Federal government should look at cap on student visas, Housing Minister Sean Fraser says

2023/08/23 Leave a comment

Looking at vs doing something about….

Raj Sharma developed what I view as a neat little test as to whether the government is serious or not:

The federal government should reassess its policy on international students and consider a cap on a program that has seen “explosive growth,” putting pressure on rental markets and driving up costs, Housing and Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser said.

The number of international students in Canada has more than doubled since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office in 2015, government data show. At the end of 2022, it sat at 807,260.

“The reality is we’ve got temporary immigration programs that were never designed to see such explosive growth in such a short period of time,” Mr. Fraser said Monday in Charlottetown. He noted that unlike the permanent resident immigration programs where the government sets targets each year, the study permit program is a temporary resident program that is driven by demand and doesn’t have a set cap.

He said the growth of the program for international students is happening in concentrated regions of Canada and is putting an “unprecedented level of demand” on the job market but even “more pronounced” demand on the housing market.

Asked if the government should cap the number of international students allowed in Canada each year, he said it’s an option Ottawa should consider.

Mr. Fraser did not provide any timeline for when Ottawa might lower the number of study permits issued. Asked if a change would be made this fall, he said Immigration Minister Marc Miller would have more to say at a later date.

Mr. Fraser spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a three-day cabinet retreat in Prince Edward Island.

The affordability crisis pushing many Canadians to the brink, in particular owing to rising housing costs, is at the top of the agenda for the meetings. The government wants to come up with new ways to make the first-time homebuyers’ market more accessible and also address rental costs that are increasingly unsustainable for lower- and middle-income households.

Postsecondary schools in Canada have relied more and more on international students for their revenue streams because their tuition fees are much higher than the fees paid by domestic students.

Mr. Fraser said the federal government needs to work with colleges and universities to ensure those institutions also take responsibility for housing the record numbers of international students they’re accepting.

He also said the government needs to more closely scrutinize private colleges, some of which he suggested were illegitimate and taking advantage of the international student permit system.

Some of those schools “exist purely to profit off the backs of vulnerable international students,” Mr. Fraser said. He added that there are some “plaza colleges” that have up to six times more students enrolled than physical space for them in their buildings.

“Not all private colleges should be treated with the same brush,” he said. “There are good private institutions out there and separating the wheat from the chaff is going to be a big focus of the work.”

As part of the federal cabinet’s focus on the housing crisis, it will hear from two of the authors of a report released last week. That report says the spike in rental housing costs is in part attributed to the growth in young adults living in Canada, which is in part linked to the rise in international students

The authors call on the government to establish an industrial strategy for housing, saying that in order to restore affordability by 2030, the country needs to build 5.8 million more housing units, of which approximately two million should be rentals.

In Ottawa, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre blamed the government for the sky-high housing costs, noting the rapid rise has happened under Mr. Trudeau’s watch.

“Now he wants Canadians to forget all that and blame immigrants; he wants to divide people to distract from his failings,” Mr. Poilievre told reporters on Parliament Hill.

Mr. Poilievre would not say whether he would lower immigration levels, and instead said that Ottawa needs to crack down on slow-moving municipal bureaucracies that make it harder to start construction projects.

In Charlottetown, the Housing Minister stressed the need to be “really, really careful” not to blame immigrants for Canada’s housing crisis. And Mr. Fraser dismissed Mr. Poilievre’s criticism entirely, saying the Conservatives are now promising what the Liberals have already campaigned on in past elections.

At a separate press conference, Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Cornwall, PEI, that immigration is a key part of the solution for Canada’s housing shortage because the construction industry needs more skilled labour.

“There’s much more we need to do on housing and we’re continuing to step up,” he said. “But we’re going to continue to be the open, welcoming, prosperous and growing country we’ve always been, because that has been something that has led to great opportunities and prosperity for all Canadians.”

Source: Federal government should look at cap on student visas, Housing Minister Sean Fraser says

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Regg Cohn: Doug Ford hits a new low by using immigrants to sell his Greenbelt scheme

2023/08/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

Doug Ford is peddling a risky strategy to save his political skin, and it’s not pretty.

It goes like this:

Unless we gut the Greenbelt, we can’t construct all the homes needed for waves of new immigrants and refugees.

And unless we build all that new housing urgently, resentment will build up rapidly against all those newcomers.

Day after day, as the premier digs himself into a deeper and deeper political hole, he repeatedly raises the alarm: If you block the bulldozing of protected lands, you risk a popular backlash.

Far better to let me unravel the Greenbelt than allow my opponents to undermine tolerance for immigrants and refugees — which will surely happen if anyone thwarts my controversial new housing plan. Unless you let me chew up those protected lands, we will all choke on a housing shortage that is somehow the fault of foreigners.

If Ford’s fanciful scenario sounds over the top, the unpleasant reality is that he has hit a new low. Just listen to how Ontario’s premier keeps drumming up support by whipping up fears of an unaffordable foreign influx:

“Failing to act threatens to erode Canadians’ so-far unwavering support for immigration,” Ford claimed on Aug. 9, the day the auditor general delivered a damning report of his government’s political interference in gifting Greenbelt lands worth $8.28 billion to “favoured” developers.

