Idées | Il est temps de parler d’immigration autrement

2024/02/24 Leave a comment

Critique regarding the impact on immigrant sending societies:

Avec une couverture médiatique croissante, l’immigration se trouve au centre des préoccupations de la société canadienne et québécoise. Des débats sur son acceptabilité sociale à son effet sur le développement et l’épanouissement du Québec, le discours a évolué vers des inquiétudes quant à la capacité d’accueil et d’intégration des personnes immigrantes. L’immigration serait-elle devenue un problème ? Récemment, les défis liés au logement ont cristallisé ces préoccupations, qui alimentent les discours sur les capacités d’accueil des personnes immigrantes, les seuils et le recrutement des étudiants étrangers.

Deux facteurs principaux expliquent ce changement dans le ton du discours.

Tout d’abord, les événements survenus au chemin Roxham à partir de 2017, notamment la fermeture de ce passage frontalier le 25 mars 2023, ont marqué un tournant dans la perception de l’immigration. Cette décision visait à modifier les propos entourant l’immigration, jugée trop négative par les gouvernements aux prises avec l’arrivée irrégulière de migrants. Le gouvernement du Québec considérait le passage à Roxham comme un fardeau, une situation indésirable qui risquait de compromettre son image et d’accentuer les tensions frontalières, notamment en lien avec la capacité à accueillir les demandeurs d’asile au Québec, surtout à Montréal. 

Il était nécessaire de dissocier le Québec de cette problématique frontalière en mettant en avant sa vision de société d’immigration, fondée sur l’intégrité de son système d’immigration, la sélection des immigrants désirables et la contribution des immigrants à la croissance économique de la province. Dans les semaines suivant la fermeture du chemin Roxham, les médias ont réintroduit le concept du « bon migrant », mettant en lumière les travailleurs qualifiés capables de pallier la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre et les étudiants étrangers susceptibles de devenir résidents permanents.

Ensuite, l’immigration de travailleurs temporaires est devenue un enjeu majeur pour le développement économique de toutes les régions du Québec. Malgré une politique gouvernementale visant à limiter le nombre d’immigrants à 50 000 résidents permanents sous le mandat de François Legault, le Québec a connu une augmentation significative de l’immigration temporaire — travailleurs, étudiants étrangers et demandeurs d’asile. Cette hausse, illustrée par une augmentation de 46 % du nombre de migrants temporaires en une année, de 2022 à 2023, selon Statistique Canada, répond à une demande croissante du secteur économique en matière de recrutement. 

Cette évolution souligne l’importance de repenser le discours sur l’immigration. Dans son discours, le gouvernement provincial a toujours rappelé que l’immigration ne devait pas venir déséquilibrer certains fondements de la réalité québécoise, notamment la préservation de la langue française et la place du Québec au Canada.

Hospitalité et façon d’habiter le territoire

Comment parler d’immigration autrement ? Premièrement, en répondant au discours de la peur qui provoque une régression identitaire à un niveau mondial, comme on peut le voir relativement aux frontières, mais également dans notre quotidien. On devient méfiant. On craint la personne qui ne nous ressemble pas. On agit différemment sur le plan de notre identité en excluant l’autre. 

Deuxièmement, il est nécessaire de présenter une autre option s’inspirant de ce que le philosophe français Étienne Tassin nomme « une utopie concrète », qui ouvre la voie à une réflexion novatrice sur la manière d’être hospitalier au monde. Il y a une actualité de l’accueil aujourd’hui qui demande de nouvelles idées, de nouvelles actions concrètes. 

Dans un très bel ouvrage, l’historienne Michèle Riot-Sarcey présente trois caractéristiques d’une sensibilité utopique. D’abord, il est important de faire émerger une critique radicale de son temps et de renouer avec une écriture de l’espoir. Il me semble que cela est essentiel. Il faut remettre en question le discours dominant de l’immigration, de la réalité de l’immigration, de la manière dont le système fonctionne, ce qui veut dire articuler une pensée critique des politiques d’immigration de nos sociétés. Ensuite, il faut reconnaître les expériences concrètes et humaines et ne pas rester dans l’abstraction, dans une approche gestionnaire déconnectée de la réalité. Enfin, il faut se donner la possibilité de penser un monde de la migration autre que celui de l’État et de la souveraineté nationale.

Malheureusement, il est frappant de constater à quel point nos gouvernements préfèrent adopter un discours utilitariste du besoin d’immigrants. Par exemple, on discute sans cesse de ce qu’apporte l’immigration au développement de la société québécoise, mais pas de ce que cette émigration provoque sur les sociétés de départ. 

L’émigration s’est inscrite dans un besoin de départ pour des populations en survie économique, mais aujourd’hui, ce qui domine est une logique carrément prédatrice dans la stratégie de recrutement de main-d’oeuvre des pays du Nord à l’égard des bassins du Sud. Qu’en est-il de la justice migrante lorsque des États siphonnent les infirmières et autres professions en pénurie ? Le territoire québécois se doit d’être plus qu’un réservoir de main-d’oeuvre immigrante. Montréal ainsi que les régions ne doivent pas être qu’un simple réservoir de main-d’oeuvre immigrante.

