Canada Case Study Explores the Limits of Immigration to Ease Demographic Decline

2025/03/01 Leave a comment

Good and relevant study by Dan Hiebert on the need for realism and a shift towards population policy framework:

High-income countries globally face a stark demographic transition as their populations age and fertility rates decline, with key implications for productivity and the maintenance of retiree benefits if tax bases decline as workforces shrink. Questions remain about how and to what extent immigration can help slow this transition and soften the impact on labor markets. 

Canada offers a unique vantage point on the role that immigration can play in easing demographic decline—and the potential drawbacks. Over the past decade, rising permanent and temporary migration accounted for the entirety of Canada’s labor force growth. But the rapid pace of change has come with challenges. By 2024, Canada’s historic embrace of immigration had cooled amid public concerns about its impact on housing costs and public services. 

In a new report out today for the Migration Policy Institute’s Transatlantic Council on Migration, respected Canadian researcher Daniel Hiebert investigates the efficacy of immigration in addressing population change and the old-age dependency ratio. The report examines Canada’s demographic challenges (its total fertility rate of 1.26 children per woman is among the lowest rates globally) and recent changes in migration policymaking before exploring the consequences of setting immigration rates at different levels. The report uses six scenarios for admissions and population projections over the next half-century that were commissioned from Statistics Canada. 

The report finds that while the six scenarios, which range from high- to near net-zero immigration, would produce very different overall population sizes by 2046 and 2071, the old-age dependency ratio would rise even under the highest immigration rate. “These scenarios point to an important lesson: Immigration can grow the population and slow the effects of falling fertility, but it is less efficient at changing the age composition of the population,” writes Hiebert, emeritus professor of geography at the University of British Columbia. That is because immigrants themselves age and eventually retire alongside their native-born peers. 

To tackle the rising old-age dependency ratio and the prospect of shrinking workforces, policymakers would need to also consider other interventions, such as raising the retirement age, Hiebert writes. 

The report, Understanding the Impact of Immigration on Demography: A Canadian Case Study, argues that for immigration policy to effectively tackle Canada’s challenges, policymakers will need to frame a long-term strategy that considers a number of intertwining realities, including: 

  • Calibrating immigrant admissions together with decisions about social spending and investment in housing stock and infrastructure. 
  • Taking a longer lens than the standard three-year population plan, given the consequences of changing immigration targets play out over decades. This also means recognizing the need for different policy interventions as “fast” regions such as large cities face pressures on housing and infrastructure from above-average population growth, while “slow” regions such as rural areas will need help navigating depopulation and rising old-age dependency ratios. 
  • Effectively communicating with the public to set appropriate expectations for immigration. 

“Canada is frequently seen as an exceptional case, globally, with a population that has been willing—enthusiastic, even—to accommodate a relatively high rate of immigration. This consensus has become frail and the Canadian government (like others around the world) has changed its tone on immigration, acknowledging that there are costs to immigration-led population growth,” Hiebert writes. “Nevertheless, demographic challenges are resolute and ignoring them will, eventually, also carry economic and political consequences.” 

While few governments globally have clearly and forcefully articulated the unprecedented levels of old-age dependency that are looming, and the resulting painful economic adjustments ahead, embarking on a national conversation around demography, engaging with the tough policy trade-offs involved and building a population strategy could help raise Canadian public awareness, the author concludes.

Read the report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/immigration-demography-canada. 

Source: Canada Case Study Explores the Limits of Immigration to Ease Demographic Decline

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Canada announces new measures for emergency visa program for Ukrainians affected by war

2025/03/01 Leave a comment

Expected:

The federal government says Ukrainians who arrived in Canada under a special program set up after Russia invaded their country will have more time to apply for a new open work permit.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced Thursday that Ukrainians residing in this country under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) as of March 31, 2024, will now have an extra year to apply for the new open work permit. The change extends the deadline to apply to March 31, 2026, from March 31, 2025, and the visa will be valid for up to three years.

Ukrainians who arrived under CUAET will also be able to renew an existing work permit by that deadline or apply for a study permit, subject to standard fees.

“These temporary measures will allow Ukrainians and their family members to continue to work and study in Canada during this difficult time and eventually return home when it is safe to do so,” Mr. Miller said in a statement….