He used the same phrasing again two days later, reading from the same Teleprompter: “Failing to act threatens to erode our unwavering support for immigration.”

Again on Monday, in a highly touted speech to municipal leaders from across the province, the premier repeated his gut-the-Greenbelt-or-else warning: “Failing that would threaten to erode Canadians’ unwavering support for immigration.”

Over and over, again and again, Ford purports to be raising the alarm in his role as a guardian of social cohesion. But if tolerance is truly his goal, the premier is playing with rhetorical fire.

It’s not a dog whistle. It’s a bullhorn being blown from Ford’s bully pulpit.

The premier’s comments this week to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario were especially unseemly and unsettling. His speech brought back memories of Ford’s performance in early 2018, when he told an audience of northern mayors that he wanted to put Ontarians to work first, before ever letting in foreigners who might take their jobs.

Back then, Ford’s parochial pitch fell flat in front of a more worldly audience of northerners, who well understood the massive demand for talented foreign doctors and nurses, teachers and preachers, traders and tradespeople in their rapidly depopulating cities and towns. But it took a while for the premier to catch on.

Again in 2018, Ford turned his wrath on “illegal border-crossers,” picking a fight with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by claiming, wrongly, that “this mess was 100 per cent the result of the federal government.” It was an attempt to whip up resentment then, just as he risks fanning prejudice now.

Let’s be clear about the housing squeeze, the Greenbelt gambit and the foreign factor. No matter how many times Ford tries to connect the dots and paint by numbers, he is making it up as he goes along.

As much as Ford keeps pointing to future immigration levels as justification for his action, the truth is that the housing shortage long predates it. Even as the premier continually cites the Greenbelt giveaway as the prerequisite to building new homes, the reality is that his own housing advisory task force (and the auditor) argued the precise opposite.

In fact, there is more than enough land that can be repurposed to meet the government’s building targets without cannibalizing protected lands. In any case, the auditor’s report notes that the government had already met its specific housing targets last October, a full month before it suddenly went back to the well by targeting the Greenbelt.

There is no shortage of land in the region, just a paucity of political will and economic ambition. There is, however, a shortage of skilled labour today that will grow more acute in future, which explains the need for rising immigration targets.

Historically, there has been a remarkable political consensus on the benefits of immigration for a small population in a big country. That’s not to say that asking questions about the right level of immigration should be taboo.

But an elected leader must be mindful of his musings lest he legitimize the blaming and scapegoating of outsiders for our own internal miscalculations and misconceptions. Our housing shortage remains a homegrown problem, and our affordability challenges are not about foreigners.

The environmentally and agriculturally sensitive lands that form a protective cordon against uncontrolled urban sprawl are neither the problem nor the solution — just a distraction and a temptation. Which is why this Progressive Conservative government is playing a dangerous game by pretending we cannot afford to preserve the Greenbelt without fracturing societal tolerance toward newcomers.

This premier has vowed never to back down on his scandalous rezoning of the Greenbelt — a bonanza that is benefiting developers with billions of dollars in windfall profits. The least he could do is stop using immigrants and refugees as fodder for his speeches.

Source: Doug Ford hits a new low by using immigrants to sell his Greenbelt scheme

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Mike Moffatt: Canada’s housing crisis demands a war-time effort

2023/08/22 Leave a comment

Hard to disagree with Prof Moffatt but how realistic is that his recommendations can or will be implemented in the short-term. Much more complex that rolling out pandemic income benefits and complex jurisdictional issues and a federal government that has “Deliverology” implementation issues.

But a really good article by which government action (or inaction…) can be judged. And while I am being repetitive, need to address the demand side (permanent and temporary migration) along with the supply side:

A war-time-like effort is needed for Canada to build the 5.8 million homesthe Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) estimates need to be built by the end of 2030 to restore affordability. This goal can only be achieved through a robust industrial strategy, as a “more of the same” strategy is doomed to fail in at least three different ways.

The first failure point is speed. The CMHC target requires Canada to triple homebuilding in a short period, and we cannot scale that construction sector that quickly without innovation. The second is labour shortages. Canada needs a robust housing workforce strategy to increase the talent pool from electricians to urban planners, but that will not be sufficient. Housing construction must experience rapid productivity increases. The third is climate change. Simply tripling what we are doing now will not be compatible with Canada’s climate targets due to emissions from construction and land-use changes. Furthermore, we must ensure that what gets built is resilient to a changing climate.

A federal industrial strategy can address all of these by changing what we build and how we build to make the process faster, less labour-intensive, and more climate-friendly. The government can begin by curating a list of climate-friendly, less-labour-intensive building methods that exist today in Canada but need support and expansion financing to grow, such as mass timber, modular homes, panelization, and 3D printed homes. 

Next, a strategy is needed to create a market for these technologies. The CMHC can facilitate this by creating a free catalogue of designs as they did in the 1940s. This catalogue would include designs for various housing types incorporating these technologies, from midrise apartment buildings to student residences, with diverse designs appropriate for different climate conditions. Builders using these designs could be fast-tracked for regulatory approvals, such as ones from the CMHC, since the building design had already been approved.

Government can act as the first customer for these projects, further accelerating uptake. It can build homes to address the estimated 4,500-unit shortage for Canadian Armed Forces families. Social housing can be built with the use of an acquisition fund. Colleges and universities should be given funding and instructed to build on-campus student housing to support a rapidly growing population of international students or risk losing their status as designated learning institutions, which would eliminate their ability to bring in those international students.

Tweaks to the tax system will be needed to help make these projects viable, from removing the HST on purpose-built rental construction to reintroducing accelerated capital costprovisions. The approvals process at all orders of government must be streamlined, and agencies must be staffed up to address backlogs, such as in the CMHC’s MLI Select program. Building codes will need to be amended to be compatible with these technologies, and zoning codes will need to be amended to allow for more as-of-right construction, such as in New Zealand, where six-story apartment buildings are permissible as-of-right within 800 metres of any transit station.

The federal government cannot alter municipal zoning codes, but it can offer incentives to do so. It could set up a set of minimum standards (call it a National Zoning Code), and any municipality that altered its zoning code to be compliant could be given one-time per-capita funding to spend on infrastructure construction and maintenance, no other strings attached. For example, a $200 per-capita fund would give the City of Toronto an additional $600 million to upgrade infrastructure and cost the federal government a maximum of $8 billion should every municipality in Canada sign-up. It could also follow Australia’s lead, which is giving states an extra $15,000 for every home built over a target. These incentives would not only cause provinces and municipalities to approve more homes, but they would also give them the infrastructure funding holding up current homebuilding. 

We should view this strategy as an investment, not a cost, as the economic opportunities are enormous. New housing will allow workers to live closer to opportunities, and scaling up these technologies creates manufacturing jobs across Canada and new products to export worldwide.

The key to this industrial strategy working is speed. The federal government must avoid setting up new approvals processes and micromanaging the system. Instead, it should set straightforward standards, and as long as those standards are met, approvals should be granted and payments made. New infrastructure funding to municipalities should not be on a project application basis, as it slows the process, and cities know best what they need.

We are in a crisis, and a war-time-like effort is needed. The federal government must prioritize speed and act now.

Source: Mike Moffatt: Canada’s housing crisis demands a war-time effort

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Le débat sur les cibles d’immigration suscite l’engouement

2023/08/22 Leave a comment

Meanwhile in Quebec:

La consultation publique sur les cibles d’immigration qui aura lieu à la mi-septembre suscite un engouement sans précédent : 72 mémoires ont été déposés, soit plus du double que lors de la consultation précédente, il y a quatre ans, a appris Le Devoir.

Ce grand intérêt donne du fil à retordre au ministère de l’Immigration, qui doit organiser le calendrier pour entendre en un mois et demi une soixantaine d’individus et organismes ayant demandé à prendre la parole en commission parlementaire.

La période de dépôt des mémoires, qui devait se terminer le 11 août dernier, a été légèrement étirée pour quelques retardataires. En date du 17 août, la Commission des relations avec les citoyens avait reçu 72 mémoires venant de divers individus et organismes. Parmi eux, 66 ont demandé à intervenir lors d’audiences publiques. À cela s’ajoute une demande d’intervention non accompagnée d’un mémoire.

« On se réjouit de l’engouement que notre approche équilibrée de l’immigration permanente suscite dans la société québécoise », a déclaré Alexandre Lahaie, l’attaché de presse de la ministre Christine Fréchette. Or, la loi exige que la Planification pluriannuelle de l’immigration 2024-2027 soit déposée avant le 1er novembre, ce qui laisse au ministère à peine un mois et demi pour entendre tous les intervenants, qui pourront commencer à s’exprimer à l’ouverture des audiences, le 12 septembre prochain.

« Il y a des discussions avec les groupes parlementaires pour optimiser le déroulement de la consultation », a concédé M. Lahaie.

En mai dernier, le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec a soumis au débat deux scénarios. L’un prône le statu quo, soit le maintien des cibles actuelles de 50 000 nouveaux arrivants. L’autre propose une hausse de 10 000, ce qui ferait grimper les seuils à 60 000 d’ici 2027. Par le biais d’un projet de règlement, le gouvernement a d’ailleurs exigé que l’ensemble des immigrants économiques admis au Québec parlent français.

Plaidoyers pour plus d’immigrants

Le président-directeur général de la Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec (FCCQ), Charles Milliard, se réjouit lui aussi de voir une aussi grande participation aux consultations publiques en immigration. « C’est tant mieux ! C’est un bien meilleur forum qu’une campagne électorale pour en parler. Je pense qu’il y aura un peu moins de raccourcis et d’effets de toge », a-t-il soutenu.

Toutefois, même s’il est d’avis qu’il faut maximiser l’immigration francophone, il croit que le Québec ne peut pas non plus se priver de « talents exceptionnels » pour une question de langue. « On a besoin d’aller chercher d’autres expertises que la langue », souligne-t-il.

Dans son mémoire déposé en prévision des consultations débutant le 12 septembre, la FCCQ dit appuyer une plus grande immigration « en français, en région, en nombre suffisant et en bas de six mois d’attente », résume M. Milliard.

Et pour le p.-d.g., il est nécessaire de mesurer la capacité d’accueil et d’intégration au moyen de données probantes, qui ne laisseront plus de place à l’interprétation. « J’entends des gens qui disent qu’il faut dépolitiser le débat sur l’immigration. On peut le souhaiter, mais ça n’arrivera pas. Sauf qu’on peut objectiver le tableau de bord et prendre des décisions en fonction de ça. »

La FCCQ croit que chacune des régions du Québec devrait déterminer le nombre de places en service de garde, de logements, d’infrastructures culturelles et médicales, etc. « Ensuite, on additionne les 17 régions administratives du Québec, et le chiffre qu’on va obtenir va être beaucoup moins débattable », avance M. Milliard.

Un « faux débat » de chiffres ?

Représentant une centaine de membres, la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI) fait valoir que le débat sur les seuils est un « faux débat ».

Étant donné qu’il y a environ 300 000 personnes à statut temporaire au Québec, dont plusieurs qui ont déjà postulé pour la résidence permanente, et que ce sont ces personnes qui vont bénéficier des places dans les seuils établis par Québec, pourquoi se livrer à un débat de chiffres ? demande Stephan Reichhold, directeur général de la TCRI.

« Que ce soit 50 000, 60 000 ou 70 000, c’est absurde de parler de chiffres », car les immigrants qui seront admis au cours des prochaines années sont déjà ici, logés et en emploi, même que plusieurs parlent français, poursuit-il. M. Reichhold se demande ainsi pourquoi on souhaite les comptabiliser dans les cibles. « Ce qu’on demande, c’est que les travailleurs et les réfugiés, notamment ceux reconnus sur place [dans la catégorie humanitaire], soient hors cible, comme ce sera le cas pour les étudiants étrangers. »

Le gouvernement avait effectivement annoncé en mai qu’il ne fixerait pas de plafond pour l’accueil de diplômés passés par le Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ), qui subit par ailleurs une réforme. Donc aux 60 000 immigrants admis s’ajouteraient en réalité quelques milliers de diplômés du PEQ.

La TCRI souhaite par ailleurs profiter des consultations publiques en immigration pour remettre les projecteurs sur la question de l’immigration humanitaire, sa clientèle principale. « On a l’impression qu’on va être les seuls à en parler. Mais ce qui est proposé est une catastrophe. Maintenir les niveaux de 2019 pour l’immigration humanitaire, ça n’a aucun sens. »

Selon les scénarios du gouvernement du Québec, à peine 8000 places sont accordées à cette catégorie d’immigration, bien que le nombre de personnes s’y qualifiant soit en hausse, notamment en raison des arrivées par le chemin Roxham.

Source: Le débat sur les cibles d’immigration suscite l’engouement

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Watt: The Liberals tied immigration to housing: they need to prove it can work

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

But given the time lags involved in building new houses, even assuming the federal government provides funding, most municipal zoning restrictions are relaxed and service fees reduced where appropriate, any concrete results in terms of “shovels in the ground” will take a few years.

In other words, after the election. The federal and provincial (save Quebec) government fixation on increasing immigration, temporary and permanent, while largely ignoring the impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure, will deservedly come back to haunt the Liberal government if no change occurs to planned permanent immigration levels and unrestricted temporary migration (students and workers):

The revamped Liberal cabinet retreats to Prince Edward Island this week while their party languishes in polling and the Conservatives surge. Underestimate Trudeau at your peril, perhaps, but something seems to have become particularly challenging.

While it is difficult to put your finger on just what that something is, it has become clear that much of that something is Canada’s housing crisis.

Apart from the PM himself, perhaps no one feels the heat on the way to Charlottetown more than Sean Fraser, the new housing minister. Fraser got this job because the Liberals have embarked on a strategy to tie immigration (Fraser previously led this portfolio) inexorably to housing, supposedly using newly arrived skilled labour to build the houses we desperately need.

All well and good, but it doesn’t seem Canadians are having any of it. The problem is, most Canadians aren’t convinced this works — and with house prices swelling, interest rates rising, and immigration continuing exponentially, I fear by combining these issues so closely the Liberals risk sparking a major backlash against their record-setting immigration plans.

Fraser has outlined his answer to the conundrum: add more supply through incentives to local governments and increase immigration rates to, in part, provide the labour required for this.

The new housing minister tackles this after the prime minister bluntly argued, “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility.” On cleanup duty, Fraser later stated the federal government should be more active in developing and enacting housing policy, as it once was.

This, of course, is the right approach. Nevertheless, Fraser’s major challenge will be convincing Canadians that high immigration levels are good when many can’t afford homes.

This week, videos of Canadians tearily lamenting the cost of living went viral. The narrative that, after eight years in office, this government has left many — the very ones they promised to fight for — behind is beginning to set like cement.

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has taken the government to task on housing with brutal effectiveness. He has managed to own this rhetorical stance while still supporting immigration — making the disconnect between the Liberal’s immigration policy and inaction on housing even harder to ignore.

Under Fraser’s oversight, immigration increased exponentially but integration remained plagued with accreditation issues and failed to correspond with housing supply: the national housing strategy has only resulted in just over 100,000 homes. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation determined 5.8 million more are needed over the next decade. In 2022, our population grew by over a million.

The Bank of Canada also acknowledged recently that immigration drives up housing demand. As the problem becomes more acute, this is where people will focus — not on the “mirage of economic prosperity” immigration otherwise contributes to.

The Liberals, if they are to have any hope of winning the next election, must convince Canadians immigration is in their near-term interests and that it will result in more houses being built. That’s a tall order when voters are being priced out of even the remotest dream of owning a home. It’s a disconnect that also dissuades immigrants from wanting to come here in the first place.

By failing to acknowledge this and rectify the integration issues in our immigration system so newcomers can positively contribute to the housing supply, the Liberals risk allowing the social cohesion they so value to fray. And when that starts, the uniquely Canadian support for significant levels of immigration will fray with it.

That would be a terrible shame. No one needs a lecture on the fundamental role immigration has played in our past and the crucial role it will play in our future — much less that it is simply right.

What isn’t right is an approach to this issue driven by complacency and inaction rather than by a fundamental commitment — not just to policy statements but to actually building new homes.

Source: The Liberals tied immigration to housing: they need to prove it can work

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

Star Editorial: Ottawa is changing its temporary foreign worker program. It’s not clear this will help workers

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

Related editorial on the Recognized Employer Pilot along with advocating for open work permits to reduce abuse:

In early 2020, many Canadians noticed the once lush produce sections of their grocery stores were increasingly barren.

What many Canadians didn’t notice is the reason for the absence of fresh fruits and vegetables: COVID-19 outbreaks among migrant farm workers across Canada, including in southern Ontario.

The outbreaks, and their effect on food supply, reveal the value and vulnerability of the migrant workers, many of whom are hired through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

The program, which is set to be altered this September, permits employers to hire foreign workers when no qualified Canadians are available. The initiative has proven wildly popular, and successful applications have increased exponentially in recent years. But so too have accusations of abuse, of workers enduring unsafe workplace and living conditions.

Temporary labourers frequently work long hours for low pay and limited benefits, and they often live in employer-supplied, cramped quarters replete with shared sleeping and washroom facilities — the very conditions that increase the risk of infectious disease outbreaks and other health threats.

Consequently, for the welfare of the workers Ottawa needs to ensure that changing the program doesn’t increase the abuse that has long plagued the regime.

For its part, the federal government insists the alteration, known as the Recognized Employer Pilot, will do the opposite. According to Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault, the pilot will reduce the administrative burden on employers who “demonstrate the highest level of protection for workers,” and allow them to receive permits lasting three years, rather than the current 18 months. The change will come first to employers in agriculture, then to all others starting in January.

Rewarding responsible employers could help to protect both workers and ease the paperwork, and Ottawa has also promised to conduct more rigorous assessments before permits are issued. But three years is a long time, long enough for workplace and living conditions to deteriorate dramatically.

Government inspectors do monitor employers’ compliance with regulations, but that oversight has itself been substandard. In response to the COVID outbreaks among farm workers, federal Auditor General Karen Hogan issued a scathing report accusing inspectors of failing to ensure employers followed regulations.

If the pilot program is to be successful, then, it must be accompanied by improved, vigilant monitoring of employers’ compliance with safety standards throughout the three-year period.

That won’t, however, eliminate the problem that makes abuse possible: The power imbalance between employers and workers. That is the product of two factors — employer-specific work permits, and the tenuous immigration status of workers.

Employer-specific permits require workers to remain with the employer who hired them, which means some must make the impossible choice of suffering abuse or unemployment.

Aware of this, Ottawa introduced the Vulnerable Worker Open Work Permit program, which can grant abused workers a permit that allows them to move to a different employer. But the worker must first complain, something many are loath to do for fear of deportation or reprisals for employers.

In any case, by limiting open permits to those who have faced abuse, the program essentially treats abuse as a kind of hazing, an initiation rite workers must endure if they’re to gain entry to the exclusive club of open permit holders.

In contrast, if Ottawa granted open permits to all temporary workers, it would help to empower them as they could choose their employers — and abusive employers would have trouble retaining talent unless they cleaned up their act.

As for immigration status, the Star reported that workers pay income tax and employment insurance and contribute to the Canada Pension Plan, yet most remain “guests” in the country.

Most workers therefore live under constant fear of deportation, some for decades, which eliminates what little leverage they have with employers. Opening up new pathways for permanent residence would, on the other hand, help to equalize the relationship between employers and workers.

And when workers’ welfare and Canada’s food system are on the line, an equal relationship is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

Source: Ottawa is changing its temporary foreign worker program. It’s not clear this will help workers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

ICYMI: Canada plans new temporary foreign workers program to give ‘trusted’ employers quicker access

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

Of note, including the cautions by Rupa Banerjee and Syed Hussan:

The federal government is rolling out a “trusted employer program” that is meant to reduce red tape and make it easier for Canadian employers to bring in temporary foreign workers.

Officials say the Recognized Employer Pilot program will be open for applications as soon as September, first to employers in agriculture, then to all others starting in January.

It will provide employers that have “a history of complying with program requirements” with a permit to usher in foreign workers that’s good for three years, without the need to reapply within that period.

But experts and advocates are expressing some concerns over the level of scrutiny that will be in place to ensure workers are being treated well, as well as the economic conditions into which Canada will be bringing more temporary workers: a crisis of affordable housing, rising interest rates and high inflation.

The new measures come amid skyrocketing numbers of temporary foreign workers in Canada.

“There’s an overreliance on temporary workers at the detriment of Canadian workers, and in particular, newcomers,” said Toronto Metropolitan University professor Rupa Banerjee, Canada Research Chair of economic inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship.

“It also really shows how much the temporary foreign worker program is really about responding to employer demand. The employer lobby really is that strong.”

Currently, employers must undergo what’s known as labour market impact assessment (LMIA), every time they hire workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to ensure there’s a need to fill the job. They must receive a positive assessment from Employment and Social Development Canada in order to hire the foreign workers.

The number of temporary foreign worker positions approved through an LMIA annually have skyrocketed from 89,416 in 2015 to 221,933 last year, according to federal data.

Those numbers don’t include the hundreds of thousands of international students and graduates who have open-work permits, and those who arrive from more than two dozen countries that have shared mobility agreements with Canada.

“The Recognized Employer Pilot will cut red tape for eligible employers, who demonstrate the highest level of protection for workers, and make it easier for them to access the labour they need to fill jobs that are essential to Canada’s economy and food security,” Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault said in a statement Tuesday.

Applications to the pilot program, which has a budget of $29.3 million over three years, will close next September.

To qualify, employers must have received a minimum of three positive LMIAs for the same occupation over the past five years from a list of occupations that have been designated as in-shortage.

Officials said employers will be subject to a more rigorous upfront assessment process than they currently undergo, based on their history and track record with the program, ensuring that it “targets employers with the best recruitment practices.”

Canada, like other countries, has been increasingly relying on foreign workers to address labour and skills shortages despite criticisms that the workers’ precarious immigration status has exposed them to abuse and exploitation by employers.

Foreign workers, especially those in low-skill, low-wage jobs, have reported owed wages and unpaid overtime, and complained about unsafe work conditions and a lack of employment standard enforcement.

“Things like that easily get swept under the radar. And an employer could easily remain on the trusted employer list while still engaging in, sort of, very mundane and regular forms of exploitation to workers,” Banerjee said.

“Without a lot of really careful oversight and auditing, it’s very easy to allow the kinds of abuses and exploitations that exist very routinely to go under the radar and get worse because it’ll be just easier to get more and more people in.”

Further facilitating the entry of migrant workers will create a more “flexible” labour force for employers but may further strain the tight housing market, access to health care and even the school system.

“Not only is it a concern of the workers themselves, but the level of scrutiny that needs to be put into place to ensure that this is a win-win, not just a win or lose,” said Banerjee.

“There’s a bigger story of, kind of, what does this mean for Canadian society and the ability to actually absorb these extra temporary foreign workers.”

Federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay said the new pilot will help secure Canada’s food supply chain.

“From Canada’s farm fields to our grocery stores, workers throughout the food supply chain provide an essential service,” he said. “It is vital that Canadian employers, including farmers and food processors, are able to hire workers who are critical to food production and food security in Canada.”

Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said what will matter is how employers are scrutinized.

“It’s not possible to identify good employers based on complaints or inspections. Workers don’t complain because, when workers complain, they face deportation, eviction, homelessness, lack of work and other reprisals from employers,” said Hussan.

“Employers want quicker access to temporary foreign workers because temporary foreign workers have the least rights.”

Boissonnault said the government over the past few years has strengthened protection of migrant workers by preventing employers from charging recruitment fees, providing workers with information about their rights and launching a tip line for complaints.

“These are steps in the right direction in demonstrating that we take our responsibility seriously,” Boissonnault told reporters.

Source: Canada plans new temporary foreign workers program to give ‘trusted’ employers quicker access

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Century Initiative on auto-pilot: Canada’s future prosperity, quality of life, and security depend on population growth.

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

Tide continues to turn against the Century Initiative’s focus (fixation?) on population growth despite the efforts to frame as “growing well” as recent commentary in a variety of media attest.

Most notably, the Globe having hosted a number of CI events in the past has weekly articles (if not more frequently) criticizing the government’s focus on population growth from permanent and temporary migrants.

The specific recommendations are self-serving.

  • Housing and other infrastructure cannot be ensured in the short-to-medium term given time lags;
  • Social infrastructure also has time lags and why highlight childcare-it is healthcare where the current crunch is greatest;
  • I suppose meet existing targets on permanent immigration is better than arguing for further increases but…;
  • Given the large number of temporary residents already transitioning to permanent residency (about 50 percent of new permanent residents are former temporary residents), hard to understand its reference to improving planning for temporary residents given there is none.

Nothing in their submission refers to productivity and economic growth (per capita GDP).

While not surprising, just as the government has an opportunity (and obligation IMO) to pivot to more reasonable immigration policies and targets, CI itself needs to take stock of the realities on the ground and of political discourse and move beyond the platitude of “growing well.”

This submission fails on both counts, mirroring the government’s approach to date:

Canada’s future prosperity, quality of life, and security depend on population growth.

Century Initiative believes that the federal government should plan and invest for a growing population with a focus on growing well – ensuring that the benefits of population growth are broadly shared by all Canadians. 

To this end, our written submission for the 2024 pre-budget consultation process is focused on ensuring that the federal government take action to enable Canada’s long-term economic and social prosperity by responsibly growing the population. Century Initiative recommends that the federal government adopt the following evidence-based policy measures, aligned with the findings of our 3rd annual National Scorecard on Canada’s Growth and Prosperity:

  • Recommendation #1: Work with provincial, territorial and municipal governments to ensure more public and private investment in housing and other physical infrastructure needed to support a growing population.
  • Recommendation #2: Invest in social infrastructure – particularly child care – that will support families and support a growing population.
  • Recommendation #3: Meet existing immigration targets as committed in the 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan, which would mean maintaining admissions within a target range of 1.15 per cent to 1.25 per cent of the population annually.
  • Recommendation #4: Improve settlement services for temporary residents, increase opportunities for temporary residents to transition to permanent residence, and improve the process of planning for temporary resident admissions.

Source: Century Initiative: Canada’s future prosperity, quality of life, and security depend on population growth.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Keller: The Liberals have broken Canada’s immigration system

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

The Globe continues its transition from an immigration booster, hosting Century Initiative events, to one of the more trenchant critics of current policies, with weekly if not more frequent negative and well argued commentary:

Canada’s immigration system used to be the envy of the world.

Note my use of the past tense.

To appreciate what was good about Canada’s previous immigration strategy – the one followed until recently through governments Progressive Conservative, Conservative and Liberal – contrast it with the dysfunction of our friends down south.

Since the 1980s, the United States has had relatively low legal immigration compared with Canada. The U.S. also wasn’t particularly focused on admitting the highly educated and highly skilled. And there was an unofficial immigration stream – called illegal immigration or undocumented immigration, depending on one’s politics – that involved millions of people, most in low-skill, low-wage jobs.

In 2015, when the Trudeau Liberals came into office, Canada was already a high-immigration country, with a rate two-and-a-half times higher than the U.S. More importantly, Canada was a smart immigration country, with immigration selection built around the points system, which sent educated, skilled, young immigrants to the front of the line.

Both countries’ immigration had long been a mix of family reunification, refugees and economic immigrants, but Canada put the accent on the latter. Within the economic stream, our points system put the emphasis on people who were more educated or skilled than the average Canadian, and whose contribution could boost not just gross domestic product, but GDP per capita.

A skilled immigrant doesn’t just grow the size of the economic pie. They’re likely to grow it at a rate greater than the rising number of forks in the pie.

As for the U.S., it stood out for having a large pool of permanently temporary immigrants, most filling low-wage jobs. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 12 million people classified as illegal aliens in the country.

Canada’s own count was unclear, but clearly far lower.

And that was at least partly because of another bipartisan Canadian policy choice. This country had long devoted considerable efforts to making it hard to enter or remain in Canada without permission. People from countries whose citizens had a record of overstaying tourist visas found it extremely difficult to get a tourist visa.

A 2017 World Economic Forum survey ranked Canada as having among the world’s most stringent travel visa rules, placing us at 120th out of 136 countries. But that this was a feature of the Canadian system, not a bug.

We had a wider door than the U.S., yet taller walls. The welcome mat and the walls were complimentary, not contradictory. Canada was a high immigration country with unusually high public support for immigration. Why? Because the manner, scale, makeup and regularity of immigration clearly benefitted Canada, and Canadians.

Our immigration approach was successful, stable and boring.

In 2013, the U.S. Senate passed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act. The bill died in the House of Representatives because the Republican leadership refused to take it up – they wanted to campaign against illegal immigration, not fix it – but in the Senate it was supported by the entire Democratic caucus, plus a third of Republicans.

The legislation proposed a points system to focus admissions on skilled immigrants; more opportunities for visa students who earned advanced degrees in science, technology and engineering to remain in the U.S.; and strong measures to discourage illegal immigration.

Had it become law, it would have given the U.S. a more Canadian-style immigration system.

A lot has changed over the past decade. But not so much in the U.S.

Since 2015, the Trudeau government – with the co-operation of the provinces, educational institutions and business – has remade our immigration system. Without anyone noticing, and without public debate, it has become more American.

What gets most talked about most – and what isn’t American – is how Canadian immigration levels that had been stable for a generation are being steadily increased. By 2025, this country will be welcoming half a million new Canadians a year, and rising, double the number of a decade earlier.

But the Liberals have brought about a much bigger and little-noticed revolution in the shadow immigration system’s various temporary foreign worker streams – whose accent is on admitting people for low-skill, low-wage, low productivity jobs. Just like the shadow immigration system in the U.S.

Canada’s streams of temporary admissions are now larger than traditional immigration, and growing fast.

I’ve recently written about how hard it is for doctors – even Canadian graduates of overseas medical school – to get permission to work in Canada. The supply of these highly-educated professionals is greatly restricted.

At the same time, however, the Liberal government has gone to extraordinary lengths to give employers a nearly unlimited supply of low-wage workers, with many of those now arriving via the education visa stream. Those visas used to be entirely about education, but many schools now appear to be partly or even mostly peddling something else, namely the opportunity to reside and work in Canada, usually in a low-wage job.

More on this, and how to fix it, next week.

Source: Opinion: The Liberals have broken Canada’s immigration system

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Gerson: Want to ease Canada’s housing crisis? Let’s start by being responsible about international student visas

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

Gerson nails it. But goes beyond international students given housing and other pressures by increasing numbers temporary foreign workers and permanent residents:

Desperate calls by schools to urge local homeowners to rent out their rooms; students paying $650 a month to live three-to-a room in college towns boasting monthly rents upward of $2,000; a viral TikTok video purports to show an international student living under a bridge in Scarborough, Ont.

Housing is a complicated issue. It will take co-ordination, cash, and time to fix. But in the short term, there is at least one glaringly obvious – if surely controversial – way to help ease the challenge of finding affordable rental accommodation: We need to stop issuing so many international student visas.

Of course, this is not going to solve the housing problem in and of itself. But anybody who thinks that our desire to bring in as many fruitful international students as possible isn’t contributing to the housing crunch hasn’t looked at the figures lately.

Canada was home to more than 800,000 international students as of the end of last year. That number, which began growing under the Conservatives, has continued to increase at an extraordinary pace since the Liberals took office; it has roughly doubled since 2015.

International students, who actually dwarf the population of temporary foreign workers at the moment, comprise about 17 percent of university enrolment in this country. Further, the majority of those students are opting for schools where housing is exceptionally expensive and difficult to find – namely, in big cities in Ontario and British Columbia.

Why this is happening is fairly obvious. Firstly, the federal government is trying to use study as a method of attracting top international talent. Between 2010 and 2016, 47 per cent of international students who graduated from a Canadian postsecondary institution stayed in Canada.

Secondly, international students are cash cows. Tuition fees for domestic students are regulated by provincial governments. Not so for their international counterparts, which makes bringing in foreign learners incredibly lucrative for perpetually cash-strapped schools and universities. (The real growth is increasingly not just from universities, but also from private colleges.)

And these visas don’t come with anything else – that is, the schools don’t need to provide housing for the students they bring in. Student housing is annoying and expensive and a pain to manage, and most schools know that, which is why they are not particularly keen to do it. That’s why Canada’s stock of purpose-built student housing lags dramatically behind our counterparts in the United States and Europe.

This isn’t an isolated problem, either. These kids need to live somewhere, and their desperation ripples through the broader housing market, driving up demand for affordable rentals and even single-family housing.

I spoke recently with Mike Moffatt at the Richard Ivey School of Business, and he provided me with some research on the subject – including links to his own recently published report offering advice to governments on how to address the housing crisis.

Ontario alone needs to build 1.5 million housing units by 2031 to keep up with expected growth led by immigration and, yes, by international students. (The province is behind on its commitment to do so.)

And while there will be no quick fix, no silver bullet – at least one answer is painfully obvious, no?

Granting an ever-growing number of student visas to people we know will struggle to find housing is unethical at best and fraudulent at worst.

We need to dramatically cut the number of student visas, especially for private colleges, some of which are offering a quality of education that is less than desirable. We then need to tie student visas to housing availability – that is, a university shouldn’t be allowed to take on more international students than it can house in that community, for the duration of that person’s time studying in Canada. And we need to ensure schools don’t respond to this edict by pushing out less profitable domestic students, which only displaces the problem from one class of student to another.

That means we need to incentivize building more affordable rental housing. There will be a role for federal and provincial governments in this effort, perhaps in co-ordination with the private sector, to address this critical need as quickly as possible.

But I don’t see any way to address this problem unless we temporarily curtail the number of international students. The federal government needs to become far more restrictive about that particular avenue for immigration, and quickly.

If that edict seems extreme, I would remind everybody that reducing international student visas to a more manageable baseline would actually be among the easier levers to pull to relieve pressure in our housing market. Everything else from here on in is going to get much more difficult.

Jen Gerson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Source: Want to ease Canada’s housing crisis? Let’s start by being responsible about international student visas

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →