Haitian migrant’s death reignites debate over Quebec’s Roxham Road border crossing

2023/01/17 Leave a comment

The death of a Haitian migrant near Quebec’s Roxham Road has reignited a debate in the province about how to respond to an increase in asylum seekers entering the country through the irregular border crossing.

The body of Fritznel Richard, 44, was found on Jan. 5 in a wooded area near the popular unofficial entry point, about an hour’s drive south of Montreal. Provincial police said he was trying to reach family in the United States, and that he likely died of hypothermia after becoming lost.

A migrant’s advocacy group that is helping the family said Mr. Richard was originally from Haiti, had entered Canada through Roxham Road at an unknown time, and had been struggling to obtain a work permit. “Unfortunately, he was in a precarious situation and was not able to make ends meet,” said Hady Anne, a spokesperson for Solidarity Across Borders.

Hélène Gravel, who lives next to the U.S. border on Roxham Road, said that in the past few months, she and her neighbours have seen more people crossing through the forest near her house to get to the U.S., including families.

“Even if there aren’t many of them, we’re not going to wait for them to die in the forest to do something,” she said.

Mr. Richard’s death has placed a renewed spotlight on Roxham Road’s unofficial border crossing, at which tens of thousands of migrants have entered Canada in recent years, largely because of the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S. The long-standing pact means that border agents from each country must turn away asylum seekers from the other if they present themselves at official land border crossings.

The unassuming cul-de-sac near the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., customs has become an “official nonofficial point of entry” as a result, said Christina Clark-Kazak, associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs.

Concrete blocks and rocks block roads on both sides of the border in the sparsely populated area. A narrow gravel path and signs with information about the asylum-seeking process lead migrants from the U.S. into RCMP installations.

The RCMP intercepted 34,478 asylum seekers who did not use official ports of entry to enter Quebec between January and November of 2022, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data, compared to just 316 in the rest of the country.

Federal opposition parties have repeatedly called for a review of the Safe Third Country Agreement, but anxiety about the situation has been sharpest in Quebec.

“The federal government must renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States as soon as possible,” said Ewan Sauves, spokesperson for Premier François Legault.

“There is an urgent need to act on Roxham Road,” said Mr. Sauves, adding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “must ensure that the other provinces take charge of the proportion of asylum seekers that is theirs. It is not fair that it is only Quebec that has to manage this.”

Quebec is “concerned” about the increase in asylum applications since 2017 and its “ability to welcome these people with dignity and provide them with adequate services,” said Quebec Ministry of Immigration spokesperson Arianne Méthot.

The Safe Third Country Agreement is “an important tool,” said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald, adding that modernizing the agreement “has been a priority for the government for several years.” He did not provide details “due to the sensitive nature of our bilateral discussions with the U.S.”

Mr. MacDonald also pointed out that, in 2021-22, Quebec received over $697-million in compensation from the federal government to “provide settlement and integration services in the province.”

Frédéric Bastien, a prominent nationalist author and former Parti Québécois leadership candidate, filed a private prosecution against the Prime Minister on Jan. 12 accusing Mr. Trudeau of violating Canadian law by encouraging “illegal” border crossings.

In his court filing, Mr. Bastien cites a tweet by Mr. Trudeau from 2017 welcoming refugees to Canada, which read, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith.” The Prime Minister issued the message shortly after then-U.S. president Donald Trump banned travel to the U.S. from several majority-Muslim countries.

In an interview, Mr. Bastien also noted that the Trudeau government has erected facilities at Roxham Road that include instructions on how to apply for asylum.

“If this is not encouraging migrants to enter through Roxham Road I don’t know what is,” he said.

Public opinion appears to be on his side. Justice for Quebec, an organization led by Mr. Bastien, commissioned a poll late last year showing that 68 per cent of Quebeckers wanted to “close” the border crossing. A survey last spring by the respected polling firm Leger – commissioned by the Legault government and obtained by the Journal de Montréal newspaper – put the figure at 60 per cent.

But “stricter border enforcement policies correlate with increases in riskier crossings to evade authorities, and increases in tragic deaths” along borders globally, said Alison Mountz, professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration.

Ms. Gravel, who sees countless migrant buses and RCMP vehicles go by her property every day on Roxham Road, said that the flow is currently “very well-managed.” The RCMP “takes care of it,” she said.

And closing the passage “is not a solution,” said Mr. Anne, of Solidarity Across Borders. “Do you think that [the closing of] Roxham Road will stop migrants?” The group advocates for open borders and the termination of the Safe Third Country Agreement so that asylum seekers could go through regular customs to cross both ways.

He blames the agreement and the long wait for a work permit for Mr. Richard’s death, adding that he knows of several other people in the same situation. “Migrants are not looking for help, they want to work,” he said.

Source: Haitian migrant’s death reignites debate over Quebec’s Roxham Road border crossing

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Why Canada’s plan to bring in 1.45 million permanent residents won’t fix the labour shortage

2023/01/16 Leave a comment

Of note, pretty hard hitting:

With a master’s degree in nursing and six years of experience teaching nursing students in the Philippines, Rodolfo Lastimosa Jr. figured he’d quickly get a licence to work as a registered nurse in Canada.

In September, he passed his RN exam in Ontario — 11 years after arriving in this country.

Upon coming here, his overseas credentials had been “downgraded.” He found he had to work as a live-in caregiver while qualifying to become a practical nurse (RPN), then return to school for yet another bachelor’s degree in nursing.

“There was just no other way for me but to go back to school,” says Lastimosa, a 43-year-old living in Toronto, who cared for a man with dementia and later worked for a home-care health agency while juggling his studies, costly upgrading courses and qualifying exams.

At one point, Lastimosa, living paycheque to paycheque while also financially supporting his family back home, didn’t have the money for transit fare. But he says his drive pushed him through all the necessary hoops to return to his practice.

“It was tough and I had to be strong,” says Lastimosa. “My goal was always to be an RN in Canada to help others. It took me a while, but I’m proud of myself.”

Lastimosa’s story may be extreme, but many newcomers in Canada today still struggle to get equivalent work in their fields of expertise, often due to credential-recognition issues.

That’s despite the fact that the country is facing a major shortage of workers.

The latest Statistics Canada data showed 991,000 Canadian jobs remained unfilled in the third quarter of 2022; workers were particularly lacking in construction, manufacturing, and accommodation and food services.

