service. She has extensive experience working with licensing bodies, settlement agencies, and higher education and post-secondary sectors in Ontario.

Source: It’s time to dispense with false narratives and look for real solutions to Canada’s housing crisis

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Could these steps help fix Canada’s international student system? Senators think so

2023/09/21 Leave a comment

Sound assessment of some of the weaknesses and lack of integrity in international student recruitment and the complicity of education institutions and provincial governments.

Generally sensible recommendations but given jurisdictional issues, I favour some variant of provincial caps that oblige the provinces to tighten up approval of DLIs to address some of the worst abuse.

Ideally, of course, higher education would have adequate funding but defining “adequate” should not be equated with the status quo nor should it be assumed that provincial governments would simply pick up any shortfalls due to reduced international students:

Canadian governments must better police the educational sector and develop a national policy to manage foreign student intake to maintain the integrity of the country’s international education program, says a new study.

In a report released on Wednesday, four independent senators recommended stricter criteria for the so-called designated learning institutions (DLIs) to host international students and steeper penalties to hold them accountable to “unscrupulous behaviour and negligence” of their recruitment agents.

“Canada’s international student program benefits significantly from the presence of agents since they are the drivers of an industry that contributes tens of billions to the economy each year,” said the report prepared by Senators Sabi Marwah, Ratna Omidvar, Yuen Pau Woo and Hassan Yussuff.

“Agents and DLIs are not necessarily acting with the best interests in mind of international students themselves. There is little incentive and no oversight by Canadian governments to ensure both agents and DLIs place international students at DLIs most suitable for each student’s educational, career and immigration objectives.”

The integrity of Canada’s international student program has increasingly come under public scrutiny after hundreds of students from India were found to have come here with allegedly fraudulent college admission letters earlier this year.

Amid the country’s worsening housing crisis, the exponential growth of the international student population — inching toward 900,000 this year — has prompted the federal government to consider reining in their intake by strengthening its program integrity.

According to the Senate report, some 51 per cent of international students settle in Ontario, followed by B.C. (20 per cent), Quebec (12 per cent), Alberta and the Atlantic Provinces (both at 5 per cent) and Manitoba and Saskatchewan (both at 3 per cent).

While Canada has benefitted financially and culturally from international students — $22 billion in tuition revenues and spending to the economy a year, the report said there have been costs associated with the growth of the enrolment.

Canadian colleges and universities have continued to count on international tuition fees as a revenue source as government investments in education declined. Since 2006, said the report, the gap in tuition between international and domestic students has risen from double to five times as of last year.

“DLIs are responsible for setting admissions criteria for international students, but their desire to recruit as many as possible often results in low admissions standards,” said the 26-page report.

“DLIs then discover certain international students are not academically proficient enough to keep up with their programs in Canada.”

The recruitment frenzy has been fuelled by education agents, who typically receive from the schools a commission that ranges between 15 and 20 per cent of the admitted international student’s first year of tuition. The report said it works out to average commissions of $1,500 to $7,500 per student.

Adding to the mix are unscrupulous private colleges and ghost agents who prey on the ignorance of international students with “empty promises” about career prospects in Canada upon graduation and who lie about eligibility for work permits and permanent residence.

“The International Student Program has been a victim of its own success. International students have a strong desire to come to Canada, however they face many challenges including high tuition fees and abuse. In many cases they do not receive the support they need to overcome these difficulties,” said Sen. Omidvar.

“They are also being blamed for the many current economic and social challenges facing Canada, but they are the victims and not the perpetrators. We need to change the program to ensure it works for Canada and the students that contribute so much to our country.”

The Senate report said the top priority to address the integrity of the program is to conduct a national review to ensure the Canadian post-secondary sector is financially sustainable because funding shortfall is what has led to the aggressive recruitment of international students.

It also recommended a higher bar for schools to qualify to admit international students by requiring them to submit detailed plans on how they assist students in securing housing, asserting legal rights, finding employment — similar to what they had to comply during the pandemic as a condition to welcome international students back on campuses.

“DLIs who do not live up to standard should be subject to losing their ability to welcome additional international students,” said the report.

Given the “outsized role” education agents play in the industry, it recommended that immigration officials must regulate these recruiters and impose stronger penalties, such as fines and the revocation of DLI status against schools who benefit from unscrupulous agents.

The report said Canada should follow Australia’s step in requiring educational institutions to upload agent information into a centralized portal, including which agents they have written contracts with, and study visa outcomes by their agents including whether applications were approved, refused, withdrawn, or deemed invalid.

