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

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Corporate DEI initiatives are facing cutbacks and legal attacks

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

Of note:

Just three years after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off a torrent of hiring of chief diversity officers and other such roles, companies are coming under attack from conservative legal activists who argue that their DEI policies and programs constitute racial discrimination.

The challenges come as companies, faced with an uncertain economy, have already been laying off large numbers of people, including many only recently hired to implement their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies.

The one-two punch has legal experts split on what’s ahead for these efforts, while longtime diversity advocates argue that companies should take these setbacks as an opportunity to reset.

“We cannot place the reasoning for it on something as subjective as the right thing to do. It has to be the smart thing to do,” says Janet Stovall, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion for the NeuroLeadership Institute, a consulting firm focused on culture and leadership.

A surge in hiring, followed by dramatic cuts

In the corporate DEI world, Catalina Colman’s story is a familiar one.

In 2020, she was working at a small tech company as a human resources generalist, handling tasks such as employee onboardings and exits.

She had already been thinking about how to help the company grow in a more diverse and equitable way, when in May of that year, George Floyd was murdered. Suddenly, everything accelerated.

“We recognized we just needed to move quickly, and we needed to start implementing things fast,” says Colman.

The racial reckoning unfolding across the country unleashed demands for change. Companies scrambled to respond to the moment. According to the jobs site Indeed, job postings with DEI in the title jumped 92% from July 2020 to July 2021.

But the deceleration has also come quickly. Economic pressures have led companies to pull back, cutting DEI jobs including Colman’s alongside other human resources roles. Since last July, Indeed has seen DEI job postings drop by 38%.

And then in June, in another blow to diversity advocates, the Supreme Court rejected the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education, setting off predictions that corporate policies around diversity will soon meet the same fate.

Predictions of what’s next for corporate DEI

To be clear, the court’s decision applies to affirmative action at colleges and universities, not employer efforts to foster diversity in the workplace.

In a statement issued after the ruling, Charlotte Burrows, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, wrote, “It remains lawful for employers to implement diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs that seek to ensure workers of all backgrounds are afforded equal opportunity in the workplace.”

But in a Bloomberg opinion piece, Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman cited Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion, in which “he made it crystal clear that in his view, the court’s rule that an educational institution ‘may never discriminate based on race’ now applies with equal force to employers.”

Feldman told NPR the writing is on the wall.

“There’s a high probability, a very high probability, that a majority of this current Supreme Court will say the exact same thing,” he said in an interview last month.

But other attorneys say such assumptions are premature. Bonnie Levine, founder of the law firm Verse Legal, points out that a day after the affirmative action decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a Christian wedding website designer could refuse to work with same-sex couples.

“The Supreme Court has been very clear about not wanting to infringe on the rights of private parties,” says Levine.

Regardless, conservative activists are already waging a new fight.

In early August, Edward Blum, the strategist behind the affirmative action case, filed a lawsuit against the venture capital group Fearless Fund over grants it awards to black female entrepreneurs. Blum argues that the program amounts to “express and intentional racial discrimination in the making of contracts,” according to the lawsuit.

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller has also been busy, asking the EEOC to investigate hiring practices aimed at increasing minority representation at a long list of companies including Kellogg’s, Hershey and Alaska Airlines.

“They are bringing these cases to make law. That’s why they’re bringing them,” says Levine.

A moment to get out or double down

Even before this year, corporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have come under harsh criticism, including that they’re expensive, performative, even a source of division themselves.

At companies where DEI was never a priority, this may be a moment to get out.

“It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to just jump into something that is going to be more complicated if you don’t feel like you have to,” says consultant Stovall.

But for clients who are in it for the long haul, Stovall is doubling down on advice she’s always given: Focus on the rationale. Make the business case for bringing on a diversity of backgrounds and experiences.

“Every organization has basically only three goals: make money, save money, achieve a vision,” she says. “If you can tie DEI directly to one of those goals, it gets a little bit harder for even those who want to destroy it to argue that they should.”

For Catalina Colman, trying to find another DEI job after her layoff in April was disheartening. Positions she applied for were eliminated midway through the interview process.

This summer, she decided to put herself out there as an independent consultant. She’s banking on companies wanting to continue the work they started, recognizing a business imperative.

“Consumers, users are still going to want — at the end of the day — diversity to be a key pillar for an organization,” she says.

