Is immigration out of control? A debate [Kenney and Coyne] Canada wasn’t supposed to have

2025/12/15 Leave a comment

Didn’t watch the debate but this is a good summary and a demonstration of the need for such debates and discussion:

…“The single worst legacy of the Trudeau administration,” Kenney argued, “was taking a broad pro-immigration consensus and turning it on its head.”

Coyne did not meaningfully dispute that diagnosis. He did not defend the student visa explosion, the asylum surge, or the erosion of system integrity. Where the two men diverged was not on whether the system had failed, but on how much the failure should reshape Canada’s approach going forward.

The applause at the end suggested that more people in the room sided with Kenney. But the deeper victory belonged to the debate itself.

Immigration remains a pillar of Canadian life. But pillars require maintenance, which will always mean hard work. A system that cannot bear scrutiny cannot be corrected.

Canada is finally relearning how to argue about immigration without resorting to xenophobia or division, or accusing those arguing of doing so. One gets the sense that debate is essential if we want to avoid sliding into the heated, divisive rifts we see opening up south of the border and in much of continental Europe. Debating these serious policies with respect is a sign of civic maturity, and it’s essential that we continue to do so.

A confident country can argue about its future without fearing the argument; hopefully, this Hub debate is a sign Canada is still that country.

Source: Is immigration out of control? A debate Canada wasn’t supposed to have

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Coyne: If birth tourism is such a big scam, why do so few immigrants take advantage?

2025/10/16 Leave a comment

Tellingly, Coyne does not cite the example of Australia, which does require one of the parents to be either a Permanent Resident or citizen along with some residency requirements. Agree as the author of the study cited that the numbers are relatively small but they do have an impact on some hospitals in urban areas and overall undermine the meaningfulness of Canadian citizenship.

Classic case, to use former immigration minister Kenney’s phrase, “Canadians of convenience:”

…It’s often argued StatsCan’s numbers are an undercount. Hospital discharge data maintained by the Canadian Institute for Health Information appear to show the number of births to non-residents at three to four times that number: peaking at more than 5,200 in 2024, or (gasp) 1.4 per cent of all births. But still: 3 million temporary residents, and only a measly 5,200 babies? A ticket to citizenship, if not for themselves then at least for their kids, that 99.8 per cent of them pass up? 

If that suggests the problem of “birth tourism” is more rhetorical than real, there is still the principle: doesn’t it “devalue” Canadian citizenship to hand it out to the children of non-citizens? Let’s follow that line of thought. So we deny them citizenship. What happens then?

The critics are right to suggest that a good many of those 3 million “temporary” residents, perhaps as many as half, are likely to remain in Canada, more or less permanently. And yet their children born here would be denied citizenship? A permanent underclass with no legal connection to the country they’ve lived in their whole lives? Is that likely to encourage a sense of belonging, or the contrary?

There are countries that have adopted this rule, but they’re not particularly happy examples. Would anyone claim that Britain or France has a superior record when it comes to integrating immigrants? Or Germany, which, before the law was changed in 2000, denied citizenship to people who had been living there for generations? If we’re talking about “peer countries,” why talk about Old World countries, and not about most of the New World, immigrant-based countries like us, where jus soli is the norm?

I’d say this is a solution in search of a problem, but it’s more like an accelerant in search of a flame. Birthright citizenship works fine. Leave it alone.

Source: If birth tourism is such a big scam, why do so few immigrants take advantage?

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with

Coyne: A government can’t kill people for no reason? When will this judicial madness end?!

2025/08/18 Leave a comment

Valid points. Mandatory immunization provides another example:

…Nothing in the decision obliges the government to build new bicycle lanes. As such it involves no “positive rights,” which conservatives are right to oppose. It simply requires that before a government takes the extraordinary step of ordering the removal of lanes that have already been built – an action guaranteed to cost some lives and put many more in peril – it ought at least to have some basis in evidence or logic for doing so.