While many of the international students are lured by the prospects of permanent residence, just 30 per cent of them managed to become permanent residents within 10 years of arrivals due to the limited spots available annually.

The report said Canada must develop a national strategy to align the number of international students admitted with its annual permanent resident targets based on the needs of provinces, educational institutions and employers.

Source: Could these steps help fix Canada’s international student system? Senators think so

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Feds still working through family reunification backlog for immigration ‘golden ticket’

2023/09/21 Leave a comment

Lottery is the easiest way to manage high demand and increasing demand.

Weakens the demographic arguments justifying current high levels but understandable that families would like to have parents and grandparents with them (many do help with childcare):

Demand always Immigrants hoping to reunite with family members through the federal government’s Parents and Grandparents Program will be invited to apply beginning Oct.10 — but for the fourth consecutive year, those invitations will only be delivered to eligible applicants who expressed interest by 2020.

And even then, as has been the case since 2017, those invitations will be randomly selected in a lottery.

“We try not to make any promises,” said Laila Joud, 34, who wants to sponsor her parents so they can move from Syria to Ottawa to live with her family. Joud is now a permanent resident who moved to Canada from Syria via Qatar with her husband and child in 2019. She was also pregnant at the time

Her parents split their time between Syria and Qatar, waiting for the chance to come to Canada.

“The situation in Syria right now — the economic and the social — it’s just not the best and I would love to have the chance to give them the opportunity to be here,” said the communications specialist who works at a non-profit in Ottawa.

“It will mean they have a better life.”

Joud has not been able to get her name into the draw for the program, since she wasn’t eligible in 2020, the last time the federal government accepted interest-to-sponsor (ITS) applications.

Ghiath Joud and Sawsan Youssef during a trip to Ottawa to visit their daughter. (Submitted by Laila Joud)

Over 200,000 potential sponsors expressed interest in bringing their family members to Canada that year, said IRCC spokesperson Isabelle Dubois.

“Given the volume of ‘interest to sponsor’ received in 2020 that are still remaining in the pool, IRCC will again use the 2020 pool of submissions for the 2023 intake,” said Dubois.

Over a two-week period beginning Oct. 10, IRCC will begin sending invitations for 24,200 people to apply, said Dubois. From those, IRCC hopes to process 15,000 successful applications.

“We don’t understand the rationale behind it,” said Joud, who was hopeful the government would take new ITS applicants this year.

“I understand the complications and everything that’s affecting this process but I want a chance like many others.”

Super visa not a substitute

“I think everybody can agree that having the last expression of interest, the last ability to put your name in, in 2020, that is really unfair,” said Tamara Mosher-Kuczer, senior lawyer and founder at Lighthouse Immigration Law.

“If they didn’t get in the pool in 2020, this is another year, yet another draw that has passed them by,” she said.

And even if someone is lucky enough to be selected to apply, “they’d have to wait at least probably two years for the application to be processed,” Mosher-Kuczer said.

There is another more costly option, she said. Parents and grandparents can apply for a Canadian super visa which allows them to visit their children or grandchildren for up to five years.

“The problem is they have to pay for health insurance the whole time the family members are here,” said Mosher-Kuczer. “And the family members aren’t able to work. So it’s prohibitive for a lot of people.”

In fact, Joud’s parents came to Canada on a super visa but decided it was too restrictive and have since returned home.

Laila Joud says having her parents, Ghiath Joud and Sawsan Youssef, living with her in Ottawa would bring huge emotional support. (Submitted by Laila Joud)

Get your paperwork in order

Mosher-Kuczer has some advice for people in the 2020 pool.

“Start gathering the supporting documents now,” she said. “If you get one of these invitations, it’s the golden ticket. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, you’re unlikely to get invited again. So you need to be able to have that application submitted in 60 days.”

It’s not a lot of time to get everything together, but if you wait, you’re up against a tight deadline, she said.

“A lot of this information is hard to gather and then everything has to be translated according to IRCC’s very strict specifications,” she said, adding the process can be costly.

“But people don’t want to spend the money to start making those translations and getting those documents and getting the police clearances.”

Mosher-Kuczer said she also wishes the government would institute a weighted lottery: the longer you’ve been on the list, the stronger your chances of being selected.

Joud is still hopeful the government will soon reopen the parent and grandparent sponsorship program to people not yet in the pool.