Of those vacancies, 177,780 were in managerial positions and professions that must have a university education; 288,750 in occupations that needed a college diploma or apprenticeship training; 319,350 in jobs that required a high-school education and job-specific training; and 202,456 were in jobs considered low-skill.

One of the solutions the federal government has put forward to deal with the shortage is to raise the immigration level. Over the next three years, Canada plans to make 1.45 million people new permanent residents of this country — on top of bringing in an unchecked number of temporary foreign workers.

But is simply increasing our intake going to do the job? What future awaits these new permanent residents? Will those arriving find meaningful work to let them succeed in their new lives? And is this country bringing in the people its labour market truly needs?

The answers to such questions are elusive, and wrapped in an at-times confusing immigration system that critics say is in serious need of an overhaul.

A smart, overqualified workforce

Canada has the most educated workforce in the G7, largely thanks to highly educated permanent residents.

In 2021, immigrants accounted for more than half of the working-age population with a doctorate and master’s degree, or a degree in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or optometry, as well as 39.1 per cent of those with a bachelor’s degree.

Yet one in four immigrants with a university degree worked at a job that typically requires a high school education or less. That’s 2.5 times more than the “overqualification rate” of Canadian-born degree holders.

“How do we actually admit these people and ensure that not just they, but also the people who’ve come over the last 10 years, don’t completely become an underclass?” asks Toronto Metropolitan University professor Rupa Banerjee, Canada Research Chair of economic inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship of Canada’s immigrants. 

“That’s what I worry about.”

Over the past 20 years, Canadian governments have invested in credential assessments, career-bridge training and other programs to help skilled permanent residents integrate into the workforce.

Yet between 2001 and 2016, the percentage of university-educated immigrants in highly skilled jobs in Canada fell from 46 per cent to 38 per cent, statistics show.

“So where are we after 20 years? We used to say ‘Doctors are driving cabs,’ but now we say, sometimes jokingly, ‘Doctors are driving Ubers,’” says Shamira Madhany, a former assistant deputy minister in Ontario with extensive experience working with licensing bodies, settlement agencies and higher education sectors.

“You have a million jobs to fill and you need immigrants, but if their prior skills and experience is not recognized, you’re going to end up in the same situation.”

There are those for whom deskilling hasn’t been as much of an issue. Former international graduates of Canadian institutions and temporary foreign workers already have Canadian education and work experiences when they obtain permanent residence. Among the permanent residents who came for economic reasons who landed in 2020, about 67 per cent had worked in Canada before immigration, an increase from 12 per cent in 2000 and 33 per cent in 2010. 

Their prior Canadian experience helps boost first-year earnings of permanent residents, when and if they successfully transition from their status as temporary foreign workers. First-year earnings of permanent residents in the economic class have risen by 39 per cent.

The two halves of Canada’s immigration system

When it comes to selecting skilled immigrants, Canada relies on a points system based on age, language proficiency, education levels and work experience. Applicants must have a background in listed qualifying occupations to enter the talent pool. 

It’s a system that excludes those in lower-skilled and lower-wage jobs; that’s led to another part of the problem. Canada’s immigration system is divided, observers say — there are two halves that need to be aligned.

When employers want those low-skilled workers, the system turns messy.

“The federal economic immigration programs ignore anything below medium- and high-skill jobs,” says Naomi Alboim, a senior policy fellow at TMU, who served senior roles in both federal and Ontario governments for 25 years specializing in immigration and labour.

Some hire foreign workers through the temporary worker program. When it comes to permanent positions, some provinces and employers have used their limited authority to bypass federal rules and sponsor workers such as butchers, truck drivers and servers to become permanent residents.

Increasingly, employers are turning to temporary migrants already in Canada with an open work permit. In doing so, businesses avoid going through what’s known as a labour-market assessment, a measure that’s meant to ensure no Canadian is available to do the job. Those in Canada on open-work permits include youth in a working-holiday program and hundreds of thousands of international students.

While Ottawa sets an annual target for permanent residents, there’s no cap on migrant workers and international students. 

That makes for a Wild West of temporary workers in Canada, where policymakers in this country don’t have great data about who is working in this country, what credentials they have and if their skills are what we need.

“We are way too dependent on temporary entrants,” says Alboim. “We are not providing them with the support that they need, the information that they need, the pathways that they need to transition successfully to permanent residence. We have no plan for the number of temporary entrants that we receive.”

It sets the stage for exploitation, critics say.

If Canada is to keep counting on temporary foreign workers and transitioning them to be permanent residents, it needs to have a better handle of the skill sets of these temporary residents, experts say. Ottawa must set targets for foreign workers and international students — and figure out how they fit into the puzzle.

“If we are going to continue to have a two-stage immigration system, we cannot plan only for the second stage (permanent residence). We have to plan for the first, but we do no planning for the first. That’s the big issue. That’s the elephant in the room,” says Alboim.

Last year, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser relaxed the rules for employers in order to bring in more temporary foreign workers and made 16 new lower-skilled occupations in health care, construction and transportation eligible for the permanent residence talent pool. Fraser now also has the power to do targeted draws to hand-pick permanent residents with skills in demand in Canada.

“These changes will support Canadians in need of these services, and they will support employers by providing them with a more robust workforce who we can depend on to drive our economy,” Fraser said.

Connecting the public and private sectors

Meanwhile, some jurisdictions are making strides to help high-skill workers find success in Canada. Such success, where it’s been achieved, has seen collaboration with the private sector.

Several years ago, the Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia developed the Facilitating Access to Skilled Talent (FAST) program. It brought together employers and industry groups to develop online tools to assess the competency of permanent residents in skilled trades in construction — newcomers are evaluated and steered to further training or get credentials certified by authorities. Through an online platform, employers are matched with job-ready immigrants.

The program has since expanded to biotechnology, life sciences, information technology and long-term care. Funded by the federal Future Skills Centre, FAST is now delivered through some 50 settlement service agencies across Canada.

“It’s really important that we play our part, that businesses play their part and the post-secondary institutions play their part,” says Patrick MacKenzie, the council’s CEO. “We have to own that responsibility.”

He says 67 per cent of the FAST clients find jobs in their field within four weeks of arrival and the rate goes up to 85 per cent in eight weeks.