Source: Canada announces new measures for emergency visa program for Ukrainians affected by war

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Canada prioritizes new occupations for permanent residence

2025/03/01 Leave a comment

Of note:

Ottawa has added teachers’ assistants, early childhood educators, and cooks, among others, to a list of occupations prioritized in the selection of skilled immigrants for permanent residence in 2025.

The Immigration Department introduced the “category-based selection” — better known as the “targeted draw” of skilled immigrants — in June 2023 to better align newcomers with Canada’s labour market needs by prioritizing candidates in specific occupational sectors.

In additional to focusing on candidates with strong French language proficiency, the system targets those in the talent pool with a background in five occupational sectors: health care; science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions; trades such as carpenters, plumbers and contractors; transport; and agriculture and agri-food.

On Thursday, officials removed the entire transport category and added the education sector, which includes roles such as kindergarten, elementary and secondary teachers’ assistants to teachers, early childhood educators and instructors for persons with disabilities, among others.

The list of eligible occupations has been updated, with new roles added and some removed from each category.

For instance, the health care category has been expanded to cover new health care and social services occupations, as well as various technologist and technician jobs…

Source: Canada prioritizes new occupations for permanent residence

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Four Years. Zero Graves. Now What?

2025/03/01 Leave a comment

Valid question regarding lack of investigation and follow-up. Wouldn’t go as far as Kay calling it a “sacred myth”:

….No one has any idea what underground banalities gave rise to those 215 soil dislocations, because the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, as the Indigenous community in question is officially known, has refused to show anyone all of the data; and has now gone silent on the issue, after having pocketed more than $12-million CAD from the federal government, about $8-million of which was supposed to have been directed toward researching those supposed graves. The few reporters who’ve dared ask for more evidence have been denounced by activists as ghouls, and instructed that such inquiries represent a new form of colonial trauma.

The registered on-reserve population of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation comprises just 543 people. So the federal outlay works out to about $22,000 per person—enough to employ literally the entire community for many months to investigate graves that supposedly lie in precisely identified locations just a few feet from the earth’s surface.

But after four years, not a single grave has been found in Kamloops. It’s impossible to disprove the idea that one or more graves might be found at some point in the future. But the idea that there are 215 of them, much less that they contain murdered children, has become a grim farce.

Yet it is a very strange kind of farce, insofar as almost no public figure in Canada has had the courage to candidly revisit the apocalyptic pronouncements made during the initial unmarked-graves social panic of 2021.

During that period, the idea of these 215 little Indigenous martyrs being killed off by the priests and nuns who ran the Kamloops Indian Residential School became a sacred myth. And no one in the Canadian political and media establishment has any idea how to stand down from this myth now that it’s been debunked. Most members of polite society have simply stopped talking about it, apparently in hopes that the issue will fade into obscurity with the passage of time….

Source: Four Years. Zero Graves. Now What?

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Trump Administration Bends U.S. Government in Extraordinary Ways towards Aim of Mass Deportations

2025/03/01 Leave a comment

Good analysis by MPI:

Invoking the specter of “invasion,” the Trump administration has set out to build a fundamentally new, all-of-government machinery to fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations of resident unauthorized immigrants and new irregular arrivals.

To carry out this enterprise, the administration has enlisted federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that have previously never played significant roles—or any, in the case of the IRS—in immigration enforcement. It also has directed other federal law enforcement entities, including prosecutors, to prioritize deportations. And it has significantly increased the military’s involvement by deploying sizeable numbers of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, for the first time using military aircraft to carry out deportation flights, and, also in a first, detaining noncitizens arrested inside the United States at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Reaching beyond the federal ambit, the administration is also doubling down on its pressure on state and local authorities to conduct immigration enforcement actions traditionally reserved for federal agents, and is seeking or threatening to penalize those that offer resistance. And it has made cooperation on immigration a high priority in foreign affairs, taking an iron-fist approach to negotiations with foreign counterparts. Facing U.S. threats to impose tariffs, end foreign assistance, and take over the Panama Canal, Mexico and a number of other Latin American countries have agreed to implement migration controls, with some also agreeing to hold third-country nationals removed from the United States. So far, these countries have sought to appease the Trump administration, but policy implementation has been measured and strategic. Mexico, for example, has refused to accept deportees arriving on military planes and has also threatened reciprocal tariffs on U.S. imports should the Trump administration impose tariffs as early as March 4.