“There are the obvious reasons,” she said. “Being immigrants into the country. Being away from family. Being in a country where you almost have no one. It’s just having that family bond, having them with my kids.

“I am waiting for the day.”

Source: Feds still working through family reunification backlog for immigration ‘golden ticket’

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Di Matteo: More immigration will make Canada wealthier – we just need to do it right

2023/09/19 Leave a comment

Poorly argued. No understanding or acknowledgement of the different time and context between higher levels of immigration during the early 20th century and the settling of the West, or the post-World War II economic boom.

And he completely ignores the larger numbers of temporary workers and international students:

Increased immigration can be justified as a solution to aging populations and labour shortages but there are other benefits. There are benefits to a larger economy and internal market size as well as increased clout in a more global world. Moreover, the diversity of a larger population can be a key ingredient in fostering more innovation and trade growth.

But those outcomes are not assured given our productivity lag. Canadians are only about 70 per cent as productive as Americans. This is the crux of the issue. There is a role for government here in either helping facilitate the solutions or getting out of the way of those who can get things done.

Evidence suggests that immigration often has a negligible effect on a country’s prosperity in per capita income terms. Increases in labour force size are a source of overall economic growth, though this output is divided among a greater population. Output must rise faster than population for per capita income to rise, and the key to that is productivity.

In order for larger populations to have positive economic effects, increases in labour force size need to be accompanied by increases in firm-specific plants, machinery and equipment as well as physical infrastructure in transportation and communication – not to mention housing.

In other words, the solution here is more business investment to raise productivity.

This is a big endeavour, but it can be done. Indeed, it has been done before.

An immigrant to Canada in 1912 arrived during a national development and construction boom that developed the Western wheat economy and featured a soaring national investment-output ratio at upwards of 30 per cent of GDP.

There was investment not only in transcontinental railways but also in manufacturing capacity and urban infrastructure as cities expanded. As a result, while population from 1900 to 1914 grew nearly 50 per cent, the total size of the economy after inflation doubled, and real per capita income soared.

Our current immigration boom pales in comparison to that which occurred during the first decade of the 20th century. Annual immigration now represents just 1.5 per cent of Canada’s population compared to the peak years 1912 and 1913 at 5.1 and 5.3 per cent. The equivalent today would mean nearly two million immigrants a year and we are nowhere near that amount.

Moreover, back then we had nowhere near the technology of today, and arguably our productivity was even lower.

If in the early 20th century a country with eight million people could accommodate 400,000 immigrants a year and boost productivity and economic growth, then surely at 40 million this industrialized country can do better.

The country that put in place three transcontinental railroads during the relatively larger migration boom of pre-First World War should be able to parallel that infrastructure performance for a much more modest population boom.

Canada would also need to make non-economic investments to accommodate that larger population, such as increased spending on national security and additional efforts to address regional anxieties and tensions that more immigration may cause.

This will not come cheaply, but it will be worth the investment. With the highest ever immigration that in 2023 may exceed 500,000 people, Canada’s population is growing rapidly, and the long-term benefits considerably outweigh the transition costs.

Livio Di Matteo is professor of economics at Lakehead University.

Source: Opinion: More immigration will make Canada wealthier – we just … – The Globe and Mail

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Ottawa faces class action alleging rules around migrant workers are discriminatory

2023/09/19 Leave a comment

We shall see (all immigration policy is inherently discriminatory, the question revolves around whether it is for legitimate reasons or not).

It seems like a bit of a stretch to argue that:

“There were now increasing numbers of persons of colour. These schemes were justified on the basis that the immigrants of certain races, colours, or ethnic or national origins were considered unable to assimilate to Canada’s climate and society and to be better-suited for ‘unfree’ and low-skilled work.”

Whe Canada was also abolishing race-based restrictions on permanent residents.

As a child, he would get postcards from his aunt in Canada and dream to see the country and live here one day.

In 2014, as a 22-year-old, he reached out to a compatriot from Guatemala and scraped together $3,000 to pay for a job offer in poultry catching from the man’s employer in Quebec.

He would end up spending most of his next nine years in Canada as a migrant worker — on six separate closed work permits, which only allowed him to work for his sponsoring employers despite what he described as abusive and exploitative conditions and treatment.

Identified in court documents only as A.B., the young man is leading a class-action lawsuit initiated against the Canadian government for violating migrant domestic workers’ and farm workers’ Charter Rights under the closed work permit regime.

“What we’re trying to do is challenge all the provisions of the immigration regulations that allow the federal government to bind these workers and to restrict their rights to change employers,” said Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier, executive director of the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers, which filed the court case on behalf of closed work permit holders.

“It’s time to put an end to nonfree work, a system that treats the worker as the quasi-property of her employer.”

The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the provisions of the immigration law that allow such practice unconstitutional, and to award damages to migrant workers who have been subjected to “employer-tying measures” on or after April 17, 1982, when the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms took effect.

None of the claims have been proven in court.

As opposed to an “open” work permit, foreign workers on a “closed” or “employer-specific” work permit can only work here according to the specific conditions on the work permit, such as working for the named employer. Migrant workers in low-wage, low-skill jobs are generally issued a closed work permit.

The lawsuit alleged that “employer-tying measures” were rooted in direct discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin and colour.

“The development of these schemes coincided with a shift in the demographics of the immigrants entering Canada to work in these occupations. They had previously included predominantly ‘white’ immigrants,” said the 55-page court application filed on Thursday.

“There were now increasing numbers of persons of colour. These schemes were justified on the basis that the immigrants of certain races, colours, or ethnic or national origins were considered unable to assimilate to Canada’s climate and society and to be better-suited for ‘unfree’ and low-skilled work.”

When migrants on closed work permits are terminated, they lose legal status in Canada and must secure another employer with authorization by Employment and Social Development Canada to hire foreign workers.

That process can be “lengthy, difficult, costly, and most importantly highly unpredictable” as the person may risk being denied a new work permit, the lawsuit claims. It can result in the worker being prohibited from working and making a living for an indeterminate period of time.

The plaintiffs said the harmful impacts of those measures are widely known and well-documented, including:

Restricting workers’ capacity to resign and make choices concerning their work and livelihood in Canada;

Limiting their freedom of movement;

Impeding their ability to assert their rights and access help.

“The employer-tied workers’ inability to change employers creates a striking power imbalance in favour of the employer, making migrant workers uniquely vulnerable,” the lawsuit argues.

“These harmful impacts are compounded when temporary foreign workers work in remote locations, reside in employer-provided accommodation or live in their employer’s own home.”

In the lead case, the Guatemalan man obtained his first “closed” work permit valid from 2014 to 2016. The lawsuit claims he had to work between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., Monday to Friday, with only three 10-minute breaks per night, and was required to catch up to 40,000 chickens per shift, at a rate of five in each hand for every catch.

A.B. would get $3.75 per thousand chickens and $12 for the same number of turkeys. His Canadian co-workers, however, would be paid double these rates, the lawsuit alleges.

A.B. would go to bed with rips and tears on the skin of his hands and with sore muscles. When he woke up, he was often unable to extend his hands, which would remain contracted and curled in a “catching” position.

“As a result of his ‘closed’ work permit, A.B. had no choice but to endure this treatment,” he said in his claim. “He feared that complaining could lead to being fired, threatening his status in Canada, his ability to obtain a renewal of his permit.”

After a work injury in 2015, A.B. required leave from work. His contract was not renewed and he returned to Guatemala, where he underwent an MRI and found out he suffered a herniated disc.

He found another job at a family dairy farm in Quebec in 2017 and worked there until 2019, on three yearly closed work permits.

There, he claimed he was paid late, sometimes by weeks, and subjected to the employer’s “aggressive behaviour, homophobic and racial slurs, rants against the incompetence of migrant workers, and humiliating and degrading comments.” An accident in 2019 aggravated his previous work injury, and he was dismissed.

From 2020 to 2022, A.B. worked for another dairy farm — on two more “closed” permits, where he claimed he suffered similar abuse.

“The Government of Canada has not ceased to resort to employer-tying measures. It has instead continued to subject a growing number of temporary foreign workers to those measures — and it still continues to do so today,” the lawsuit said.

“The Government of Canada’s failure to put an end to those measures evidences its continued clear disregard for the employer-tied migrant workers’ Charter rights and human dignity.”

Source: Ottawa faces class action alleging rules around migrant workers are discriminatory

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Lisée: La pendule du Dr Dubreuil

2023/09/18 Leave a comment

Quebec’s language commissioner on demographic trends, on setting a target of 85 percent for economic immigrants:

C’est bien de vouloir remettre les pendules à l’heure. Mais encore faut-il avoir une pendule. Encore faut-il savoir l’heure. Dans la discussion sur le déclin du français — ou, comme certains le prétendent, son « déclin présumé » —, ce ne sont pas les données qui manquent. Dans cette chronique comme ailleurs, on est davantage dans le trop-plein que dans la disette.