Femi Ogunjji, an IT professional from Nigeria, enrolled in the FAST program when he was granted permanent residence in 2017 while still in Lagos.

He attended pre-arrival online workshops and orientation about resumé writing, Canadian workplace culture and the IT job market. He also participated in e-mentoring and learned to use the keywords in his CV to get past AI pre-screening to land interviews.

A week after settling in Vancouver, a headhunter offered him a six-week contract job that turned into a full-time job as a business systems and database co-ordinator.

FAST’s soft-skill training and labour-market orientation regarding his profession was particularly helpful, says Ogunji.

“I already had all the IT certifications,” says the 41-year-old father of two. “That’s the advantage of being in technology. You don’t need any recertification.”

Where’s Fort McMurray?

Egyptian engineer Ahmed Abdallah was cautioned by his friends to lower his expectations about getting a commensurate job in health and safety management when he came to Canada.

Before arriving in July 2020, one of them recommended he enrol in a program offered by ACCES Employment in Toronto to learn about the Canadian job market in his field, work on his resumé and build professional contacts.

Through networking, Abdallah got a job offer as a health and safety environment adviser from an oilsands company in Fort McMurray — a place he’d never heard of. 

Although he initially had to take several courses on Canadian laws, rules and regulations while on the job, he says he’s happy with his choice.

“In Canada, employers care a lot about soft skills and it’s fine if you have medium technical skills. They believe if you have the soft skills, they can teach you the technical skills. What immigration does is they just make sure immigrants coming in have strong technical skills,” says the 32-year-old.

“You need employers who are open-minded, like mine, who will take a chance on new immigrants.”

ACCES Employment CEO Allison Pond says employers have been involved in her agency’s programming by supporting newcomers with onboarding.

“Our sector needs to be very comfortable working with the business world. We have a corporate engagement team that has 15 people. These are individuals who are very comfortable in the business world and yet they’re working in a non-profit charity,” says Pond.

“Our funding is provincial. Our funding is federal. We’ve got private and regional funding. Governments need to recognize and support the settlement sector … We’re a great place for that collaboration.”

More regulations — and higher stakes

When it comes to newcomers looking to enter regulated professions — such as nursing and legal counselling — things are still trickier and more complicated. The stakes in these professions are often higher, given the need to protect the public.

Part of the problem is that newcomers find themselves having to navigate different licensing rules and regulations across federal and provincial jurisdictions. In contrast, Britain and Australia both have an overarching health regulator to oversee licensing processes, making it easier for newcomers to manoeuvre through the systems, says Wilfrid Laurier University professor Margaret Walton-Roberts, whose current research focuses on the global migration of nurses.

Foreign-trained nurses and doctors coming to Canada in recent years are getting better information beforehand, starting their credential clearance and receiving the counselling about their licensing pathways sooner, she says.

However, barriers have continued because assessments and bridge programs meant to fill knowledge and skills gaps require extensive government funding and resources.

The CARE Centre for Internationally Educated Nurses, for instance, offers one-on-one case management, exam preparation, mentoring and other supports. In 2021-22, the organization got $282,000 from the federal immigration department and $1.33 million from Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development.

In the same fiscal year, 113 of its clients passed College of Nurses of Ontario exam to become RNs or RPNs while more than half of its program participants had been in Canada for over five years.

The province has some, limited medical residency spots available for internationally educated doctors to acquire field training experience. But they must compete against Canadians who study in medical schools abroad.

“It has to be almost bespoke, because you are talking about such a complex system and you have to match people who’ve come from a completely different country,” says Walton-Roberts, editor of “Global Migration, Gender, and Health Professional Credentials,” published by University of Toronto Press in 2022.

“You have to support the candidate as they find their way into professional practice. That all costs money.”

‘No one guided me’

The federal government has invested an extra $115 million over five years, with $30 million ongoing, to expand its foreign-credential recognition program with a focus on supporting those in health-care professions.

Ontario also passed a new law to eliminate Canadian work-experience requirements for professional registration and licensing, reduce overlapping language tests and compel regulators to sign up registrants faster in emergencies such as a pandemic. It funds 46 bridge training projects, totalling $68 million over three years, to serve 12,516 newcomers in various professions.

Although these changes help address some past challenges in effectively registering applicants, Ontario’s fairness commissioner says there still isn’t a routine “co-ordinated end-to-end system” for players in immigration, settlement, post-secondary education, regulator and employment to address and resolve licensing gaps.

Another challenge is how to assist qualified internationally trained licensing applicants who, for one reason or another, fail to meet all the registration requirements, says Fairness Commissioner Irwin Glasberg, who oversees licensing practices of 40 regulators.

“I am asking regulators and other stakeholders to find ways to move them across the finish line,” he says. “Our province cannot afford to have skilled immigrants remain on the sidelines when, with appropriate supports, they can apply their skills where they are needed most.”

In the Philippines, Lastimosa was a registered physical therapist before he studied to become a registered nurse and later a nursing instructor while working in hospital emergency. He even got himself a diploma in midwifery.

He says he felt demoralized when he was deemed ineligible to practise in Canada, after waiting a year to get his credential assessed, when competency gaps were identified. 

“Different applicants had different gaps. There’s no uniformity how to fill those gaps,” says Lastimosa, who delayed his studies at York University’s two-year nursing program until 2019, because he needed to save money while supporting his parents and relatives back home. “No one guided me what to do.”

He was a RPN for a private home-care agency and during the pandemic he worked five jobs at vaccination clinics and different hospitals before he passed his RN exam last summer.

Lastimosa says he believes some of the recent initiatives by provinces and regulators to fast-track foreign-trained health professionals into the workforce, through supervised practices and offering temporary conditional licences, certainly make sense and will help.

“It should all start with the immigration application process. If you qualify to migrate here as a nurse, it should only take you a few months or weeks to take the exam and practise, but it’s not the case,” Lastimosa says.

“The process is more streamlined now, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.” 

Source: Why Canada’s plan to bring in 1.45 million permanent residents won’t fix the labour shortage

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Federal Court judge slams Canadian immigration’s demand to see …

2023/01/16 Leave a comment

Of note:

A Federal Court judge has described as “unintelligible” a Canadian visa officer’s rejection of a B.C. study permit for an Iranian master’s student because she failed to produce her grades.

Saba Ahadi applied for a study permit in January 2022 after being accepted to the master of business administration program at the University of Canada West (UCW) in Vancouver, B.C.

Ahadi also applied for a temporary resident visa for her five-year-old daughter, whom she intended to bring with her while her husband remained in Iran.

Source: Federal Court judge slams Canadian immigration’s demand to see …

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Dutch government backtracks on migrant family reunions

2023/01/16 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Dutch government on Wednesday backtracked on restrictions that it placed last year on family members joining asylum-seekers who are granted residency in the Netherlands, after courts ruled the move was unlawful.

State Secretary for Justice and Security Eric van der Burg said in a letter to parliament that he expects other courts to follow suit “as a result of which the useful effect of the measure is temporarily absent.”

Van der Burg said he is temporarily suspending the family reunion restrictions pending a definitive ruling by a Dutch administrative court.

The justice ministry introduced the restrictions last year as part of a raft of measures aimed at reining in the high numbers of migrants arriving in the Netherlands that led to a housing crisis and overcrowding at asylum-seeker centers.

The problems came to a head in the summer when hundreds of people were forced to sleep outdoors in unsanitary conditions outside the country’s main migrant reception center in the northern village of Ter Apel.

The conditions at the camp were so bad that the Dutch branch of humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders sent a team to tend to the migrants, the first time the agency had deployed in the Netherlands.

In an attempt to ease the overcrowding, the government in late August announced measures including a move to temporarily rein in family reunions until migrants are permanently housed, provide more housing for people whose asylum requests are honored and process and repatriate people quicker from countries that are considered safe.

But a number of courts have since ruled that such family reunions can go ahead.

The Dutch council for Refugees has been highly critical of the policy, calling for it to be scrapped and labeling it “politics at its most ugly.”

Source: Dutch government backtracks on migrant family reunions

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Labelle: L’immigration, McKinsey et le diktat de la mobilité internationale

2023/01/14 Leave a comment

Of interest although I think she overstates the reduction of state powers due to increased mobility:

Romain Schué et Thomas Gerbet viennent de dévoiler, le 4 janvier dernier, l’influence de la firme américaine McKinsey sur la politique d’immigration du gouvernement Trudeau et les coûts faramineux payés à cette entreprise. Cette firme aurait conseillé l’accueil de 465 000 immigrants en 2023 pour atteindre 500 000 en 2025, dont 60 % seraient de la catégorie économique. A-t-elle aussi conseillé l’augmentation fulgurante des travailleurs temporaires ? Le contrôle des frontières et des demandeurs d’asile ? Une transformation démographique du Canada postnational dont se vante Justin Trudeau ? Une réorganisation du système informatique, une meilleure gestion des passeports (ce serait alors une faillite) ? L’information est bloquée pour le moment. Mais de quel droit tout cela ?

Faut-il s’étonner de ce recours à une multinationale pour influer sur les affaires internes canadiennes ? Non, si on le met en relation avec le développement hégémonique d’une théorie sociologique de la mobilité qui domine aujourd’hui au point de rendre les gouvernements dépendants des multinationales comme McKinsey.

Pour comprendre ce changement de paradigme, un retour en arrière s’impose.

Le paradigme de la mobilité adopté par le fédéral depuis des décennies

Le paradigme de la mobilité (mobility studies) n’a fait que se renforcer depuis la fin des années 1990. En 2005, le sociologue John Urry publiait un texte édifiant et quelque peu délirant dans Les Cahiers internationaux de sociologie pour décrire le monde en mouvement : demandeurs d’asile, terroristes, touristes, diasporas, étudiants internationaux, entrepreneurs, sportifs, randonneurs, prostituées sont en mouvement, écrivait-il. Le sociologue reprochait à ses pairs d’avoir négligé le phénomène de la mobilité et d’avoir jusqu’ici insisté plutôt sur le rôle de structures sociales figées au sein de la société ou de l’État-nation obsolète.

John Urry en appelait à une « reformulation de la sociologie dans sa phase post-sociétale », dont l’objet majeur ne serait plus les sociétés dans leur spécificité, mais « les diverses mobilités des peuples, des objets, des images, des informations et des déchets [sic] ». Depuis, ce paradigme concurrence diverses perspectives « post » , y compris la thèse de la superdiversité, très en vogue dans les universités anglophones, où l’on parle avec une délicatesse douteuse « d’itinérants transculturels ». Le multiculturalisme est pour ainsi dire dépassé, on nage désormais dans l’univers trans. Toutes remettent en cause les frontières politiques et symboliques des États-nations, ainsi que les significations de la citoyenneté et de l’appartenance.

Cette mouvance est à mettre en relation avec la création du réseau international Metropolis fondé en 1996 à l’initiative du ministre Sergio Marchi, et dont Meyer Burstein a été codirecteur exécutif, ainsi qu’avec le discours du fédéral sur la rentabilisation du multiculturalisme et la stratégie d’innovation du Canada. En 2004, le document « Élaboration de l’analyse de rentabilisation du multiculturalisme » précisait que les transilient immigrants font partie d’une nouvelle « classe créative », apte à mobiliser leurs réseaux internationaux en vue d’investissements et de bonnes pratiques commerciales.

Les immigrants et les « minorités visibles » y sont vus comme « un réservoir de compétences culturelles et linguistiques auquel les industries canadiennes peuvent faire appel pour leurs opérations à l’étranger ou pour prendre de l’expansion sur les marchés internationaux », écrivait déjà en 2004 l’ex et puissant directeur d’Immigration et Citoyenneté Canada, Meyer Burstein.

Les liens que les diverses « communautés culturelles et raciales entretiennent avec presque tous les pays du monde sont synonymes de prospérité économique et ont contribué à susciter l’intérêt du gouvernement du Canada à l’égard du multiculturalisme », statuait à son tour Patrimoine canadien (2005). On ne peut donc s’étonner du recours aux tentacules internationaux de la firme McKinsey. Et Justin Trudeau ne peut être que d’accord avec ce niveau d’interférence dans un pays qu’il conçoit et présente comme postnational.

Les effets pervers de la mobilité sur les personnes et le pouvoir des États

L’immigration internationale concerne plusieurs catégories de personnes aux statuts social et politico-juridique différents. Or, les pays doivent choisir entre deux catégories principales de transfrontaliers sur le plan économique : les travailleurs étrangers qualifiés, hautement mobiles, et les travailleurs non qualifiés.