Source: Idées | Il est temps de parler d’immigration autrement

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

John Ivison: Poilievre signals he’s willing to take a hatchet to runaway immigration levels

2024/02/23 Leave a comment

Still vague but signals. But as I have argued, a Conservative government will face some of the constraints and pressures that have resulted in the current mess, What changes a Conservative government might make to Canada’s immigration policies:

…Poilievre, on the other hand, has resisted pressures to demonize immigrants, even as Canada has witnessed a significant increase in the number of people who think the country accepts too many newcomers.

That said, at a press conference in Kitchener, Ont. on Wednesday, Poilievre gave his clearest indication yet that he will crack down on the number of new immigrants if he forms government.

He said a Poilievre government would apply a “mathematical formula” that links population growth to the growth in the supply of housing. “It’s the only way to eliminate the housing shortage — adding homes faster than we add population,” he said.

It’s not clear what he means exactly, but the facts are that Canada brought in nearly 1.3-million newcomers last year: 471,550 permanent residents and around 800,000 new non-permanent residents (students and temporary foreign workers). At the same time, Canada built 223,513 new homes, a 10-per-cent drop from the previous year thanks to expensive materials and a shortage of labour.

A logical mathematical formula would be two newcomers for each house built, given units usually accommodate two adults. That would almost account for the Liberal immigration target of 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025, but it would mean a new government would have to freeze work and student visas — unlikely, given the economic constraints.

One way or another, Poilievre is going to have to dramatically reduce the number of immigrants far beyond the 364,000 new student visa cap imagined by the Liberal government….

Source: John Ivison: Poilievre signals he’s willing to take a hatchet to runaway immigration levels

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

David | Crier au loup

2024/02/23 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on Quebec immigration politics, criticism of CAQ contradictions and the relationship with federal politics:

Le gouvernement Legault réussit si rarement à obtenir quoi que ce soit d’Ottawa que près d’un an après la fermeture du chemin Roxham, le premier ministre n’en finit plus de s’en féliciter et de fustiger ceux qui doutaient qu’il arrive à convaincre Justin Trudeau.

Il est vrai que les sceptiques étaient nombreux, mais il y en avait autant qui pensaient que cela n’empêcherait pas les migrants de continuer à affluer au Québec, à commencer par sa propre ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette.

« Le chemin Roxham, s’il est fermé, il va simplement s’en recréer un autre quelques kilomètres plus loin. Ça ne règle absolument rien, de le fermer », disait-elle, avant d’effectuer un virage à 180 degrés après s’être rendu compte qu’elle contredisait son patron.

M. Legault peut toujours continuer à se péter les bretelles, mais le problème demeure entier. Les demandeurs d’asile ont découvert qu’il est encore plus simple de prendre l’avion. « Finalement, la fermeture du chemin Roxham n’a pas donné grand-chose », relevait déjà l’automne dernier le ministre responsable des Relations canadiennes, Jean-François Roberge.

Cela a donné si peu de résultats que M. Roberge en est rendu à dire non seulement que les services publics sont saturés, au point qu’une « crise humanitaire » serait imminente, mais aussi que l’identité québécoise elle-même est menacée. Bien entendu, le grand responsable demeure le gouvernement fédéral, qui a fait des aéroports canadiens, surtout celui de Montréal-Trudeau, de véritables passoires.

***

On peut discuter de la proportion exacte de demandeurs d’asile qui se retrouvent au Québec et de la compensation qu’Ottawa devrait verser au gouvernement provincial, mais le fardeau qu’il doit supporter est indéniablement excessif et inéquitable.

Le moins qu’on puisse dire est que ce nouveau cri de détresse n’a pas semblé inspirer à Justin Trudeau un plus grand sentiment d’urgence que la précédente lettre de M. Legault, datée de la mi-janvier, dans laquelle il évoquait une situation devenue « insoutenable » et un « point de rupture ».

Pour toute réponse, Québec a eu droit à 100 millions sur les 362 millions qu’Ottawa a accordés à l’ensemble des provinces pour loger les demandeurs d’asile, alors que le gouvernement Legault présente maintenant une facture d’un milliard.

Il a peut-être raison de s’alarmer, mais ce n’est pas la première fois qu’il crie au loup sans prendre les mesures qui s’imposent si le danger est aussi grand. Devant une telle urgence, les fins de non-recevoir à répétition d’Ottawa devraient l’avoir convaincu que ses réclamations sont peine perdue. Sinon, ce ne sont que des paroles en l’air et Ottawa a raison de l’envoyer paître.

Au printemps 2022, le premier ministre soutenait qu’accueillir plus de 50 000 immigrants entraînerait la « louisianisation » du Québec. L’automne dernier, son gouvernement a pourtant prévu admettre environ 65 000 immigrants au Québec en 2024. Quand le Parti québécois en proposait 35 000, dont il exigerait une connaissance suffisante du français à l’arrivée, M. Legault disait la chose impossible, mais cela est apparemment possible s’ils sont 65 000. Il y a de quoi être perplexe.