Mercredi, à l’Assemblée nationale, le nouveau commissaire à la langue française, Benoît Dubreuil, nous a rendu un service collectif majeur en offrant une balise claire permettant de déterminer si on va, ou non, dans la bonne direction. Pour sa première intervention publique, il donnait son avis sur les augmentations proposées des seuils d’immigration. Pour rappel : la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) a fait il y a un an à peine sa campagne en promettant de s’en tenir à 50 000 par an. Aller plus loin serait, a dit le premier ministre, « un peu suicidaire ». Fidèle à sa pratique de rompre ses promesses, il envisage maintenant de les hausser à 60 000, et en fait à 70 000 s’il compte à part une des nombreuses filières d’accès à la résidence permanente.

Dubreuil n’était pas venu pour taper sur les doigts de la CAQ, ce n’est pas son rôle. Il était venu lui dire comment atteindre l’objectif affiché de « renverser le déclin du français ». La décision de n’admettre que les immigrants économiques qui connaissent le français au point d’entrée, écrit-il dans son mémoire, est « susceptible d’accroître, de façon importante, l’utilisation du français par les personnes immigrantes ». Mais jusqu’à quel point ? Et quelle est la mesure du succès ?

Pour la première fois dans l’histoire des politiques linguistiques, il en fixe une : 85 %. C’est, une fois qu’on exclut les langues tierces et qu’on répartit les gens qui affirment être linguistiquement non binaires (donc anglos et francos également), la répartition des Québécois qui travaillent principalement en français et qui utilisent principalement la langue de Vigneault dans l’espace public. Si les futurs immigrants se répartissent linguistiquement ainsi, il n’y aura pas de déclin, affirme-t-il, mais stabilisation. Sinon, le déclin se poursuivra.

« Nous ne pouvons pas négliger les effets cumulatifs de cet écart, écrit-il. Si les 793 915 personnes immigrantes et les 148 075 résidents non permanents (RNP) qui occupaient un emploi au Québec en 2021 avaient opté pour le français au travail dans la même proportion que la population d’accueil (84,4 %), ce sont 234 243 personnes de plus qui y auraient utilisé le français le plus souvent au travail. Ce nombre représente 5 % de l’ensemble de la main-d’oeuvre du Québec. » L’impact serait « concentré dans la région métropolitaine de Montréal : le français y serait utilisé le plus souvent par 78 % des travailleurs, au lieu de 69 % ».

Le hic ? Les calculs de Dubreuil sur les scénarios proposés à 50 000 ou 60 000 par an n’atteignent pas sa note de passage de 85 %. Elles sont, au mieux, à 79 %. Donc elles ralentissent la rapidité du déclin, sans l’arrêter.

Mais la réalité linguistique est complexe, et qui sait si les autres mesures adoptées et à venir n’auront pas un impact à la hausse ? Placide, Dubreuil accepte cette part d’incertitude. Et comme il n’a pas le mandat de déterminer si une hausse des seuils sera délétère pour le logement, les places en garderie ou l’hôpital, mais seulement sur le français, il propose de s’appuyer sur les faits. Qu’on fixe d’abord le seuil à 50 000 et qu’on mesure chaque année, chez les nouveaux venus, si le critère de 85 % est atteint ou presque. Si oui, qu’on passe à 60 000 si on le souhaite. Sinon, on fait une pause et on s’interroge sur les boulons qu’il faut resserrer pour la suite.

La ministre semblait agréablement surprise par le mécanisme proposé (comme moi). Mais est-ce bien suffisant ? Il y avait autour de la table de la commission un véritable croisé du français, estomaqué que rien ne soit dit sur l’éléphant dans la pièce : les 370 000 temporaires dont l’utilisation du français est encore bien moindre que celle des permanents. « Si notre intérêt est la promotion du français, qui est en déclin, on fait fausse route parce que le troisième scénario est absent, à savoir les travailleurs temporaires. » Ce député, un libéral né au Maroc, est Monsef Derraji. Je lui accorde le titre de défenseur du français de la semaine.

Dubreuil a appelé en effet à une « approche cohérente » incluant les travailleurs et, a-t-il précisé, les étudiants temporaires, mais puisque la ministre nous annonce pour bientôt de nouvelles mesures sur le sujet, j’ai décodé qu’il attendait de les voir avant de se prononcer sur leur efficacité.