La mobilité des premiers est vue comme un signe d’ouverture envers le pays d’accueil. Désirable sur le plan économique, elle ne pose pas de défis d’intégration, soutient-on à tort. Dans cette perspective, la chasse aux cerveaux (ou plutôt l’exode des cerveaux, vu sous un autre angle) apparaît souhaitable pour les États demandeurs et les institutions qui ont besoin de professionnels ou d’étudiants internationaux afin de favoriser l’investissement, la recherche et l’innovation.

Au contraire, les mouvements de la main-d’oeuvre à bon marché et souvent déclassée sont à contrôler afin de ne pas provoquer un sentiment d’envahissement dans la société d’accueil. C’est la raison pour laquelle cette force de travail fait l’objet d’un sempiternel débat public sur la naturalisation, l’intégration civique et les exigences linguistiques. Sans compter qu’en Amérique du Nord, pour un immigrant indépendant jouissant du statut de résidence, on compterait une cinquantaine d’immigrants parrainés, compte tenu des réseaux et des liens transnationaux des migrants.

Enfin, ce paradigme de la mobilité provoque également l’obligation de repenser les notions de citoyenneté et de souveraineté de l’État, jugées obsolètes dans un monde globalisé. Les chercheurs ont beau spéculer sur la beauté du transnationalisme, on peut pourtant constater que tous les États aspirent à contrôler l’immigration selon leurs intérêts propres en matière de sécurité et d’ordre public, de légalité, de réunification des familles, de dépenses publiques et de problèmes urbains, d’intégration sociale et politique, voire d’identité nationale. En ce sens, le paradigme de la mobilité véhiculé par des instances supraétatiques ne peut qu’entamer le pouvoir de l’État.

Enfin, il serait intéressant de savoir ce que pensent les conseillers de McKinsey sur les dysfonctionnements et l’éventuelle crise sociale qu’entraîne la mobilité incarnée par la traversée du chemin Roxham. Les demandeurs d’asile qui arrivent par milliers aux frontières comptent-ils dans l’objectif des 465 000 à 500 000 migrants souhaités sur cinq ans ? En dépit du fait que ce système donne lieu à de l’exploitation, à un trafic reconnu et à des réseaux internationaux de passeurs bien organisés et sans doute sans pitié ? Une situation que le gouvernement Trudeau ne semble pas avoir le courage de regarder en face et devant laquelle le Québec semble impuissant.

Source: L’immigration, McKinsey et le diktat de la mobilité internationale

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Liberal minister says Canada needs more immigration as targets get mixed reviews

2023/01/14 Leave a comment

Mixed reviews are from me and Ted McDonald of UNB:

As Canada plans to significantly ramp up its immigration levels in the coming years, some policy experts are worried about potential effects on health care, housing and the labour market.

But Immigration Minister Sean Fraser insists that Canada needs more newcomers to address labour shortages and demographic changes that threaten the country’s future.

“If we don’t continue to increase our immigration ambition and bring more working-age population and young families into this country, our questions will not be about labour shortages, generations from now,” Fraser said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“They’re going to be about whether we can afford schools and hospitals.”

In November, the federal Liberal government announced a new immigration plan that would see Canada welcome 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025.

A record-breaking 431,645 people became permanent residents in 2022.

The new immigration rates will be substantially higher than rates in similar countries, such as Australia, said University of New Brunswick political science professor Ted McDonald.

That’s not a bad thing in itself, he said. But in his view, raising immigration levels isn’t the right way to address current labour shortages.

“I think the policy would make more sense if it’s aligned with what are seen as underlying structural labour market shortages that are going to persist,” McDonald said.

At the same, he said one justification for immigration is clear: Canada has a declining birthrate.

According to Statistics Canada, the country’s birthrate fell to a record low of an average of 1.4 children per woman in 2020. That’s well below the 2.1 rate needed to maintain a population without immigration.

That doesn’t stop others from worrying about how more newcomers could put a strain on other perennial issues such as housing affordability and health care.

“There’s no assessment that I have seen of the impact of these targets on housing affordability and availability, no assessment of these targets in terms of additional pressures on health care,” said Andrew Griffith, a former high-ranking official at Immigration and Citizenship Canada.

But Fraser said that many of the new permanent residents already live in Canada. For example, 157,000 international students became permanent residents in 2021.

“It’s not as though there are half a million people coming to Canada who are not already here,” the minister said.

He said changes are also coming to the Express Entry system in the spring so that immigrants can be selected based on the sector and region in Canada they’re heading to.

That will help alleviate some of the strain on things like health care and housing, he said.

The ongoing debate on whether the new targets are too ambitious is also coinciding with heightened scrutiny regarding what — or who — is influencing government policy.

Radio-Canada reported last week that two sources within Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said McKinsey & Company’s influence on immigration policy has grown in recent years.

A government response to a Conservative MP’s written question, which was tabled in the House of Commons in December, says the department has not recently awarded any contracts to the consulting firm — at least, not during the timeframe the MP asked about, which was from March 2021 until October 2022.

And during the interview Thursday, Fraser said McKinsey has had no role to play in the new immigration levels plan.

“I’m not being influenced by them,” Fraser said.

“This is something that I’ve arrived at independently.”

The minister said he came to the decision regarding the immigration plan on the advice of department officials. He said he also took into consideration what he’s heard from different organizations, stakeholders, and provincial and territorial leaders.

Policy experts often worry about the outsized influence stakeholders can have on government policies, since interest groups lobby the government to implement policies that are in line with their priorities, and some are more powerful than others.

Business groups in Canada have seen ongoing labour shortages as a major concern, and they have called on the government to help fill vacancies.

Following the announcement of the new plan, the Business Council of Canada applauded the targets in a press release, saying that “an economy that is chronically short of workers cannot achieve its potential.”

Griffith said that in his opinion, the current government is “fairly responsive to the pressures of stakeholders,” whether they are business groups or organizations that work with immigrants.

While the interests of stakeholders can sometimes align with what is actually good policy, McDonald said stakeholder groups have “vested interests.”

“We have to be aware of where the advocacy is coming from, and not being naïve about it,” he said.

Source: Liberal minister says Canada needs more immigration as targets get mixed reviews

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No-shows, dropouts and asylum requests — these 10 schools have Canada’s highest rates of ‘non-compliance’ among international students

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Time for their “designated learning institution” (DLI) status to be reviewed and possibly revoked. Back door immigration, not education stream.