Source: Corporate DEI initiatives are facing cutbacks and legal attacks

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

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

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

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

The specific recommendations are self-serving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Keller: The Liberals have broken Canada’s immigration system

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

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

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

Note my use of the past tense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our immigration approach was successful, stable and boring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration 

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

For the record, letter from former mayors Crombie, Sewall and Eggleton, highlighting the false arguments used by advocates for the name change. Opportunity for new mayor Chow to signal that she has a broader perspective than the Dundas change advocates and is careful with taxpayer money:

Dear Mayor and City Councillors,

We, former Mayors of Toronto, request you to re-consider the decision to re-name Dundas Street.

We question the interpretation of the research leading to that decision and the practicality of carrying it out. Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was, according to a considerable amount of historic evidence, a committed abolitionist of slavery. His first achievement as an abolitionist was in 1778, when, as a lawyer, he took a appeal case in Scotland, of an enslaved person Joseph Knight, brought to Scotland from Jamaica by his owner. In court Dundas stated that he “hoped for the honour of Scotland, that the supreme Court of this country would not be the only court that would give its sanction to so barbarous a claim. Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.” The judges not only agreed but ended slavery completely in Scotland.

Dundas has been faulted for his next act on the subject, in 1792. Then a British MP, he moved an amendment to a motion of William Wilberforce on the abolition of the slave trade to make it gradual. Wilberforce’s motion of the previous year, 1791, had failed miserably, 163 to 88. With Dundas’s amendment, it at least passed in the House of Commons, the first anti-slavery motion to do so in Great Britain.

Unfortunately, the plan was subsequently defeated in the House of Lords. It would take a lot more than a British law to get rid of the slave trade and slavery, which Dundas understood. Yet even Wilberforce eventually came to see the necessity of intermediate steps: in 1823 he became vice-president of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

Dundas’s appointment, of John Graves Simcoe, also an abolitionist, as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (Ontario) also promoted the anti-slavery cause. On arrival, Simcoe sought to get an abolition bill adopted, but there were slave owners in the House of Assembly and much opposition. The abolitionist attorney-general, John White, who presented it, then revised it drastically and it passed in 1793, making Ontario the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to adopt an anti-slavery law. John White, not so incidentally, was defeated in the next election.

Dundas was also enlightened about French-English relations in Canada, notably requiring laws to be enacted in both languages, instead of English only. He also was responsible for Britain taking steps to reverse two decades of oppression of Black Loyalists in the Atlantic provinces.

In summary, it appears that Henry Dundas for whom the street is named, was a committed abolitionist who, when facing strong opposition and certain defeat, rather than give up his quest, advocated for interim measures that would ultimately lead to that result. It seems he was doing the best he could under challenging circumstances at that time in history.

Therefore, we don’t see a valid reason to remove his name from the street. From a practical perspective, and given the City’s financial circumstance, there are more appropriate ways to spend $8.6 Million.

On behalf of David Crombie, John Sewell, Art Eggleton

(The letter was signed by Mr. Eggleton

Source: Breaking: Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration

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

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SHEPHERD: Poilievre repeatedly refuses to offer his own immigration target numbers

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

Don’t normally post articles from “True” North but of interest that they are criticizing Conservative leader for not commenting or engaging on immigration targets.

Personally, I have some sympathy for his refusing to comment given that any reduction might well be portrayed as anti-immigration or even racist by the Liberals and NDP (which or course it would not be as I have argued elsewhere):

Immigration Minister Marc Miller hinted recently that he may soon announce an increase in Canada’s immigration targets. The usually outspoken Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre seemingly has nothing to say about that.

“Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at,” Miller said earlier this month. “But certainly, I don’t think we’re in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination.”

Officially, Canada plans to bring in 465,000 permanent residents this year, 485,000 next year, and 500,000 by 2025.

But don’t be fooled: we also invite in hundreds of thousands of additional residents every year, such as temporary foreign workers and international students, so our population actually grew by 1.05 million in 2022 even though we have a below-replacement fertility rate of 1.40 births per Canadian woman.

Canada’s exorbitantly high immigration numbers are straining the housing supply, the healthcare system, and social services such as food banks.

Many journalists, myself included, have been asking Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre what his immigration targets would look like if he becomes prime minister.

In a July press conference for ethnic media, blogger Darshan Maharaja asked Poilievre whether reducing immigration targets could help relieve the demand side of Canada’s housing crunch.

“In order for housing to become affordable at current rates of immigration we need to build six million homes by 2030,” Poilievre answered. “Right now we’re on track to build about 1.4 million homes. So we have to choose, either we’re going to build more homes or we’re going to have a big problem.”

“We gotta build, we gotta build now,” Poilievre said.

When I asked Poilievre’s office whether he would keep Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration targets, and what he thinks about immigration minister Marc Miller possibly increasing the targets this fall, I received no answers to my questions and was instead sent a link to a CPAC video.

“My common sense policy on immigration will be driven by the number of vacancies that private sector employers want to fill, the number of charities that want to sponsor refugees, and the families that want to reunite quickly with loved ones,” Poilievre stated in the video during a stop in Ottawa.

“What’s wrong with the 500,000 target in your mind?” another journalist asks Poilievre.

“I think what’s wrong is Justin Trudeau’s incompetence… I’ll make sure we have housing and healthcare so that when people come here they have a roof overhead and care when they need it.”

People who would have been hesitant to say it out loud even a year ago are now admitting it: our high immigration levels make it more difficult for Canadians to house themselves.

Even individuals with full-time employment can’t keep up with the average rent of $2,000 per month ($3,000 in Vancouver), and end up living out of their vehicles at highway rest stops.

Immigration is now becoming a ballot issue for voters who historically may have only ever expressed support for our system. According to a poll commissioned by Bloomberg News, 68% of Canadians believe Trudeau’s immigration targets negatively impact the housing market.

So, yes, Poilievre should be offering up a quantitative figure to let us know where he really stands on the matter, instead of always deflecting with calls to ‘build, build, build.’

Until he does, we can only conclude that the Conservative party does, in fact, agree with Trudeau’s immigration targets.

With no opposition or critique of Trudeau’s immigration levels from any political party in the House of Commons, there will be no acknowledgment that Canada’s immigration plan actually does not work to counteract an aging population and workforce. Because immigrants themselves age and most come with dependents, parents, and grandparents, immigration does notultimately address the problem of replacing retirees.

Deeper questions arise once you know these facts: do our high immigration targets exist solely so that banks have an endless supply of debtors, landlords an endless supply of renters, and corporations an endless supply of workers who are less aware or assertive of their rights?

I await Poilievre’s answers and numbers.

Source: SHEPHERD: Poilievre repeatedly refuses to offer his own immigration target numbers

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Despite Criticism, More People Than Ever Before Are Trying to Get ‘Golden Visas’ in Europe

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note. Money quote: “It’s great for business” when countries threaten to close programs:

If you have the funds, buying your way into European citizenship is relatively easy—despite some politicians’ attempts to make it otherwise.

As such, demand for so-called golden visas across the European Union has skyrocketed, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. These documents allow wealthy foreigners to basically buy residency—and in turn, a path to citizenship—by investing in real estate or financial assets in European countries. All over the continent, people are taking advantage of the programs while they still exist.

While a couple of countries no longer offer golden visas—Ireland and the United Kingdom, notably—others are seeing a surge in demand. In May, Portugal issued a several-year high of 180 golden visas, while Greece’s 412 that month was an 87 percent increase from the year prior. In 2022, Spain gave out a whopping 2,462 golden visas, up 60 percent from 2021, and Italy distributed 79, the most since the country launched its program in 2018.

Part of the demand may be due to politicians’ calls to end the golden-visa system, which they say is loosely regulated and leads to rising property costs as wealthy foreigners move in. “Every time governments threaten to shut these programs down, there’s a surge of demand of people trying to get through the door before they close,” Nuri Katz, the founder of the immigration consultancy Apex Capital Partners, told Bloomberg. “It’s great for business.”

Portugal said in February that it would be ending its golden-visa program, while Greece increased its investment threshold from $272,854 (€250,000) to $545,708 (€500,000) in certain areas. Spain is considering an even larger bump, from $545,708 (€500,000) to $1.09 million (€1 million). But for the people eyeing these programs as a way to nab European citizenship, that price tag may simply be a drop in the bucket.

“For people worth about $5 to $7 million, richer millionaires, a $500,000 investment to get EU residency is fine,” Katz said.

And despite the push among some groups to do away with golden visas, the programs have brought an influx of cash into the EU, which many experts say may be enough to keep them around. In the past decade, countries that issue golden visas have seen about $27.3 billion (€25 billion) in investment through the programs, with Portugal on its own gaining $7.3 billion (€6.8 billion). That sort of money, particularly in places that rely on foreign capital, might be hard for countries to turn down.

Source: Despite Criticism, More People Than Ever Before Are Trying to Get ‘Golden Visas’ in Europe

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

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