***

Chercher un bouc émissaire sur lequel rejeter la responsabilité de ses échecs est un réflexe naturel en politique. Un gouvernement qui détient 89 sièges sur 125 peut difficilement faire porter la faute à l’opposition. Bien sûr, il y a les syndicats, les médias, Trump… mais cela a aussi ses limites.

Mardi, M. Legault a trouvé un autre coupable. « À quoi ça sert, le Bloc québécois ? » a-t-il demandé. Que doit-on lui reprocher au juste ? Les demandes du Québec en matière d’immigration semblent plutôt bien défendues par ses soins à la Chambre des communes.

Pas plus tard que la semaine dernière, il y a fait adopter une motion réclamant la convocation d’une réunion des premiers ministres des provinces et des ministres de l’Immigration pour qu’ils fixent des seuils tenant compte de la capacité de paiement et d’accueil du Québec et des autres provinces.

M. Legault n’en est pas encore à unir sa voix à celle de Pierre Poilievre, qui accuse régulièrement le Bloc d’être le complice de Justin Trudeau, mais faut-il comprendre qu’il croit le Parti conservateur plus apte à représenter les intérêts du Québec à Ottawa ?

M. Poilievre a déclaré mercredi que « le Québec est au point de rupture à cause de la décision de Trudeau d’enlever le visa du Mexique que les conservateurs avaient mis en place ». Quelle coïncidence, n’est-ce pas ?

Il est vrai qu’avec la montée du Parti québécois, qui peut compter sur l’appui du Bloc, et vice versa, la Coalition avenir Québec et le Parti conservateur ont des ennemis communs aussi menaçants pour l’un que pour l’autre. Aux yeux de bien des Québécois, Pierre Poilievre est cependant un loup au moins aussi dangereux que Justin Trudeau.

Source: Chronique | Crier au loup

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Mike Moffatt and Cara Stern: Bold solutions to the housing crisis must be front and centre in budget 2024

2024/02/22 Leave a comment

On immigration, sensibly propose a reduction to 2022 levels (arguably, might need further reduction given housing construction timelines, healthcare capacity and the like):

…Address demand while waiting for supply

Canada’s housing crisis was largely caused by our housing stock not keeping up with population growth. Supply-side reforms are needed to increase the absorptive capacity of the housing system to support the newcomers that contribute so much culturally and economically to the fabric of this country. However, that will take time, so demand-side measures are needed while the country builds that capacity.

In the last 18 months, the number of non-permanent residents in Canada nearly doubled, from 1.37 million to 2.5 million. This rapid growth led to a crisis for international students and other non-permanent residents who did not have the housing or supports needed to thrive in Canada. The federal government has responded by capping international student visas, but there is more work to be done.

They could develop a plan to reduce the number of non-permanent residents to 2022 levels of roughly 1.5 million. This one-million-person reduction can happen through attrition by slowing the intake of non-permanent residents (as with the international student visa cap) to levels that are exceeded by the outflow. This includes those both leaving the country and those gaining permanent residency. The purpose of this would not be to close the border to those who contribute so much to Canada but rather give the country time to increase its absorptive capacity. This would then create the conditions for both newcomers and existing residents to thrive.

Source: Mike Moffatt and Cara Stern: Bold solutions to the housing crisis must be front and centre in budget 2024

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Quebec asks Ottawa for $1B to cover rising costs of asylum seekers

2024/02/22 Leave a comment

Understandable, even somewhat hypocritical given that under the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec’s financial transfer is independent of immigration levels and thus, given lower immigration levels, gets significantly more funding on a per immigrant basis than other provinces:

The Quebec government is calling on Ottawa to reimburse $1 billion — the amount the province says it has spent to welcome a growing number of asylum seekers.

At a news conference Tuesday, Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette, Education Minister Bernard Drainville, Social Solidarity Minister Chantal Rouleau and Jean-François Roberge, minister of Canadian Relations, said the increase in new arrivals may soon become untenable for Quebec’s education network and social services. 

The province says it spent $576.9 million in 2023 on social services to support migrants. It says that is on top of the $470 million it spent in 2021 and 2022. 

As of Dec. 31, 55 per cent of asylum seekers currently residing in Canada — 160,651 people out of 289,047 — are in Quebec. 

“This is completely unreasonable,” Fréchette said. “Our capacity to provide services to asylum seekers has limits.” 

The province is asking the federal government to relocate asylum seekers more equitably throughout Canada and to slow the influx of asylum seekers entering the country by tightening Canadian visa policies.

It also wants Ottawa to close loopholes that it says would allow criminal groups to infiltrate Canada and to reimburse the province for all costs linked to welcoming asylum seekers from 2021 to 2023. 

Roberge, who is the minister responsible for relations with the rest of the country, said the federal government’s “passive attitude” toward Quebec’s reception of asylum seekers “must absolutely end.”

Fréchette pointed to the four Atlantic provinces, which together received a total of 380 asylum seekers in 2023, compared to Quebec’s 65,570. 