Finally, the administration has achieved something that several of its predecessors could not: Getting Congress to act on immigration legislation. The White House scored a victory when, within a few days of the inauguration, Congress in a bipartisan fashion passed the Laken Riley Act, the first stand-alone immigration legislation in nearly two decades. The law dramatically increases mandatory detention of noncitizens accused of certain criminal offenses.

The orchestrated, whole-of-government machinery displayed by this administration in its first month—accompanied by a muscular, carefully crafted messaging campaign—has the closest parallels with the actions that occurred in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when broad swaths of the federal government were repurposed to serve the national security mission. The fundamental difference is that post-9/11 actions were a response to an actual attack on U.S. soil, whereas today’s rhetoric of “invasion” and the arrival of foreign “military-age” men intent on building an “army” is not matched by reality. While encounters of asylum seekers and other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border reached record levels in fiscal year (FY) 2021 and FY 2022, there is no evidence so far of a significant threat to national security or general public safety. And, in fact, irregular crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border significantly declined during 2024, and in particular during the latter half of the calendar year….

Source: Trump Administration Bends U.S. Government in Extraordinary Ways towards Aim of Mass Deportations

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Deportations from Canada up 11 per cent in 2024, with half a million more awaiting removal

2025/02/28 Leave a comment

More recent data with large backlog of removals:

There are about half a million foreign nationals in Canada waiting for removal, including almost 30,000 who are wanted by officials as well as some 21,000 who can’t be removed.

The Canada Border Services Agency said it had 485,359 people in its removal inventory as of Dec. 31, including 120,273 in Ontario and 197,029 in Quebec. About 123,000 were not assigned to any region.

Last year it also reported 16,860 enforced removals, an 11 per cent increase from 2023, reaching the highest level since 2019, when 11,276 people were removed from the country, according to the latest removal statistics released by the border agency on Tuesday.

The top 10 countries where these foreign nationals were sent back to were: Mexico (3,579); India (1,932); Colombia (956); Haiti (806); Romania (653); the U.S. (631); China (535); Venezuela (470); Pakistan (392); and Hungary (366).

“Removing individuals who do not have the right to enter or stay in Canada is essential to maintaining the integrity of Canada’s immigration program and to ensuring fairness for those who come to this country lawfully,” it said.

Among the people booted out of the country last year, 13,527 were failed refugees and 2,261 were foreign nationals removed for non-compliance of immigration laws. While 771 people were removed due to criminality, 89 were involved in organized crime….

Source: Deportations from Canada up 11 per cent in 2024, with half a million more awaiting removal

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Record number of people applying to come to Canada to work, study or visit were refused in 2024

2025/02/28 Leave a comment

Ottawa refused a record number of would-be visitors, international students and foreign workers seeking to come to Canada last year.

According to data obtained by the Star, immigration officials rejected 2,359,157 or 50 per cent of temporary resident applications in 2024, up from 1,846,180 or 35 per cent the year before. The refusal rate — covering study permits, work permits and visitor visas — hit the highest level since 2019, before the pandemic.

Among the three subgroups, 1.95 million or 54 per cent of visitor visa applicants were denied last year — up from 40 per cent in 2023, along with 290,317 or 52 per cent of study permit applicants (up from 38 per cent), and 115,549 or 22 per cent of those who applied for authorization to work in Canada (down slightly from 23 per cent).

The federal government has set aggressive targets to rein in the number of temporary residents in the country under tremendous public pressure amid the affordable housing crisis and rising costs of living faced by Canadians post-pandemic. It also reduced the annual intake of new permanent residents by 20 per cent to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.

To clamp down on the surging temporary resident population in the country, Ottawa has tried to limit new entries while banking on migrants already here to leave voluntarily after their legal permits expire, with a portion of them transitioning to permanent residence under eligible programs.

However, immigration data appears to show a different story when it comes to showing the door to migrants who are already here.

Migrants with expiring temporary resident status are eligible to extend their legal status by applying for what’s called a visitor record. The document allows them to remain here legally but doesn’t let them work or study.

Immigration Department data showed the number of visitor record applications received doubled from 196,965 in 2019 to 389,254 in 2024. The refusal rate hovered at around five per cent. Last year, extension was granted to 321,277 temporary residents — only down slightly from 333,672 in 2023.

“If you remain here and you cannot legalize yourself either as a student, a worker or a permanent resident, the fallback solution is a visitor record,” said Ekaterina Neouimina, who speaks on behalf of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association as a founding member.

While she’s not surprised by the jump in refusals of temporary immigration to Canada, she said it doesn’t make sense that the visitor record approvals remained high.

Source: Record number of people applying to come to Canada to work, study or visit were refused in 2024

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Étudiants étrangers | Québec impose un plafond aux établissements

2025/02/28 Leave a comment

As per the rest of Canada, with similar issues and pushbacks:

Après avoir légiféré pour s’attribuer le pouvoir de limiter le nombre d’étudiants étrangers, le gouvernement Legault passe à l’acte : il réduit de 20 % le nombre de demandes pouvant être faites par des étudiants étrangers voulant fréquenter un établissement d’enseignement québécois. Plus particulièrement, Québec agit en limitant le nombre de certificats d’acceptation du Québec (CAQ), un document essentiel à l’obtention du permis d’études délivré par Ottawa.

Le gouvernement a attribué 156 647 certificats en 2024, et réduira ce nombre à 124 760 en 2025. Chaque établissement se verra donc attribuer un quota à respecter. Une nuance est importante : le nombre de certificats n’est pas représentatif du nombre d’étudiants étrangers au Québec puisque le certificat est accordé pour la durée d’une formation.

Les collèges privés écopent

La baisse est concentrée dans les collèges et établissements d’enseignement privés. « Là où vraiment, il va y avoir une réduction substantielle, c’est dans les AEC [attestations d’études collégiales] », explique la ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur, Pascale Déry. Québec cible les AEC et les formations de courte durée qui, déplore-t-elle, « servent de voies rapides » pour obtenir la résidence permanente.

On parle de formations en administration, en courtage immobilier, en planification d’évènements, en design, par exemple. « Il y a plein, plein de programmes d’AEC très populaires […] où il y a eu une croissance substantielle du nombre d’étudiants étrangers, constate la ministre. Est-ce qu’on a besoin de tous ces étudiants étrangers dans des programmes d’attestation d’études collégiales ? La réponse, c’est non. »

Selon le décret, le Collège Ellis (Trois-Rivières), le Collège Universel (Montréal), le Collège LaSalle (Montréal) et l’Institut Teccart (Montréal) sont les établissements privés qui accueillent – et de loin – le plus d’étudiants étrangers. Québec serre également la vis aux établissements d’enseignement qui offrent des formations professionnelles et, comme cela a été démontré dans les médias, qui ont « développé des modèles d’affaires » autour du recrutement à l’étranger.

Cégeps : des programmes « protégés »

Québec protège les AEC au collégial et la formation professionnelle qui visent à former des travailleurs dans trois domaines : santé, services sociaux et éducation. Des programmes « nichés » en région ou dans des secteurs stratégiques, comme l’aviation, ne subiront pas non plus de diminution, assure Mme Déry. Les cohortes en région vont toutes démarrer, assure-t-elle.

En revanche, le nombre d’étudiants étrangers dans l’ensemble des programmes d’études techniques (DEC) et préuniversitaires sera plafonné. Cela veut dire que Québec attribuera, pour 2025-2026, le même nombre de certificats par établissement qu’en 2024. D’ailleurs, le décret publié mercredi est d’une durée d’un an seulement. Le gouvernement Legault veut prendre en considération sa planification pluriannuelle de l’immigration – qui inclura pour la première fois l’immigration temporaire – pour définir les seuils pour les trois prochaines années dans le milieu de l’enseignement.

« La première étape, c’est de freiner cette croissance qu’on a eue au cours des dernières années, pour toute la pression que ça crée sur les services publics, sur le logement [des étudiants] dans mon cas », illustre la ministre. Le nombre d’étudiants étrangers ayant un permis d’études valide a explosé au Québec de 2014 à 2023, passant de 50 000 à 120 000, une hausse de 140 %, selon le gouvernement.

Coup de frein dans les universités

Comme pour les cégeps, Québec donne un coup de frein dans le nombre d’étudiants étrangers admis dans les universités en plafonnant la délivrance des certificats au niveau de 2024. Or, il s’agit d’une année où le nombre d’admissions a connu « une légère baisse », notamment en raison des actions du gouvernement fédéral, qui a plafonné pour une période de deux ans le nombre d’étudiants étrangers admis au pays. « Cette mesure a déjà un impact, reconnaît Mme Déry. Donc, dans le réseau universitaire, il n’y aura pas de réduction comme telle. On vient stabiliser le nombre de CAQ par rapport à 2024. » Selon la ministre, il s’agit d’une mesure « responsable, équilibrée et balancée ».

Les cégeps et les universités avaient rejeté le projet de loi du ministre de l’Immigration, Jean-François Roberge1. Les universités de Montréal, de Sherbrooke, McGill et Laval avaient même demandé d’être soustraites à la nouvelle loi. Pour les années à venir, « tout est sur la table », a prévenu la ministre, mardi. Elle invite les universités et les cégeps à participer aux consultations sur la planification de l’immigration, qui doit avoir lieu ce printemps.

Selon elle, le décret va « encourager et même pousser » les établissements universitaires « à mieux recruter des étudiants » pour être « certains qu’ils vont vraiment venir au Québec ». Mme Déry estime que leur « autonomie institutionnelle » est conservée, puisque les établissements vont « gérer la distribution » de leur quota.

Source: Étudiants étrangers | Québec impose un plafond aux établissements

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The Citizenship of Elon Musk and his Brood

2025/02/27 Leave a comment

Recently, petition e-5353 (Citizenship and immigration) was launched, advocating revocation of Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship. The petition struck a chord with many Canadians (over 300,000 signatures as of February 26). 

While there are no legal grounds for revoking his citizenship under current legislation or under the previous revocation provisions of the Harper government, Musk and his families provide an interesting illustration of how citizenship by descent works in practice for three countries: Canada, USA and South Africa.

Musk was born in South Africa, obtained Canadian citizenship through descent by his Canadian mother, and become an American citizen after living and working in the USA. Three of the mothers of his children are Canadian-born, the most recent mother is US-born. All of his children were born in the USA.

The previous first generation cut-off for Canadian citizenship meant than none of Musk’s children would have been Canadian citizens were it not for the fact that the first three mothers were born in Canada and thus able to transmit their citizenship. However their children (second generation) would not be able to do so. 

The proposed revision of the Citizenship Act in Bill C-71, likely to be revived in some form, would allow these children to obtain Canadian citizenship provided they met the residency requirement of 1,095 days in Canada, within a time limit of five years or without a time limit as C-71 proposed.. 

It is likely that all of his children would have been entitled to South African citizenship, provided that Musk did not renounce his South African citizenship and registered the birth with South African authorities. However, there is no indication that Musk has registered their births in South Africa.  

With respect to American citizenship, some media commentary has made a linkage between Musk’s offspring and the Trump administration’s executive order to curtail birthright citizenship, just as some have highlighted that Musk may have worked illegally for a brief period in the USA (Musk has denied). However, it is hard to see how Trump’s executive order, even in the unlikely event courts rule in its favour, would impact on Musk’s offspring given his American citizenship.

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Wells: Ira Wells on book banning

2025/02/27 Leave a comment

Peel Region never fails to disappoint in its excesses:

In one, [Ira] Wells was invited to take part in a “library audit” at his child’s Toronto school, led by a principle who said that if it were up to her, they’d get rid of “all the old books.” In another, all books published before 2008 were removed by the armful from Peel Region school libraries west of Toronto, on the general understanding that justice was invented in 2008 and that before that year, we were mostly just pummeling one another with rocks and other tools of oppression. I paraphrase.

Here’s a paragraph from the manual Peel Region school librarians used to guide them in this work of moral uplift. For my money, the word “therefore” is being asked to carry more than its fair comic weight:

Source: Ira Wells on book banning

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