Overly charitable to state that “While it would be unfair to cast doubt over the integrity and legitimacy of these colleges and universities” given that, at a minimum, they and governments are complicit in this abuse of the program.

Great that IRCC has identified this risk, what remains to be seen if IRCC acts on this by revoking their DLI or other measures to curb this abuse:

Ontario is home to seven of the 10 schools flagged by the Canadian government as having the highest rates of “non-compliance” when it comes to international students failing to show up for their registered courses, or instead applying for asylum.

The names of the so-called designated learning institutions, or DLIs — schools approved to host international students — were revealed in an internal report by the Immigration Department’s integrity risk management branch.

The list raises questions about Canada’s rapidly expanding international education industry, which has seen schools bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign students at significantly higher tuition rates than their Canadian peers, and whether it may be experiencing issues around compliance and enforcement.

Seven of the post-secondary schools on the list, compiled in November 2021, were private institutions while the other three are publicly funded universities: Laurentian University in Sudbury, Cape Breton University and Université Sainte-Anne, both in Nova Scotia.

The ratings of the schools were based on the percentages of “no show,” “no record” or “no longer registered/enrolled” among their enrolled international students. The list also cited the number of asylum claims made by enrolled students.

The overall potential non-compliance rates of the 10 schools ranged from 33 per cent to 95 per cent, compared to the overall average of just seven per cent among some 1,600 DLIs across Canada, according to the list obtained under an access to information request by immigration policy analyst and lawyer Richard Kurland.

Evergreen College in Brampton, renamed Eastview College in 2021, and the Academy of Learning College in Toronto topped the list, both scoring 95 per cent.

At Evergreen, where six asylum claims were traced, 274 of the 288 students were deemed non-compliant, including:

  • 132 no-shows, who were offered admission but never confirmed acceptance, registered but never attended class, or presented in class but stopped attending without telling school administration.
  • 140 “no records,” where the administration does not have a record of a letter of acceptance issued to this person or any record of the person being enrolled in the school, despite immigration records saying otherwise. Experts say such discrepancies can be the result of clerical errors. 
  • two who were dismissed, withdrew voluntarily or transferred to another institution.

A spokesperson for Eastview said the “no record” numbers originated from fake acceptance letters that were issued under Evergreen’s name. The spokesperson said the administration had brought the issue to the attention of the Immigration Department but that no action was taken to address it.

The no-shows, she said, could be attributed to those who just came to the college looking for an acceptance letter so they could extend their work permit or to use it as a stepping stone to gain admission to another college.

“With the acceptance letter, they’re supposed to start with the program. But you know what, they do not. We can’t do anything with it,” noted the spokesperson, adding that some of the no-show students didn’t even bother to ask for refunds of fees and tuitions.

While it would be unfair to cast doubt over the integrity and legitimacy of these colleges and universities based on the data, experts say it does suggest some issues around compliance and enforcement.

“Some students may be bona fide or genuine students coming in and then they can fall through the cracks and then start not showing up to their classes. Could it be that they don’t really have the funds to actually pay for the next semester, so they don’t show up and start going under the table and underground?” asked immigration lawyer Lou Janssen Dangzalan.

“You’ve seen the reports of colleges doing strip-mall classes or theatre classes. That could dissuade an international student from attending classes. If I were an international student and paid so much money for tuition, I would be so demoralized attending classes. Basically that’s recorded as a no-show or no-record or no longer registered.”

Michael Sangster, CEO of the National Association of Career Colleges, said he could not comment on specific cases, but said its 450 provincially regulated members work closely to ensure students are supported and have the skills training needed to succeed.

“As all post-secondary institutions experience, there are many personal reasons why prospective students may ultimately make the decision not to pursue their studies, particularly over the last three years,” he said in a statement.

Other private colleges that made the non-compliant list included the Academy of Learning Career and Business College in Owen Sound, with an 87 per cent rate; Flair College of Management and Technology in Vaughan (82 per cent); Canadian Institute of Management and Technology in Ontario (62 per cent); BITTS International Career College in Mississauga (60 per cent); and Pacific Link College in Surrey, B.C. (47 per cent).

The Star reached out to all 10 institutions on the list. Four had responded by time of publication.

Sandip Dhakecha, Flair College’s campus administrator, said some private institutions do have lower admission criteria than their publicly funded counterparts. Sometimes, international students stop showing up when they realize their programs won’t earn them postgraduate work permits and coveted permanent residence in Canada.

“This is a pressing issue for us also because, you know, it looks bad on our name. We want to provide the quality education. But the thing is, we don’t have any control over our students,” he explained. “If a student comes before the program starts and asks for a refund, we 100 per cent refund them.”

In a statement to the Star, BITTS International said it was surprised by the report because it always follows all procedures for reporting and registration as required by different federal and provincial ministries of all DLIs.

“The non-compliance percentage of students are (those) who obtain their admissions at BITTS and then never continue with their enrolment and full-time studies. Many of these students obtain multiple admissions and then enrol where they find it convenient,” it said.

“Whatever information, that has been obtained in this report, we would like to review all of it, in detail, and respond accordingly.”

At Laurentian University, which has a 39 per cent non-compliant rate (with 321 of the 828 students potentially breaching the rules), registrar Serge Demers said post-secondary classes don’t take attendance and the registration system has become a proxy to monitor students.

“We’re talking about people who are not here, so it’s difficult to ask them why they’re not here,” said Demers. “There’s all of these levels of privacy that exist. In a world where everyone was in good faith, we wouldn’t need this system. I think the system is in place because there are people that are working their way through the cracks.”

A total of 197 asylum claims were reported from students enrolled in the top 10 DLIs — an issue that Dangzalan blames partially on the fact that not all international students have access to permanent residence, as often marketed by unscrupulous recruiters.

“If you run out of your postgraduate work permit, you are able to get a work permit while you’re waiting for your refugee determination,” said Dangzalan. “It’s an offshoot of the problem of overmarketing Canada. The system is just overwhelmed and now they’re trying to use alternative avenues to stay and remain in Canada.”

Source: No-shows, dropouts and asylum requests — these 10 schools have Canada’s highest rates of ‘non-compliance’ among international students

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Elrick: The problem with immigration targets: They’re ‘guesstimates’ easily misunderstood by the public

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Elrick’s critique of immigration targets being ‘guesstimates’ is valid, given the lack of serious analysis of labour and other needs and the lack of consideration of the externalities in terms of housing, healthcare and other public services.

However, in Canada at least, the negative political impact has been limited with only recently some question but not on xenophobic grounds.

But having a better understanding of the impacts of high immigration levels on housing, healthcare, infrastructure is essential to reduce the negative impacts of current and future levels:

The illusion of science that surrounds these numbers and their emotive force make them powerful political tools that need to be better understood by the public to avoid provoking anti-immigration sentiment.

Immigration targets are immigration bureaucrats’ best guess, based on institutional experience and analyses, of how many people can join a society and economy without threatening social cohesion.

In other words, they are estimates of what Canadian immigration bureaucrats have historically referred to the country’s “absorptive capacity.”

Writing in 1948, a high-ranking civil servant called the concept “difficult if not impossible to measure,” while noting that it includes factors such as the population to land ratio (accounting for expected standards of living), demographic trends, employment opportunities and immigrants’ economic, social and human capital.

Based on these considerations, the federal government has aimed since the 1950s — and, as shown below, mostly failed — to bring in the equivalent of one per cent of Canada’s population annually through immigration.

Canada’s immigration levels as a share of population. Author’s calculations

Immigration intake

Ottawa’s announcement late last year of plans to raise its immigration target to 500,000 a year by 2025 is therefore unremarkable from a policy perspective.

Statistics Canada’s low-growth scenario for Canada’s population in 2025 is 39,861,100, which would make the planned immigrant intake equivalent to 1.25 per cent of the population.

The problem with immigration targets entering public debate is that they eliminate nuance while raising anxieties. Like governments, the general public is concerned about “absorptive capacity,” but it seldom has access to the kinds of detailed academic research on the economic and social integration of immigrants that civil servants do.

Integration successes and challenges can vary by someone’s human capital (for example, education and linguistic ability); how they enter the country (for example, as a skilled worker or a spouse); their age and macroeconomic conditions upon arrival; broad institutional contexts (including the structure of labour markets); racial or ethnic discrimination; and the quality of their social ties in Canada.

None of the nuance needed to answer the question of how many and what kind of immigrants have a positive or negative effect on society is reflected in a single, large number.

Absent a more complete picture of immigrant integration dynamics and outcomes, immigration targets can easily activate public anxieties about immigrants threatening social cohesion by increasing competition for resources like health care, housing, education and desirable jobs, or by creating what some might regard as too much socio-cultural diversity.

Scapegoating the stranger

This is evident in Québec Premier François Legault’s declaration last year that admitting more than 50,000 immigrants a year to the province would be “a bit suicidal.”

This statement followed former Québec immigration minister Jean Boulet’s claim that “80 per cent of immigrants (who) go to Montréal don’t work, don’t speak French or don’t adhere to the values of Québec society.”

Such statements are neither new nor exclusive to Québec.

Immigrants have long been the scapegoats for broader political failures. Just ask Georg Simmel, a Jewish sociologist in early 20th-century Germany, who identified “the stranger” as a key position in modern societies and one often held by immigrants.

Economic insiders but perpetual social outsiders, “strangers” are at once appreciated for their economic utility and easily declared an “inner enemy” when troubles arise.

The scapegoating of “the stranger” is politically expedient, as it allows both political leaders and dissatisfied citizens to avoid painful questions about the real sources of their troubles, including long-term trends in social, health and housing policies, which require sustained political efforts to fix.

Fuelling polarization

When immigration targets cause public anxiety, they can fuel political polarization and be used by politicians to justify harsh immigration policies.

Take the case in the United Kingdom. In 2010, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announced that immigration needed to be limited to “tens of thousands” rather than “hundreds of thousands” of people per year to reduce pressure on public services.

Plucked out of thin air during a television appearance, the “tens of thousands” guesstimate, which became known as the “net migration target,” has had a large impact on policymaking and public perceptions of British immigration over the past decade.

The idea that there were too many immigrants being admitted by a factor of 10 helped to justify a new, restrictive immigration policy — as well as Brexit — as a means of limiting immigration from Europe under the European Union’s freedom of movement clause.

The target also became a justification for creating a hostile environment for immigrants in the United Kingdom, whereby controls on legal status have been integrated into everyday settings like classrooms, health-care facilities and workplaces.

Guesstimates like immigration targets can be useful and expedient for policymaking. But in the public arena, they need to be more fully understood if immigration debates are to be grounded in evidence.

Source: The problem with immigration targets: They’re ‘guesstimates’ easily misunderstood by the public

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Canada’s cities see immigration-driven population surge after pandemic lull

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Useful analysis:

Canada’s urban areas recently experienced their strongest population growth in at least two decades, after a weak expansion during the early stages of the pandemic.

Over the year ending July 1, 2022, the country’s census metropolitan areas (CMAs) grew 2.1 per cent – about 574,000 people – according to Statistics Canada estimates published Wednesday. That was the strongest pace of annual growth since the agency began publishing such figures in 2001.

It was a comeback of sorts for urban regions, which had grown just 0.5 per cent the previous year, lagging the growth in rural areas. The pandemic and its accompanying border restrictions led to a dramatic decline in immigration to Canada, while many urban residents decamped to smaller communities.

But as restrictions eased, immigration surged to record levels, helping drive most of the population increase in urban areas. Sixteen CMAs notched their strongest annual growth on record.

At the same time, some major cities are still seeing plenty of residents leave. The Toronto region, for one, is losing significantly more people to other parts of Canada than it is bringing in. Over the past year, its population growth was entirely driven by international migration, which includes permanent residents and foreign students.

Several economists tie the exodus to worsening home affordability, along with the rise of remote work. And as homes have gotten pricier in suburbs and exurbs, buyers are looking even further afield.

“This is not like 50 years ago, when people were leaving downtown Toronto and moving to Etobicoke,” said Mike Moffatt, the founding director of the PLACE Centre think tank, referring to the former suburb that is now part of the city of Toronto. “This is people moving to London or Moncton or basically outside of the economic region. So there is a fundamental difference.”

Indeed, Atlantic Canada is experiencing a boom. Moncton’s population rose 5.4 per cent over the year ending July 1, 2022, the most of any CMA. Halifax was the next highest, at 4.5 per cent. Charlottetown grew 4.2 per cent.

There was breadth to the expansion, too. The Calgary area grew 3.2 per cent, or roughly 50,000 people, its strongest pace since the mid-2000s. The Vancouver area added 2.8 per cent to its population. The populations of Barrie and London, Ont., rose 3.2 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively.

The Toronto region did grow – by 2.1 per cent, or more than 138,000 people. However, it saw a net intraprovincial loss of roughly 78,000 – which means that many more people left for other parts of Ontario than moved in. It was the most on record, and the outflow has accelerated in recent years, alongside rising home prices and rents. There has been a spike in the number of children leaving the city, suggesting that young families are getting priced out of the housing market and are looking elsewhere for properties.

The Montreal and Vancouver areas also saw net intraprovincial losses of about 29,500 and 14,300 people, respectively, over the past year. Over all, Montreal’s population grew just 0.9 per cent, outpacing only Thunder Bay (0.2 per cent) among CMAs.

Toronto is also losing people to other provinces. The region saw a net interprovincial outflow of roughly 21,400 residents, more than double the previous record for departures.

Mr. Moffatt said the concern is that cities such as Toronto will suffer a “hollowing out” of their middle classes, who can no longer afford to live there. This has implications for the labour market, he said, as many crucial workers – such as teachers and nurses – are forced to relocate.

“You basically have two extremes, where fairly wealthy and older households can make it work, then you have young students and people starting their careers who are sharing apartments,” he said.

On the flip side, the Calgary area swung to a net interprovincial gain of residents in what amounted to the largest inflow of people since the oil price collapse of 2014 to 2016.

Similarly, Halifax is drawing large numbers of people from outside Nova Scotia. The CMA notched a net interprovincial inflow of more than 8,000 people, a figure that has been rising steadily for years.

Brigitte Teleu, a local real estate agent, said upward of 30 per cent of her clients recently have been out-of-province buyers. Like much of the Maritimes, Halifax saw home prices surge during the boom period of 2020 and 2021.

“Our prices are still relatively low, even now, compared to the rest of Canada,” she said. “A lot of people are selling their homes in Toronto, and they have all the money to spare and they just buy a house upfront in cash.”

Canada is struggling to build enough homes for its rapidly growing population, especially with higher interest rates, which make construction costlier and qualifying for a mortgage even more difficult. The federal government, meanwhile, is pursuing record levels of immigration in the coming years, adding more demand for homes in short supply.

“I think we’re going to have an escalation of the current trends, where our cities are growing but at the same time we are losing a lot of young professionals to Alberta and Atlantic Canada” from Ontario, Mr. Moffatt said.

Source: Canada’s cities see immigration-driven population surge after pandemic lull

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Philip Cross: Reality’s insoluble trilemma: More people, more wealth, more green? Choose two

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

While overly ideological in substance and wording, Cross does have a point regarding trade-offs in both the Canadian and international contexts:

Collectivists subscribe to the fantasy that we humans can simultaneously expand our population, reduce our environmental footprint and continue to enjoy rising per capita incomes. This displays an utter lack of awareness that the three are a trilemma at the global level. In a trilemma you can achieve only two of your three goals simultaneously; whichever two we select, the other necessarily falls by the wayside. Fortunately, the choice is not hard for sensible people to make.

Most of the Left clearly supports an expanding human population. This is implicit in their belief, which they share with just about everyone, that every individual has worth — and deserves, they would add,  support such as universal health care and a basic income. Demographers agree population will continue to increase from its current eight billion to somewhere between 10 and 11 billion people. Most members of the Left will not object.

At the same time, collectivists regard any recession in incomes or rise in unemployment as intolerable. Witness their near-hysterical reaction to the tightening of monetary policy in response to the inevitable surge in inflation following excessive fiscal and monetary stimulus during the pandemic. The Left does tolerate chronic slow growth in developed nations — though without conceding that the taxes and regulations it favours often cause it. Economic growth is even more imperative for the hundreds of millions of people in other countries still living in “where will my next meal come from?” poverty.

Finally, the Left holds that the environment and all plant and animal life are sacred. Humans should therefore save the environment and protect the planet whatever it costs. The completely unrealistic goal is to freeze nature in its current state. But “protecting the planet” at all costs is fundamentally anti-human. We exist and thrive because of our ability to control the planet’s environment. As documented by the economic historian Robert Fogel, this control allowed an explosive increase in human numbers and longevity over the last three centuries, while the average body size of adults expanded 50 per cent as our living standard soared.

Something has got to give. We cannot have more people, rising incomes, and a smaller environmental footprint at the same time. If we continue to expand population and raise incomes, there is bound to be a growing impact on the environment as demand rises for land, food, energy and water. We can try to limit our per capita consumption of resources but more people and rising incomes will put relentless upward pressure on total consumption.

The only way to reconcile rising population and a lower environmental impact would be to sharply reduce the resources available to the average person. This would entail not just a short-lived recession — which we heard repeatedly in 2022 is unacceptable — but a drastic reduction in living standards, which would be especially harsh for the world’s poor

Our final option would be to minimize our environmental impact while maintaining high living standards. But this would require sharply reducing the number of people, which contradicts the goal of a growing population. In his recent book Fossil Future, Alex Epstein cites a biologist who wrote that “Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” Such anti-human attitudes are repugnant to most people.

If curtailing the number of humans is immoral, while engineering a sharp reduction in our standard of living is unacceptable, the only option left to us is to accept that a planet with more humans enjoying rising incomes inevitably will have a growing impact on the environment. The renowned economic historian Douglas North was frank in his description of how “a necessary precondition to understanding the evolving human environment is understanding the revolutionary changes resulting in the ‘conquest’ of the physical environment.” Epstein echoes that sentiment, noting that much of the improvement in the human condition has resulted from our increasing ability to control an often-hostile environment while extracting more of the planet’s bountiful resources; in his words, eliminating human impact “is an anti-human moral goal.”

The global challenge is to minimize our environmental footprint without compromising either human health or rising incomes. It is simply unrealistic to say we can increase our population, maintain our standard of living and lift billions of people out of abject poverty without impacting the planet’s environment. You can only choose two of these goals, and it is obvious which two most people will opt for.

Philip Cross is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: Philip Cross: Reality’s insoluble trilemma: More people, more wealth, more green? Choose two

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