A spokesperson for Quebec’s immigration minister said since Roxham Road closed in March 2023, the five main countries of origin of asylum seekers who stayed in the province are Mexico, India, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal. 

The amount Quebec says it has spent on last-resort financial assistance for asylum seekers between 2022 and 2023 went from $163 million to $370 million — a 127 per cent increase.

In January, Quebec said it recorded a spike in the number of requests for social assistance, which it attributed to the increase in asylum seekers. 

Data from the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Solidarity shows that requests for social assistance made by asylum seekers increased by 27 per cent at the start of 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year.  

In the past couple of years, requests for social assistance by asylum seekers have grown from 27,099 in October 2022 to 43,174 in October 2023, according to ministry data.

So far, discussions with Ottawa haven’t led to an agreement. The federal government transferred $100 million to Quebec three weeks ago to support a program to house migrants, but Fréchette said the injection is “clearly insufficient.”

Increase in asylum seekers weighing down school network

Even if the federal government reimburses Quebec, the ministers say money wouldn’t solve the root of the problem. 

Although Quebec is obligated to provide instruction to asylum seekers who are minors, the education minister says the province is reaching a “breaking point,” where it cannot rule out the possibility that educating them would be unfeasible.

“We are approaching a point where we will not be able to serve people who are already on the Quebec territory,” Drainville said. “What Quebec has done to educate these asylum-seeking children in recent years is exceptional, but now, it can’t continue like this.”

There are 1,200 French-language classes for newcomers in Quebec, which is the equivalent of 52 elementary schools, Drainville said. Montreal’s French school service centre has been receiving 80 new registrations per week. 

At this rate, he says the province would need to open three to four new elementary schools by the end of the school year just to teach young asylum seekers French. 

“The risk is that we will not be able to offer them the education they are entitled to,” Drainville told reporters. “We’re hoping something can be done to bring down the level, and we’re calling on the federal government to take its responsibilities.”

What is most challenging for Montreal’s French school service centre is recruiting teachers in the middle of the school year to meet the needs of additional students, says the centre’s director of services, Mathieu Desjardins. 

There are more than 6,100 students enrolled in elementary and high school French-languages classes of the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal, he said. Previously, the total number of those students did not exceed 5,400. 

“We are still managing to recruit new teachers, but of course, they are teachers who are not legally qualified,” he said. “Resorting to non-legally qualified teachers is one of the solutions we currently have to respond to the teacher shortage.” 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday the federal government recognizes how generously Quebecers have been welcoming asylum seekers.

“The federal government was there with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we will continue to work hand in hand with Quebec to ensure that we can move forward in the right way,” Trudeau said at a news conference in Vancouver.

“The important thing, obviously, is to reassure everyone from one end of this country to the other that we have a functional, rigorous immigration system where the rules are being followed.” 

Announcement ‘damaging’ for asylum seekers, advocate says

In recent weeks, public discourse in Quebec has revolved around the pressure immigration puts on housing and social services. 

But strains on government services have “more complex explanations than only the arrival of newcomers,” said Louis-Philippe Jannard, the protection stream co-ordinator of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI) — a  group of over 150 organizations supporting newcomers

“It’s very damaging for asylum seekers to be scapegoated as they have been this morning by the Quebec government,” said Jannard. 

In particular, he says the government suggesting that newcomers were overburdening the education network was “below the belt.” 

“It’s been documented in the past decades as well that there has been some underfunding of the education system,” he said, alluding to numerous reports of teachers leaving the professionafter a couple of years because of poor working conditions. 

“The so-called ‘breaking point’ — I don’t think it’s caused by the arrival of asylum seekers,” Jannard said.  

Source: Quebec asks Ottawa for $1B to cover rising costs of asylum seekers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Vast majority of permanent residents applying to join military haven’t been accepted, figures show

2024/02/20 Leave a comment

CAF has also encountered difficulty in recruiting visible minorities. But security vetting is important and we will see whether the number will move this year (if memory serves me correct, this was first raised by the Conservatives under Kenney, given USA has similar program):

The Canadian Armed Forces has received more than 21,000 applications from permanent residents eager to join the chronically understaffed military full time — but CBC News has learned that less than 100 of them have made it into the regular force in the year since they were allowed to sign up.

In 2022, the federal government lifted a ban on permanent residents enlisting in the military after the country’s top commander warned of a critical shortfall in personnel.

Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said that given the “significant number of demands around the world, there’s just not enough Canadian Forces to do everything.”

Out of 21,472 applications from permanent residents received between Nov 1, 2022 and Nov. 24, 2023 (the first full year of eligibility), less than one per cent were accepted into the regular forces — just 77 people, according to the Department of National Defence.

And of the 6,928 permanent residents who applied to join the navy, army and air force reserves, just 76 were accepted between Nov. 1, 2022 and Jan. 26, 2024, the department told CBC News.

Defence Minister Bill Blair said he’s not satisfied with those numbers.

“I frankly think it’s not good enough and it’s potentially an opportunity lost,” Blair told CBC News.