That’s arguable, but it’s not crazy. To be sure, ordinarily we leave the balancing of risks and returns to governments to figure out. The exception in law is where rights are involved. And of these the right to life is surely the most fundamental.

Again, let’s compare the Nova Scotia case. I don’t get to take a stroll in the woods for a couple of months, at a time of severe fire risk, versus I am put permanently at risk of getting killed, to save car drivers a couple of minutes off their route – which it won’t even do! 

These are the sorts of distinctions conservatives used to be able to make without difficulty. What happened?

Source: A government can’t kill people for no reason? When will this judicial madness end?!

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Coyne – Tariffs are only the start: we must buckle down for years of conflict with the U.S. [population]

2025/03/08 7 Comments

Coyne somewhat surprisingly ends up endorsing the Century 2100 population goal, with little critical thinking regarding its limitations and fallacies (a larger population does not mean a more prosperous population):

…Last, and perhaps most important: if we’re tired of the Americans kicking sand in our faces, maybe it’s time we bulked up. We’re roughly 42 million to their 340 million today. But suppose we aimed to make that eight-to-one margin more like four-to-one by the end of the century. Suppose, that is, we took seriously the idea of aiming for a population of 100 million.

To get there in 75 years would require no acceleration in population growth: in fact, it would mean slowing our growth considerably, to roughly 1.2 per cent per annum, from the 1.5 per cent annually it has averaged over the last 75 years.

It isn’t only our relationship with the United States this would change. Most other large developed countries are projected to flatline or shrink over the same interval. By 2100, according to the United Nations, the population of Japan will fall from 123 million today to 74 million; Germany, from 85 million to 71 million; Italy, from 59 million to 35 million. France and the United Kingdom are projected to grow slightly, to 68 million and 74 million, respectively.

Were we merely to double our current population by then (a growth rate of less than 1 per cent annually), therefore, we would be the second largest developed country, a major player on the world stage – and better placed to hold our own against the Great Republic to our south.

Source: Tariffs are only the start: we must buckle down for years of conflict with the U.S.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Coyne: The U.S. election shows that sometimes the people get it wrong

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

One of his better columns. Many other examples, Brexit being perhaps one of the best among Western countries:

…But that is an entirely separate question from whether it is rational, in response, to vote for a candidate such as Mr. Trump. The Biden administration made its share of mistakes; Ms. Harris has her flaws; the American economy could be performing better (though quite honestly it’s hard to see how); identity politics has a lot to answer for. But the notion that any of these, or all of them, represent such a dire threat, such an emergency, as to justify a “remedy” such as Mr. Trump – there is no other word for this but irrational.

It is not polite to say this. The notion that “the people are always right” is a staple of democratic discourse. And there is much truth in this. Indeed, I have often been forced to acknowledge it myself – the issue in which I had been so heavily invested, the factors that I had felt sure really ought to decide this or that election, proved, in the fullness of time, not to be of such overwhelming importance as all that, at least when set beside all the many other issues and considerations that combine, by some extraordinary alchemy, to produce a vote.

The average voter, busy as they are with the regular distractions of life, may take a broader and I dare say better view of things than the full-time pundit, too caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of politics. But it is not necessarily true, always and everywhere. Indeed, it can’t be true for all voters – in any election, the abiding wisdom of the majority must be set against what is presumably the abject folly of the minority.

Who’s to say we must necessarily pay homage to the former, just because they slightly outnumber the latter? Sometimes the people – some of the people at any rate – get it wrong. Especially the people who say the reason they voted for Donald Trump is that he is a “man of God,” or will “get tough with Russia,” or “cares about people like me.”

It is expected of politicians, especially losing politicians, that they must nevertheless grit their teeth and mouth the words, “The people are always right.” But such pieties are not required of columnists.

Source: The U.S. election shows that sometimes the people get it wrong

Filed under Politics Tagged with ,

Coyne: In a country where immigrants are the majority, anti-immigration politics are obsolete

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Or counter productive. But still room for lots of debates and discussions over numbers of both permanent and temporary, priorities and programs and the like:

….Indeed, we are about to cross a significant threshold. As of the 2021 census, 23 per cent of Canadians were immigrants – a record. Add to that the 17.6 per cent of the population with at least one foreign-born parent, and more than 40 per cent of the population were either first- or second-generation immigrants.

That was three years ago – before the current great wave of immigration. By now that number must be at least 42 or 43 per cent. Add to that the 6.8 per cent of the population, as of April 1 of this year, made up of non-permanent residents, and we are very nearly at 50 per cent.

That proportion is only likely to grow. Two years ago – again, before the great wave – Statistics Canada projected first- and second-generation immigrants would make up 52.4 per cent of the population by 2041. But that was on the basis of a projected total population of 48 million. It is already at 41.4 million.

There is no going back from this. We have crossed the immigration Rubicon. It’s easier to campaign against immigration in a country with little experience of it. But in a country where immigrants, and their children, make up the majority? It is not going to happen.

Source: Opinion: In a country where immigrants are the majority, anti-immigration politics are obsolete

Filed under Immigration, Politics Tagged with

What struck my attention when away

2024/06/18 Leave a comment

Immigration

Century Initiative’s 100 million population goal by year 2100 was meant to be provocative – and isn’t a target – CEO says

Appears to be flailing around given that their fundamental arguments appear to have failed:

Ms. Lalande said the 100 million population goal for 2100 “was meant to be provocative and bold” and to “spark an economic recharge.” The ultimate objective isn’t to see a specific population number by 2100, she said, but for Canada to be strategic and thoughtful in planning for growth.

“We don’t believe that growth should happen at all costs,” she said, saying the 100 million figure “was meant to galvanize the conversation and to spark debate and discussion of what the country could be and how we need to get there.”

But she warned against curtailing immigration, saying “that approach would result in an aging, less-skilled work force, less foreign investment, less diversity and less influence” globally.

Source: Century Initiative’s 100 million population goal by year 2100 was meant to be provocative – and isn’t a target – CEO says

Government criticized for limiting immigration sponsorships to four-year-old list

Never possible to satisfy demand:

Immigrants who came to Canada with the hope that their parents or grandparents could one day join them say they feel cheated after the federal government opened a sponsorship lottery this month drawing from a four-year-old list of applicants.

They are upset because Ottawa decided to allow around 30,000 sponsorships this year, but excluded applicants from joining the program if they had not registered an interest in 2020.

Some told The Globe and Mail that if they can’t successfully sponsor their relatives at some point, they may have to leave this country themselves to take care of them.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is sending out 35,700 randomly selected invitations to Canadian citizens and permanent residents to apply for the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP).

The invitations are drawn from a list of 200,000 people who expressed an interest in sponsoring their relatives in 2020.

Not everyone who receives an invitation to apply will submit a PGP application; however, IRCC said it ultimately expects around 32,000 grandparents and parents to qualify for permanent residence….

Source: Government criticized for limiting immigration sponsorships to four-year-old list

Caregivers from abroad to be given permanent residence on arrival under new pilot programs

Of note, addressing some past concerns:

The pilots, which are enhanced versions of two programs set to expire on June 17, will put qualified nannies, child-care and home-support workers on a fast track to settling in Canada.

Caregivers working for organizations that provide temporary or part-time care for people who are semi-independent or recovering from an injury or illness will also qualify under the new programs, which Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said will later become permanent.

Canada will admit more than 15,000 caregivers as permanent residents in the next two years, as part of Canada’s overall immigration targets, according to IRCC.

“Caregivers play a critical role in supporting Canadian families, and our programs need to reflect their invaluable contributions,” Mr. Miller said in a statement….

Source: Caregivers from abroad to be given permanent residence on arrival under new pilot programs

Canada needs an Immigrant Bill of Rights

Hard to see how adding another layer will necessarily improve processing and client service compared to addressing systemic issues:

This is why in a new report entitled Let’s Clean Up Our Act, the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association (CILA) encourages the federal government to introduce an Immigrant Bill of Rights to provide newcomers with greater protection and an enhanced experience. 

We also believe the Immigrant Bill of Rights should be complemented by introducing an Ombudsperson for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). 

These recommendations are far from novel or controversial.  

Numerous federal departments and agencies already have a bill of rights and/or ombudspersons.  

Source: Canada needs an Immigrant Bill of Rights

Tasha Kheiriddin: Brace for a possible tsunami of illegal migrants if Trump is re-elected

So almost a dedicated stream and pathway to citizenship? But that would require Canadian residency for at least three years, not “just being on our side:”

So what can Canada do that is positive? Apart from planning for these specific eventualities, Heyman suggests that we process as many Americans as possible for the equivalent of an American H1 Visa to Canada — not necessarily to live here, but to have a Canadian passport in their pocket and advocate for our country south of the border. “You’ve got a generational opportunity to get the top talent, people with means and skills, on your side — and possibly into your country,” Heyman said. A silver lining, perhaps, but the tsunami still looms.

Source: Tasha Kheiriddin: Brace for a possible tsunami of illegal migrants if Trump is re-elected

Rioux | «It’s the immigration, stupid!»

On the results and aftermath of the European Parliament elections and the political shakeout in France:

Son coup de tête a déjà provoqué le rassemblement de la gauche autour de son aile la plus radicale (La France insoumise) qui se complaît dans une forme de romantisme révolutionnaire flirtant avec l’antisémitisme et les appels à la violence. À droite, il a accéléré l’éclatement des Républicains, dont les jours étaient comptés, au profit d’un RN portant certes des revendications partagées par la majorité des Français, mais sans expérience ni cadres chevronnés et dont le programme économique est pour le moins boiteux.

Derrière l’apparence du combat des extrêmes, ne serions-nous pas en train de découvrir le nouveau visage de ce que sont tout simplement devenues, après une période d’effacement, la gauche et la droite ? Pour le dire simplement, la nouvelle gauche est aujourd’hui plutôt multiculturelle, wokiste et décoloniale. La nouvelle droite, plutôt nationaliste, souverainiste et conservatrice.

Dans la fureur et le chaos, nous assistons non seulement au retour de l’opposition entre droite et gauche, mais peut-être aussi de l’alternance sans laquelle aucune démocratie ne saurait survivre.

Source: Chronique | «It’s the immigration, stupid!»

Antisemitism, Israel Hamas war

Abella: What happened to the legacy of Nuremberg and the liberal democratic values we fought the Second World War to protect?

Well worth reading:

To paraphrase Martin Luther King, the arc of the moral universe may be long, but it does not always bend towards justice. And that means that too many children will never get to grow up, period – let alone in a moral universe that bends toward justice and the just rule of law.

I used to see the arc of my own life bending assertively from Nuremberg to ever-widening spheres of justice, but in this unrelenting climate of hate, I feel the hopeful arc turning into a menacing circle.

We need to stop yelling at each other and start listening, so that we can reclaim ownership of the compassionate liberal democratic values we fought the Second World War to protect, and to put humanity back in charge by replacing global hate with global hope.

My life started in a country where there had been no democracy, no rights, no justice. It instilled a passionate belief in me that those of us lucky enough to be alive and free have a particular duty to our children to do everything possible to make the world safer for them than it was for their parents and grandparents, so that all children, regardless of race, religion or gender, can wear their identities with pride, in dignity, and in peace.

Source: What happened to the legacy of Nuremberg and the liberal democratic values we fought the Second World War to protect?

Regg Cohn: Doug Ford isn’t the only one who has fumbled on antisemitism

Also well worth reading by those who have no answers to these questions:

To be sure, critics of Israel — of which I am one — are not necessarily anti-Israeli (or anti-Jewish). But a good many are so adamantly opposed to the existence of the state of Israel, for reasons of history or bigotry, that you have to ask:

Where would those millions of Jews go? Back to Poland, as some like to taunt? Here to Canada, where they feel increasingly besieged? Stay where they are in a single state where “Palestine shall be free, from the river to the sea,” subsuming and consuming the Jewish state?

Israel is guilty of many sins during its long decades of occupation, although neither side is blameless about missed opportunities. After the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 Jews and the taking of hostages, Israel’s overreaction and overreach transformed a just war of defence into a war without justifiable limits.

Source: Doug Ford isn’t the only one who has fumbled on antisemitism

Lederman: The banning of an Israeli-American graphic novelist shows how some arts organizations are rushing to judgment

Exclusion is not the answer except in extreme cases where it crosses into hate speech:

With Israel and Hamas at war, there has been so much screaming at one another, across a widening divide. What could be accomplished by having actual conversations?

This isn’t the only instance of selective targeting of Israeli, Jewish or Palestinian artists by arts organizations. With festival and awards season approaching in the fall, there is reason to fear more exclusions to come.

Source: The banning of an Israeli-American graphic novelist shows how some arts organizations are rushing to judgment

Citizenship

Mansour: Citizenship in the Multicultural State

Interesting evolution by Mansour compared to his earlier writings:

In conclusion, it might be said that the generation of 1968 was a pioneer generation in the making of a new political agenda that goes beyond the attachment to the state of which a citizen is a member. Canada has contributed to this agenda, internationalist and multicultural, through the social changes that have occurred in the years since its centenary anniversary. As a result, Canadians are in the midst of emerging new sensibilities that are more open to the world, more receptive of other cultures, more inclined to accepting international law and adjusting domestic statutes to that requirement. These changes render older political arrangements less meaningful in the twenty-first century.

Source: Citizenship in the Multicultural State

Foreign interference

Three article of interest of foreign interference and the shameful “witting” involvement of some MPs

‘Witting’ involvement changes the nature of foreign interference

NSICOP doesn’t name the parliamentarians who are witting participants in foreign interference. It raises a question about parliamentarians. It calls on the government to brief MPs about interference – and warns MPs to “reduce their vulnerabilities.”

And once again, it is another report telling the public that the Canadian government has not done enough to counter the threat of foreign interference. If anything, those warnings have grown louder.

This time, what a committee of parliamentarians has told us in clearer terms than ever is that the threat of interference from abroad includes participants here in Canada, inside Parliament, who have something to gain from dealing with foreign actors.

Source: ‘Witting’ involvement changes the nature of foreign interference

Coyne: We need to know the names of the traitor MPs, but don’t count on any of the parties to give them up

The Liberals’ tactic of deny, delay and deflect – first denying the allegations, then, when they can no longer be denied, denying they matter – has proved largely successful. Polls show that foreign interference ranks low on the public’s list of important issues. The Opposition is likely to take the hint. It was to their advantage to demand a public inquiry, so long as the government refused – and so long as they could be assured its findings would only stick to the government. But now? What’s in it for them?

For that matter, the same might apply to certain sections of the media: The report refers to Chinese officials “interfering with Canadian media content via direct engagement with Canadian media executives and journalists,” while a redacted passage cites “examples of the PRC paying to publish media articles without attribution.”

So if none of the parties is keen on turning over this rock, if law enforcement are unwilling and the media nervous – Mr. Dong’s lawsuit against Global News will have had a useful chilling effect – then the betting proposition has to be that nothing will happen. None of the MPs involved will be prosecuted, or named, or face consequences of any kind. And the public will shrug. Experience has taught them that, in this country, nobody ever faces consequences for this kind of thing.

Unless … unless a lone MP stands up in the House and names the names.

Source: We need to know the names of the traitor MPs, but don’t count on any of the parties to give them up

Yakabuski | L’ingérence étrangère et l’indifférence libérale

Tout au plus, la vice-première ministre, Chrystia Freeland, a-t-elle promis que les libéraux effectueraient « un suivi interne » dans la foulée du rapport. Comme son collègue à la Sécurité publique, elle n’a pas semblé désireuse d’aller au fond des choses. Est-ce parce que le caucus libéral compte beaucoup de députés issus des communautés culturelles qui entretiennent des relations étroites avec les représentants au Canada des gouvernements de leurs pays d’origine ? Certains de ces députés craignent, avec ou sans raison, une chasse aux sorcières dans la foulée du rapport McGuinty.

« La garantie que je peux donner aux Canadiens est que notre gouvernement prend très, très au sérieux l’ingérence étrangère », a réitéré cette semaine Mme Freeland. Or, la réaction du gouvernement au dernier rapport laisse, encore une fois, une impression contraire.

Source: Chronique | L’ingérence étrangère et l’indifférence libérale

Other

Hindutva ideology proved costly for India’s Narendra Modi

Of note:

The decade-long entrenchment of far-right ideologies in India, an over-focus on dividing Hindus and Muslims and on wealth generation for the rich eroded the country’s human rights record, judicial autonomy and press freedom.

That people with the least individual power were able to collectively push back against plans of the most powerful has rekindled the flame of democracy domestically and fanned hopes of resistance against tyranny globally.

Source: Hindutva ideology proved costly for India’s Narendra Modi

A Plea for Depth Over Dismissal

Agree:

To be clear, this article is not a plea for a return to scorecard history. Scorecard history is not a sound approach either. For, in the end, history is a qualitative discipline. Ranking prime ministers, or anyone else for that matter, is a silly exercise. Good deeds and bad deeds cannot be weighted and tallied up so that some final score can be determined. For that matter, categorizing deeds as good or bad in the first place flattens a great deal of complexity, like intentionality or unforeseen consequences, and it is precisely in that great universe of gray that real insights can be found. Insights into continuities between past and present, into how politics work in practice, and into the most accurate assessments of legacy. For the legacy of most leaders, much like the legacy of the policy of multiculturalism, will be neither entirely beneficial nor detrimental. But through a rigorous, nuanced, and deep examination of the lives and legacies of politicians and their policies, we stand to learn much about our country’s past – and its present too.

Daniel R. Meister is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of The Racial Mosaic (MQUP 2021).

Source: A Plea for Depth Over Dismissal

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Coyne: On foreign interference, Canada has been a sitting duck

2024/04/01 Leave a comment

Sadly true:

..Representatives of the various diaspora communities most affected – Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Indian – testified of the threats, violence and other coercive tactics to which they have been subjected by agents of their respective countries of origin, including threats against family members still there.

More to the point, they testified of the indifference and inaction that greeted them when they sought the protection of Canadian authorities: the police officers who told them there was nothing they could do, the political parties who refused to take up their cause, the governments that appeared to actively collude in their repression – from the City of Ottawa banning protests outside the Chinese embassy to the federal Immigration department granting residency permits to former high-ranking officials in the Iranian regime….

Source: On foreign interference, Canada has been a sitting duck

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Coyne: Home truths about Canada’s housing mess

2023/09/18 Leave a comment

Coyne acknowledges (partially) that high immigration levels are part of the problem but only partially so. And when exactly did we have higher immigration rates, as a percentage of the population, since the settling of the West?

It’s a shortage of houses, not a surplus of people. Now everyone’s convinced the problem is high immigration. No doubt there’s some truth in this, in specific markets – the extraordinary, seemingly unanticipated surge in the number of foreign students enrolling in Canadian universities and colleges has overwhelmed the supply of student housing. Maybe a pause there would help.

But we had higher immigration rates in the past without igniting a housing crisis. And prices were already at stratospheric levels long before the immigration surge of the past two years. I don’t disagree that made things worse, but it’s the long-term decline in the supply of new housing that has set us up for this.

Source: Home truths about Canada’s housing mess

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

BC Business Council: Canadians face 40 years of stagnant incomes – government’s economic strategy is failing, vs Coyne’s supply side immigration approach

2023/09/14 Leave a comment

Good hard hitting look at the government’s economic and related immigration policies. Money quote: “… like believing Christmas dinner will be made easier if you invite more people because they can help with the washing up.”

Sharp contrast to the Andrew Coyne piece below “hallelujah for all those extra people, and let’s have lots more,” which reminds me of voodoo supply side economics and the Laffer curve:

The House of Commons resumes sitting Sept. 18. One of its first orders of business should be to debate the government’s economic growth strategy, which is failing and needs a rethink.

In the five years to 2019, Canada’s real GDP per capita growth was an anemic 0.5 per cent per annum. Since 2019, it has been the fifth-weakest of 38 OECD countries – and per capita GDP growth has even turned negative over the past year.

For the second quarter of 2023, year-over-year GDP growth was 1.1 per cent. But population growth was 3.1 per cent, the highest since 1957-58, after the Hungarian Revolution and the Suez Crisis. Thus, in per capita terms the Canadian economy is shrinking by 2 per cent year-over-year.

Canada is one of the few advanced countries where real incomes are lower than before the pandemic. Real GDP per person is $55,170, compared with $56,379 in 2019, meaning the economy is generating $1,200 less income per person, or $2,830 less income per household, than it was four years ago.

We estimate Canada will not recover its 2019 income per capita until at least 2027, based on the federal budget’s projections for GDP growth and likely population growth. The OECD forecasts that Canada will be the worst-performing advanced economy over both 2020-30 and 2030-60, with the lowest growth in real GDP per capita. The principal reason is that Canada is expected to rank dead last among OECD countries in productivity growth over most of 2020-60.

Young and aspirational Canadians face 40 years of stagnant average real incomes. The only way to feel confident about future living standards is to avoid looking at the data.

Several of the government’s core policy beliefs are misguided. The first is that freewheeling government spending, untethered by the defined limits of a credible fiscal anchor, is not “consumption” but rather “investment” that raises real incomes. The data say otherwise.

A related belief is that government programs are what entice companies to become more innovative and productive, rather than signals from well-functioning, competitive product markets and discerning customers. The government has relied on households and business taxpayers to fund subsidies for preferred recipients and has massively expanded the bureaucracy without much to show for it other than shrinking the relative size of the private sector. That is a recipe for a low-productivity, low-wage economy.

A third belief is that “ever-increasing” immigration is an economic panacea. The academic literature overwhelmingly finds that the level of immigration has a negligible or neutral overall impact on indicators that determine a country’s living standards: labour productivity, real wages, the employment rate, the population’s age structure and, crucially, GDP per capita.

Ramping up immigration to fill low-wage jobs instantly increases demand for things that take years to build, such as housing (especially rentals), roads, schools and hospitals. We have no idea how provinces and municipalities can be expected to quickly address the needs of 800,000 extra temporary residents arriving in the past two years – people they did not know were coming – along with 920,000 additional permanent residents. Our concern is compounded by the revelation that Statistics Canada has undercounted – by one million – the number of temporary residents already here. The federal government’s immigration strategy is like believing Christmas dinner will be made easier if you invite more people because they can help with the washing up.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so,” wrote Mark Twain. Demonstrably, federal policies are yielding “prosperity-free” economic growth.

We believe Canada needs an economic policy agenda focused on raising average living standards. The country would benefit from modest (and co-ordinated) fiscal and monetary policy restraint to dampen inflation, alongside a productivity-focused agenda to expand the economy’s supply-side capacity, expedite business investment and innovation, scale domestic firms and ensure Canada can supply the world with responsibly produced natural resources and manufactured goods.

This will require overdue reforms to our inefficient tax and regulatory systems. Such a policy agenda would aim to cool demand and enhance supply, bringing them into balance. Critically, this would lift rather than reduce or stagnate average real incomes, as is happening under the federal government’s current approach.

David Williams, DPhil, is vice-president of policy at the Business Council of British Columbia. Jock Finlayson is the council’s senior policy adviser.

Source: Canadians face 40 years of stagnant incomes – government’s economic strategy is failing

Coyne:

By now the consensus has more or less become set in stone. Why are housing prices in Canada so high – fifth highest, relative to income, in the OECD? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s because we’re taking in too many people. Supply and demand and all that. Common sense, really.

The same goes for our stagnating standard of living. Canada’s GDP per capita is no higher than it was in 2017; labour productivity, having fallen for five consecutive quarters, is back to where it was in 2014. That, too, we are told, is on account of there being too many people about. Again, simple math, right? More labour relative to capital equals less investment per worker equals lower productivity. QED.

Or health care. Wait times are now three times what they were 30 years ago. Must be because of all of those immigrants.

It’s true that Canada’s population has been growing over the past year or two at rates that exceed recent experience: a million more people last year, probably at least as many this year.

Of course, that’s coming off a relatively slow year in 2021, when the population grew by only 200,000 and change, but still: We’re looking at an average population growth rate, over the past three years, of nearly 2 per cent annually. And yes, most of that has been the result of immigration.

Of course, 2-per-cent population growth isn’t especially high by historical standards. From 1946 through 1982, that was the average growth rate; throughout the 1950s, indeed, it was well in excess of that mark. I do not believe the 1950s are commonly associated with either sluggish growth rates or housing shortages.

For that matter, soaring house prices and lagging productivity growth – and health care wait times – have been issues in Canada for many years, long before population growth began to take off. As they are in other advanced countries, with stable or even falling population numbers.

So perhaps the case that Canada, of all places, suffers from Too Many People may not be quite so self-evident as it may have first appeared. If GDP per capita is straggling, is it because of the denominator (population) or the numerator (GDP)? If housing prices are soaring, is that because of the demand, or the supply? Is the problem too many people, or too little of the investment and housing needed to support them?

It would be one thing if the supply of either were running flat out – if investment or output or housing starts were at record or even unusually high levels, but still could not keep up with the torrid growth in population. But such is not the case.

I suppose it’s possible to connect the relative stagnation of per capita GDP over the past several years to the surge in population over the last two. But it’s surely at least as significant that GDP growth itself has slowed markedly throughout. At roughly 1.5 per cent a year, after inflation, GDP growth since 2014 has averaged less than a third of what it was in the 1950s.

The same with housing. Maybe you can put the current level of house prices down to the number of people living here. Or maybe we should look at the number of houses. At 424 housing units per 1,000 residents, economists at Scotiabank have observed, Canada has the lowest supply of housingof any G7 country.

Why? Because the supply of housing in recent decades has slowed to a trickle. Housing starts, at roughly 260,000 annually, are lower now, in absolute terms, than they were in the early 1970s, when our population was barely half what it is today. Adjusting for population, the rate of housing starts is a third less than it was in the 1960s and 1970s (600 per 100,000 population versus 900).

If we were still building as many houses, proportionately, as we did then, we’d be adding more than400,000 units a year, and no one would be talking about a housing shortage. We’re not overpopulated, we’re underhoused.

It’s just too simple, in other words, to look at the number of people, or the growth rate, as our neo-Malthusians would have it. It’s certainly true that an increase in population, given a fixed quantity of investment or housing, will lead to increased pressure on these resources. But these quantities aren’t fixed, or certainly needn’t be. If they are, it’s worth asking why – notably, what contribution ill-considered policy might be making to this.

As, in fact, we now are. What can be said about population growth is that it makes the costs of bad policy more apparent. If it means we are now beginning, at long last, to have a serious conversation about the barriers to investment and housing construction that have bedevilled this country for decades, then hallelujah for all those extra people, and let’s have lots more.

Source: It’s not that we have too many people. It’s that we have too few houses

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