En vérité, l’excellente première performance de Dubreuil ne m’a pas étonné. Son CV était atterri sur mon bureau en 2002, alors que je cherchais quelqu’un qui connaissait bien l’allemand. Le CV de Dubreuil m’informait que son allemand était excellent, comme son anglais, son néerlandais et son russe. Il était désolé de m’informer qu’il ne pouvait que lire, mais ni parler ni écrire, le danois et le suédois (il ne s’est intéressé que par la suite au portugais, à l’espagnol, à l’italien et au roumain). Pour Les Politiques sociales, qui devint pour une décennie la référence francophone sur le sujet, Dubreuil produisait par pays des synthèses d’une qualité telle qu’on les retrouvait ensuite, en ligne, telles quelles, dans les textes de cours de profs d’université.

Il terminait son doctorat en philosophie politique sous la direction de Jean-Marc Ferry (il est donc « docteur ») et, de l’autre main, faisait publier dans des revues savantes des textes de pointe sur l’anthropologie des langues. J’ai rencontré beaucoup de gens intelligents dans ma vie, mais très peu du niveau de Benoît. J’en ai rencontré encore moins qui conjuguent ce savoir avec un pragmatisme créatif et une totale absence de suffisance.

À l’écouter présenter son rapport, je retrouvais l’homme posé, presque humble, vous expliquant sans aucun effet de toge que le patient malade — le français — requiert un traitement vigoureux, que ses signes vitaux doivent être annuellement vérifiés et que son rétablissement ne sera complet que si sa pression artérielle francophone atteint, ou dépasse, 85 %. Merci, docteur.

Source: La pendule du Dr Dubreuil

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Coyne: Home truths about Canada’s housing mess

2023/09/18 Leave a comment

Coyne acknowledges (partially) that high immigration levels are part of the problem but only partially so. And when exactly did we have higher immigration rates, as a percentage of the population, since the settling of the West?

It’s a shortage of houses, not a surplus of people. Now everyone’s convinced the problem is high immigration. No doubt there’s some truth in this, in specific markets – the extraordinary, seemingly unanticipated surge in the number of foreign students enrolling in Canadian universities and colleges has overwhelmed the supply of student housing. Maybe a pause there would help.

But we had higher immigration rates in the past without igniting a housing crisis. And prices were already at stratospheric levels long before the immigration surge of the past two years. I don’t disagree that made things worse, but it’s the long-term decline in the supply of new housing that has set us up for this.

Source: Home truths about Canada’s housing mess

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Bernhard: Immigrants didn’t cause our failings. We did that all by ourselves

2023/09/16 Leave a comment

Agree with his litany (rant?) of policy failures in housing, healthcare, labour markets etc.

But most of the commentary and analysis notes that large increases in permanent and temporary immigration have contributed to all these problems by not factoring the impact of a larger population, driven by immigration.

Given the time lags to address these so long-neglected issues, it is only responsible to advocate for a freeze and/or a reduction of current levels that takes account of housing, healthcare and other impacts, rather than current governmental immigration planning which largely ignores these:

Despite record levels of polarization, it seems pundits and politicians of all stripes agree on one thing nowadays: no matter the problem, immigrants are the cause.

Housing crunch? Too many immigrants.

Health care squeeze? Ditto.

Wages too low? International students flooding the labour market.

These arguments are lazy, dangerous and, most of all, incorrect. Yet somehow, they’re everywhere.

But even a cursory glance at these arguments shows that the people making these claims haven’t given the evidence even a cursory glance.

For example, the housing crisis far predates the recent immigration boom. In hot markets like Toronto, residential home prices more than doubled between 2000 and 2014. Immigration rates during that period were more than 30 per cent lower than they are now. The last time immigration levels skyrocketed like they have recently was between 1985 and 1995. House prices didn’t boom in those years; they crashed more than 25 per cent.

Let’s put some uncomfortable truths on the table.

Immigrants didn’t subsidize property speculation with public funds by exempting housing investments from capital gains taxes. Successive federal governments did that.

Immigrants didn’t block zoning reform for decades, making it illegal to build more housing. City councils did that.

Immigrants didn’t remove some 130,000 homes from the rental market to become quasi-legal hotels on Airbnb. Profiteering investors did that, often illegally, while governments looked the other way.

Immigrants aren’t responding to recent housing price drops by holding up the construction of more than 8,000 housing units in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area until prices go back up. Developers are doing that.