“I believe that there are very many of those permanent residents in Canada who would make outstanding members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and quite frankly, we need more people in the Canadian Armed Forces.”

Brig.-Gen. Krista Brodie, the commander overseeing military recruitment, said that the “process takes time.”

“Certainly it’s frustrating, and we field those frustrations from candidates and from Canadians and from our own chain of command all the time,” she told CBC News.

Brodie said permanent residents are told when they apply that it can take 18 to 24 months for Canada’s security agencies to handle their files because they can require an “additional level of security screening” due to “foreign implications.”

“At the end of the day, we have to be a combat-capable force ready to fight tonight, and so standards matter,” Brodie said. “And when you’re dealing with sensitive military equipment in a national security environment, those factors are really important.”

Blair said the recruitment process has to move faster.

He said he’s asked his department to look at allowing permanent residents to serve on a probationary basis while they wait for their security checks to be completed.

“I’ve got some experience in this, in hiring in other organizations. You’ve got to go fast, you’ve got to go certainly faster than those numbers demonstrate,” Blair said.

Source: Vast majority of permanent residents applying to join military haven’t been accepted, figures show

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

How NIMBYs are helping to turn the public against immigrants

2024/02/20 Leave a comment

Overly simplistic as factors influencing housing prices not merely NIMBY-driven. But useful comparison between Canadian and American situations:

…The problem arises when governments effectively prohibit the supply of housing from rising in line with demand. Between 2012 and 2022, Americans formed 15.6 million new households but built only 11.9 million new housing units. As a result, even before the post-lockdown surge in migration, there were more aspiring households than homes in America’s thriving metro areas.

This was largely a consequence of zoning restrictions. Municipal governments have collectively made it illegal to erect an apartment building on about 75 percent of our country’s residential land. In large swaths of the country, there are households eager to rent or buy a modest apartment, and developers eager to provide them, but zoning restrictions have blocked such transactions from taking place.

This creates a housing shortage. You can house 32 families much more quickly and cheaply by building a single apartment building than by erecting 32 separate houses. To require all of your community’s housing units to be single-family homes isn’t all that different from prohibiting the manufacture of all non-luxury cars. In both cases, you end up with artificial scarcity and unaffordability.

If private builders were allowed to respond to rising demand — while the government ensured the provision of housing to those unable to pay market rents — we could have large increases in immigration without any uptick in housing insecurity. In our current reality, the rise in asylum seekers has coincided with a record spike in homelessness and persistently high housing costs. 

It is hard enough to sustain popular support for large-scale immigration when there aren’t major economic downsides to that policy. Add legitimate concerns about housing costs to perennial anxieties over cultural change, and it becomes difficult for even the most pro-immigration societies to avoid a nativist backlash. Or at least, this is what recent events in Canada suggest.

Why Canada is getting colder on immigration

Canada has long been considered an exceptionally pro-immigrant country. Yet it has struggled to sustain popular support for liberal immigration policies amid its deepening housing shortage. Canada’s experience therefore serves as a cautionary tale for American progressives: If we allow municipalities to suppress housing construction, then ridding our nation’s mainstream politics of Trumpian xenophobia and electing a vigorously pro-immigrant administration will not be enough to avert popular demands for restricting immigration. 

Until recently, Canada’s immigration politics were the envy of US cosmopolitans. In 2016, while many other nations were trying to repel Syrian refugees, the Canadian government couldn’t find enough displaced families to meet the public’s demand for sponsoring them. Since 2019, the country has welcomed more refugees than any other nation, and done so with minimal public outcry. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to capitalize on his country’s multicultural openness by putting immigration expansion at the center of his vision of economic growth. Canada welcomed 471,550 new permanent residents in 2023, up from 300,000 in 2015.

And that figure does not include foreign students, temporary workers, and refugees, who together constitute an even larger group of new arrivals. In 2025 and 2026, the government aims to admit 500,000 new permanent residents each year.

But in recent months, the political sustainability of Trudeau’s plan has come into question, in no small part because immigration’s impact on housing costs has come under scrutiny. 

Rents have soared across Canada in recent years. From 1990 to 2022, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the country increased at an average annual rate of 2.8 percent. In 2023, it rose by 8 percent. The government estimates that it will need to add 3.5 million extra housing units by 2030 to make shelter affordable. But a recent report from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce suggests that this underestimates the housing shortage by 1.5 million units, a shortfall driven by an undercount of nonpermanent immigrants, who have been entering the country in massive numbers.

Trudeau has sought to promote housing construction in various ways. But his administration’s efforts have yet to offset the impact of years of highly restrictive zoning in many of Canada’s largest population centers.

As Canadians bid against each other for an inadequate supply of housing units, they’ve soured on immigration. 

In a 2022 poll from the Environics Institute for Survey Research, Canadians disagreed with the statement that there was too much immigration in their country by a margin of 42 points. One year later, that margin had shrunk to 7 points, the largest single-year shift in the survey’s history. Among Canadians who said immigration levels were too high, the most commonly cited reason by far was that immigrants drive up housing prices. 

In response to these changing political winds, the Trudeau government has sought to restrict admissions of international students while imploring universities to provide dedicated housing for their enrollees. But this minor concession to the nation’s restrictionist mood appears insufficient. The prime minister’s approval rating has sunk in recent months, with 64 percent of Canadians now disapproving of his performance. Meanwhile, Canada’s Conservative Party has ridden the housing and immigration issues to a strong advantage over Trudeau’s Liberals in the polls. 

Abundance is possible, but scarcity seems popular 

There are many parallels between the politics of immigration reform and those of housing policy. In both cases, countries have the power to swiftly increase their collective prosperity by tolerating some short-term disruptions. When cities let developers build more housing, they not only reduce rent inflation but also increase their tax bases, which makes it easier to fund robust social services. When rich nations let prime-age immigrants settle within their borders, they increase their productive capacity, which makes it more affordable to support retirees. 

And yet, in both of these policy areas, we routinely opt to make ourselves poorer for the sake of avoiding change. 

America does not need to choose between expanding immigration and reducing housing costs. But there is a risk that we’ll choose to do neither.

Source: How NIMBYs are helping to turn the public against immigrants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Keller: Justin Trudeau has the power to fix one of his biggest political problems. Joe Biden isn’t so lucky

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

Not as easy as portrayed but definitely compared to the USA:

….Mr. Biden and Democrats want to address this. This year, after Senate Democrats gave in to long-standing Republican demands and agreed to a tough border bill, the President said he would gladly sign it the minute it hit his desk.

Former president Donald Trump responded by ordering Republicans to kill the bill. He wants disorder at the border.

And Canada?

Our immigration surge – a mix of low-wage temporary foreign workers, schools peddling visas to aspiring low-wage workers, and refugee claimants arriving as alleged tourists from countries such as Mexico – is having effects similar to those in the U.S. Similar, but bigger.

On the one hand, GDP is higher than it would have been. But GDP per person has been shrinking since 2022. A country with a history of lagging productivity is lagging more than ever. Each piece of pie is getting smaller.

And population growth has been so large and fast that rental housing vacancies are at a record low, and heading lower. Rents are very high relative to wages, and unlikely to moderate any time soon. Ditto housing prices. Voters have noticed.

Mr. Biden can’t fix his immigration problem because Mr. Trump’s congressional minions won’t let him.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in contrast, has all the tools to rewrite the story he authored.

Most of what needs doing – downsizing but up-skilling the student visa program; eliminating temporary foreign work visas outside of agriculture and high-wage jobs; reimposing visa requirements on countries such as Mexico; returning permanent immigration to a focus on skilled immigrants – is up to the executive in the Canadian system.

If he wants to, the PM can make like Nike, and Just Do It.

Source: Justin Trudeau has the power to fix one of his biggest political problems. Joe Biden isn’t so lucky

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Lisée | Le remède imaginaire [immigration]

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

Blast from the past, still relevant, perhaps even more so, along with commentary on the French language commissioner’s comments on how francisation will never match demand, particularly given the large number of temporary workers and students (the latter likely to decline sharply given tougher French language requirements:

Il a fait son apparition dans le débat public en 2011, cosignant un ouvrage choquant. Le malotru utilisait des chiffres probants pour crever un dogme. Le livre s’intitulait Le remède imaginaire (Boréal). Le dogme qu’il trucidait était celui de l’immigration comme solution à la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre et au vieillissement de la population et comme levier pour l’enrichissement. Les études existantes, osait-il affirmer contre l’avis unanime des gouvernements, du patronat et d’associations de gauche, démontrent que ce n’est tout simplement pas le cas. L’immigration peut avoir d’autres vertus, mais pas celles-là.

Treize ans plus tard, les constats des auteurs Benoît Dubreuil et Guillaume Marois ont fini par percoler dans le débat public, même si les zones de résistance perdurent. L’économiste Pierre Fortin a mis à jour le consensus scientifique dans ses propres publications, y compris dans un rapport de 2022 pour le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ). Il vient d’ailleurs de surenchérir. Analysant les dernières données disponibles des pays du G9 et de quatre provinces canadiennes, il conclut dans cette étude que « l’immigration contribue surtout à modifier la répartition de la pénurie entre secteurs de l’économie, mais qu’elle ne produit pas de réduction globale significative de la rareté de la main-d’oeuvre. Dans les cas étudiés, elle paraît au contraire l’avoir aggravée ». Ouch !

Benoît Dubreuil est un récidiviste. Désormais commissaire québécois à la langue française, il a utilisé le même outil — sa maîtrise des chiffres — pour dégonfler une autre baudruche : l’efficacité de la francisation pour renverser le déclin du français. « On a accumulé un passif, a-t-il expliqué, dans le sens où les gens qui sont arrivés au cours des dernières années, même si on voulait avoir des classes de francisation pour tout le monde, on n’y arriverait pas. Et même si on avait des classes de francisation, il faudrait avoir des incitatifs financiers beaucoup plus forts pour amener les gens à s’inscrire et pour amener les gens à y mettre un nombre d’heures conséquent. » 

On a beau doubler, tripler, quintupler les budgets de francisation, la cible est simplement inatteignable. C’est comme vouloir mettre le lac Saint-Jean en bouteille. On peut, comme le fait la ministre de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, Christine Fréchette, proclamer qu’on fait des progrès considérables, le niveau du lac ne bouge pas, et les rivières continuent de s’y déverser.