Immigrants are not causing the cataclysmic deterioration of our health care system. In Ontario alone, an estimated 20,000 internationally trained nurses are sitting on the sidelines, prevented from healing patients because of bureaucratic holdups to their accreditation that provinces have known about forever, but have chosen not to resolve.

Immigrants are not suppressing wages. Companies like Uber did that, performing the world’s greatest Pinocchio routine by claiming, incredulously, that their work force neither wants nor deserves basic protections like minimum wage or a reliable place to pee while on shift. Even more incredulous is the reaction of governments across the land, which just sat back and watched as these American companies boastfully broke the law and drove down wages while paying no corporate taxes. As with Airbnb, governments eventually changed the laws to fit the crime, locking a generation of people, disproportionately immigrants, into low-wage servitude for California corporations.

Increasingly, this labour force is made up of international students, who desperately need the money because provinces permit rapacious colleges and universities to charge outrageous international fees for what is too often a useless education. Why do the students pay? Because post-study work permits are a reliable pathway to permanent residency, which the federal government keeps wide open. When the fees got to be too much, the feds lifted work restrictions for international students. Now they study even less while paying even more to subsidize the rest of us.

Immigrants didn’t cause our failings. We did that all by ourselves.

In fact, strategic immigration is our best chance to solve many of these challenges.

Tens of thousands of immigrant health care professionals have passed their Canadian exams and are eager to reinforce our failing system. If we simply let them contribute, we could relieve huge pressure from the front lines, practically overnight.

The extra 2.3 million new homes we need to build by 2030 won’t build themselves, yet Canada will lose 700,000 skilled workers to retirement between 2021 and 2028. Unless you’re hoping to find a few hundred thousand Canadian-born tradespeople in the couch cushions, immigrant expertise is the only way to get us anywhere close to meeting our housing goals.

Blaming immigrants for our homegrown problems is a double defeat. It opens the door to the horrifying mainstream xenophobia that contemporary Canada has so far escaped, while closing the door on the very people who are our best chance at overcoming these challenges, resulting from decades of made-in-Canada complacency and neglect.

To the many opinion leaders now casually calling out Canada’s supposed immigration excess: please do your homework. Check the evidence. And open your mind to the fact that while Canada’s problems may be far-reaching, their origins are hardly far-flung.

Daniel Bernhard is CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

Source: Immigrants didn’t cause our failings. We did that all by ourselves

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Starmer has broken silence on immigration policy but electoral risks are clear – The Guardian

2023/09/16 Leave a comment

To watch:

Few issues have made Labour tie itself in knots as much as immigration over the past decades.

There have been times when the party has tried to ignore the subject, and subsequent high levels of public dissatisfaction with the quadrupling of net migration during the Blair and Brown eras.

At other points, the party has tried cack-handedly to confront perceived public concerns, such as Ed Miliband’s widely criticised “controls on immigration” mugs from 2015.

Until now, Keir Starmer has largely stayed silent, attacking the Tories for incompetently presiding over a collapsing asylum system and failing to tackle small boat crossings, without setting out Labour’s plans to change things.

But with cross-Channel migration likely to be a major issue at the next election, Starmer has decided to square up to the problem.

His approach appears to be aiming for as grown-up a stance as possible – and that involves a careful balancing act.

The Labour leader is trying to sound tough about “smashing the gangs” abusing the system, while disavowing the extreme solutions of the Tories who want to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

He is stressing that he wants no return to free movement, while opening the door to a deal with the EU to create safe routes for some asylum seekers in a quid pro quo for being able to return those arriving across the Channel.

Labour’s goal is for voters to give Starmer credit for attempting to solve a seemingly intractable issue with cross-border diplomacy, and without resorting to inhumane treatment or populist rhetoric.

But the electoral risks are clear: already the Conservatives are attempting to paint the Labour leader as trying to unpick Brexit through side-deals with the EU to allow more migration. At the same time, by ruling out a return to free movement, the Labour leader is giving no succour to former remain voters who may be toying with the Lib Dems.

“We have left the EU. There’s no case for going back to the EU, no case for going into the single market or customs union, and no freedom of movement,” he said on Thursday.

Having set out some concrete policy, Starmer will now be hounded with questions about what level of asylum seekers he would be willing to accept, and to put a number on how much net migration there would be under a Labour government.

In turn, Labour will try to turn the conversation on to its plans to clear the Tory asylum backlog, and stop the spending on hotel bills, portraying Sunak’s party as chaotic and obsessed with unrealistic headline-grabbing policies such as Rwanda.

Suella Braverman lost no time in claiming that Starmer’s plan would make the UK a “dumping ground” for Europe’s migrants, while Starmer retorted that the government’s own plan for dealing with small boat crossings was “nonsense”.

This is no doubt the beginning of a dividing line on immigration policy between the Tories and Labour that could prove crucial at the next election.

And Labour has calculated that it is worth taking the gamble of spelling out what it sees as the only credible way of really “stopping the boats” as Sunak has promised, and will probably fail, to do.

Source: Starmer has broken silence on immigration policy but electoral risks are clear – The Guardian

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Ottawa to refine way it counts non-permanent residents, to factor in visa processing delays 

2023/09/16 Leave a comment

Of note. An improvement, even if likely incomplete:

Ottawa will revise the way it counts non-permanent residents this month and take into account delays by the immigration authorities in processing the paperwork of international students, foreign workers and others who want to extend their stay in Canada.

Rather than presuming they have left the country 30 days after their permits and visas expire, Statistics Canada will stretch the hiatus period, counting them as still in the country for around four months while their paperwork is being processed.

The changes to its methodology follow warnings from economists that there may be around one million more non-permanent residents living in Canada than official figures suggest.

Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets, said Statscan’s system assumes that temporary resident visa holders leave the country 30 days after the expiration of their visas, even though many of them remain longer and apply to extend their stays.

Mr. Tal estimates that about 750,000 of the non-permanent residents absent from the official numbers were missed this way. Another 250,000 – mostly international students – were missed by the census, he says.

Statscan said on Thursday it has been counting non-permanent residents as having left the country 30 days after their visas expired but it believed Mr. Tal’s estimate of those missed from the figures was too high.

But it said later this month it would revise its methodology, and count non-permanent residents as having left the country at around 120 days after their visas expired. This would take into account the amount of time it is actually taking Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to process visas.

Laurent Martel, director, demography, at Statistics Canada, said because there is no exit data on the number of non-permanent residents leaving the country, it has to rely on the date at which permits to stay in Canada expire as an indication of when non-permanent residents are no longer here.

He said the processing times for people wanting to renew or extend their visas and permits fluctuate. But he said Statscan has been in close contact with IRCC and had adjusted its assumptions to accurately reflect the time it is taking officials to process the paperwork.

“For those who are in the process of renewing their permits, we have to rely on assumptions. Up to now the assumption, designed in partnership with the IRCC … it was 30 days,” he said in an interview. “What we have done recently is that we have adjusted the processing time so now we’re changing that assumption.

“It will go from 30 days to 120 days because right now it’s a better reflection of the reality currently with IRCC in terms of processing times.”

He said Statistics Canada would continue to monitor the situation and may revise its assumptions again if IRCC’s processing times change. He said the publication of the revised figures was timely and came against a backdrop of a very large increase in the number of non-permanent residents in Canada.

Mr. Tal welcomed the revised methodology, which Statistics Canada described in background briefings on Thursday.

The federal government has boosted its immigration targets in recent years, and is now aiming to admit about 500,000 new permanent residents a year by 2025. But that doesn’t include foreign students on visas or people on temporary work permits.

Statscan said it believed its figures were robust and revised figures to be produced later this month would not show an enormous difference. Mr. Martel said because it was working closely with IRCC, “we truly believe that our assumptions do make sense actually.”

He said non-permanent residents whose visas and permits had expired but had not applied to renew or extend them, and were still in Canada, were not counted in the official statistics.

A former federal economist, Henry Lotin, who is the founder of the consulting firm Integrative Trade and Economics, said he began telling Statistics Canada six years ago that its population forecasts for non-permanent residents fall short.

Like Mr. Tal, Mr. Lotin has estimated that at least one million more non-permanent residents are living in Canada than are captured in official numbers.

“They know they had to change and I appreciate they have responded to re-examine how they count non-permanent residents,” Mr. Lotin said.

But he said that there were still huge backlogs at IRCC and many non-permanent residents have waited far longer than four months to have their papers extended or renewed.

He said if 120 days is the average time non-permanent residents have to wait for the paperwork to extend their stays to be processed, many waiting far longer would still not be counted as in the country.

Mr. Lotin added that non-permanent residents waiting for extensions after the expiration of their visas and permits were legally in Canada.

Source: Ottawa to refine way it counts non-permanent residents, to factor in visa processing delays

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