« Une majorité d’immigrants temporaires [ne parlant pas français] ne s’inscrivent pas aux cours de Francisation Québec, et ceux qui y obtiennent une place n’y consacrent pas suffisamment de temps pour dépasser le niveau débutant », dit Dubreuil. Le gouvernement de la CAQ a l’impression d’avoir frappé deux grands coups en exigeant l’obtention d’un niveau 4 (sur 12) pour renouveler les permis de travail après trois ans et d’un niveau 5 pour les étudiants en fin de premier cycle de McGill et de Concordia venant de l’extérieur du Québec.

« Moi, a dit Dubreuil devant les journalistes mercredi, un diplômé qui a un niveau 5, je ne l’embauche pas, OK ? Puis, je connais quand même pas mal l’apprentissage des langues, là. On ne peut pas prendre la personne puis la mettre dans une réunion de travail, on ne peut pas la mettre ici dans la salle puis penser que la personne va comprendre ce qui se passe. » On ne peut pas non plus l’inviter à souper. Le niveau 8, pour lui, devrait être visé « de façon générale pour assurer une intégration sociale ».

On est loin du compte, car l’afflux de travailleurs temporaires, calcule-t-il, a un impact majeur sur l’augmentation de l’utilisation de l’anglais au travail. Entre 2011 et 2023, le nombre de salariés utilisant principalement l’anglais a bondi de 40 %. C’est sans précédent, explique-t-il (mais il semble oublier la Conquête, puis l’afflux de loyalistes fuyant la révolution américaine). Reste que son évaluation est en deçà de la réalité, car il n’a pas les données pour les arrivées de 2024. Et c’est évidemment concentré à Montréal, où le gain anglophone est le plus fort et crée une spirale de l’anglicisation de l’immigration.

« La plupart des gens qui ne parlent pas français au Québec sont en immersion anglaise. Donc, si vous arrivez, vous connaissez bien l’anglais, vous êtes en immersion anglaise à temps plein et vous faites du français trois, quatre, cinq heures par semaine. Si je reviens vous voir un an, deux ans, trois ans plus tard, quelle va être votre langue forte ? Celle que vous allez privilégier dans un environnement comme celui de Montréal où, dans les faits, il n’y a pas beaucoup de contraintes à l’utilisation d’une langue plutôt que l’autre ? » La langue de Shakespeare, évidemment. 

C’est donc, je le suppose, pour sortir les décideurs de leur torpeur qu’il a évalué la somme que tous les intervenants — gouvernement, entreprises, immigrants — devraient investir pour franciser correctement les immigrants temporaires arrivés avant la fin de 2023 : près de 13 milliards de dollars. Or, cette somme n’inclut ni le coût de francisation des résidents permanents qui ne parlent pas le français, ni celui des 32 % d’Anglo-Québécois qui ne le parlent toujours pas près d’un demi-siècle après l’adoption de la loi 101, ni celui des 25 % d’allophones qui ne le parlent pas non plus, ni même celui des immigrants temporaires arrivés après le 31 décembre 2023.

On peut certes mieux franciser des immigrants qui ont fait l’effort, avant de venir ici, d’acquérir des bases. Mais sinon, la francisation comme solution au déclin linguistique est un mirage. Une inaccessible étoile. Un fantasme dont la réitération rituelle par le patronat, ainsi que par les élus libéraux et solidaires, fait écran au réel et laisse place à la dégradation de la situation.

Je ne doute pas un instant de la volonté de François Legault et de plusieurs membres de son équipe de laisser en héritage la fin du déclin. Et il est indubitable que plusieurs des mesures annoncées depuis six ans sont courageuses, inédites et structurantes. J’ai bon espoir que le plan que déposera bientôt le ministre de la Langue française, Jean-François Roberge, inclura des éléments positifs.

Mais c’est le drame de ce gouvernement d’avoir simultanément présidé, d’abord par inconscience — il n’a pas vu venir la hausse des immigrants temporaires —, ensuite par laxisme — il fut informé de la perte de contrôle dès 2021 —, à ce grand phénomène d’anglicisation de l’ère moderne. Réagissant jeudi au dépôt du rapport, la ministre Fréchette a invité Ottawa à « sortir de sa bulle » en ce qui concerne l’inégale répartition géographique des demandeurs d’asile. Bien. Mais au sujet de l’impact anglicisant des immigrants temporaires, elle semblait confortablement campée dans la sienne.

Source: Chronique | Le remède imaginaire

Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with , , ,

Douglas Todd: Record population growth ‘massive problem’ for housing in B.C

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

No real surprise but nevertheless of note:

The statisticians describe the unprecedented number of people streaming into B.C., while the province’s mayors explain how difficult and costly it is to try to house everyone.

A special housing meeting of the Union of B.C. Municipalities heard this week that B.C.’s population has jumped like never before — and that more than 600,000 new dwellings are needed just to get back to supply and demand ratios similar to a couple of decades ago.

“All of our growth is international,” said Brett Wilmer, B.C.’s director of statistics. B.C.’s population would basically remain flat, Wilmer said, if it weren’t for the dramatic hikes it has experienced in permanent residents, and especially of foreign students and guest workers.

More than 80 per cent of B.C. newcomers are moving to Metro Vancouver, Victoria, the Fraser Valley and the Central Okanagan, said Wilmer.

While B.C.’s population expanded by a near-record three per cent last year, an economist for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Braden Batch, said new housing supply is not matching outsized demand.

“Population growth has put real strain on the housing system. It’s a massive problem,” said Batch, adding new dwellings would have to be built 2.5 times faster to keep up.

The hundreds of mayors, councillors and urban planners attending the UBCM housing summit were told that B.C.’s population will grow by almost one million in the next eight years.

Batch’s charts showed that, under current scenarios, B.C. is set to have a housing shortfall of 610,000 units by 2030.

That prompted the director of Simon Fraser University’s Cities Program, Andy Yan, to say: “We’re going out to offer the Canadian dream to people around the world, but we seem to be OK throwing them into a housing nightmare.”

B.C.’s mayors described how hard it is to get developers to build affordable new housing. They also warned it is costly for taxpayers to provide the transit, sewer systems, schools and medical care to support prodigious population growth.

During a panel titled “Housing the Next Million British Columbians,” five mayors from across the province expressed decidedly mixed feelings about the way B.C. Premier David Eby and Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon last year pushed through sweeping legislation to respond to dramatic urban population growth.

While some mayors complained they weren’t consulted, the B.C. government is now requiring municipalities to allow between three and six units per lot in virtually all low-density residential neighbourhoods, plus highrises near the transit hubs of 31 towns and cities.

Despite some mayors expressing cautious support for Victoria’s plan, they nevertheless said they didn’t think it would improve affordability.

Instead, the mayors described the high cost of supporting more people in more congested neighbourhoods, and expressed dissatisfaction about overstretched staff, loss of green space, parking debacles and a dire shortage of construction workers.

Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley said it will cost taxpayers an average of $1 million to upgrade a typical 100-metre row of detached houses to provide the infrastructure for four- and six-plexes.

“I’m also not sure we have the workforce, the tradespeople, to do it,” said Hurley, remarking that “hopefully half of the those million more people who are arriving will be in the housing construction industry.”

Both Hurley and Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie said the NDP’s push for multi-unit housing throughout cities is creating chaos for their long-range community plans, which have emphasized high density around SkyTrain lines and certain town centres.

“The densification we’ve done is really stark,” said Hurley, referring to massive new skyscraper clusters Burnaby has encouraged at Metrotown, Brentwood and Lougheed town centres.

Citing Richmond’s much-praised Steveston, a community with detached homes on small lots on the south arm of the Fraser River, Brodie argued the B.C. government’s mass upzoning scheme “will destroy a fine neighbourhood.”

None of the five mayors on the “Housing the Next Million British Columbians” panel believed that efforts to increase housing supply will actually lead to affordable dwellings for middle-class and other families.

In recent years, Brodie said, Richmond “has built 50 per cent more housing units than the population has grown. But prices have still gone up by 60 per cent. It simply does not follow that supply reduces prices.”

Bluntly, the mayor of Burnaby added: “The idea that supply will lead to affordability is an absolute fallacy.”

Although speakers agreed projections about the future are hard to get right, Hurley suggested it’s possible development could slow down.

That echoed Wilmer, who told delegates the huge spike in foreign students and guest workers approved by Ottawa in the past two years should “drop back to historical levels this year and next.”

Such non-permanent residents put the most pressure on rental costs, which are at record highs in Metro Vancouver.

While Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto talked about how accommodating vigorous population growth means her city “can only go up, up, and only go in-fill,” Janice Morrison, the mayor of 11,000-resident Nelson, lamented the inevitable “loss of urban green spaces, which is a big reason a lot of people move to smaller cities.”

Richmond’s mayor disagreed over parking with Nathan Pachal, the mayor of the City of Langley. Saying it costs $90,000 to create one parking space, Pachal supported the NDP’s plan to drastically reduce off-street parking for new multi-unit housing buildings. But Brodie said it will create a parking nightmare.

Meanwhile, Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog was among those expressing guarded support for the provincial government’s aggressive “good intention” to provide shelter to more people through blanket upzoning.

Like some others, however, Krog suggested the strongest hope for creating more units, especially of the affordable kind, lies in government-subsidized housing — especially from the national government, which he said got out of housing incentives 30 years ago.

All in all, the mayors called firmly on the federal Liberals to show more common sense. That means, they said, Ottawa must be more pragmatic in aligning its international migration targets with the ability to provide housing for all.

Source: Douglas Todd: Record population growth ‘massive problem’ for housing in B.C

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →