Canada’s population sees biggest one-year increase on record, StatCan reports

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Quoted on need for annual levels plan to include temporary residents and political will to curb growth:

Canada’s population is growing at its fastest pace since the distant days of the baby boom.

According to the latest Statistics Canada report, the population last year grew by more than a million — a 2.9 per cent rate, the highest since the late 1950s and one that outstrips, by a wide margin, every other G7 country.

At that rate, observed StatCan’s Patrick Charbonneau, the population, now at slightly over 40 million, would double in just 25 years.

The question those figures and that projection raise is this: Is Canada — famously in the midst of both a housing crisis and a health-care crisis — ready to deal with that many more people?

The growth — 98 per cent of it — has been driven by immigration, both permanent and temporary, and particularly by the numbers of non-permanent residents coming to Canada. Those include refugees, temporary foreign workers and international students.

In 2022-23, Canada took in some 1.13 million immigrants, the highest such figure on record, and almost half a million more than the previous year. Over the same period, the number of non-permanent residents increased by 697,701.

As of June 2023, the number of non-permanent residents stood at nearly 2.2 million, about 5.5 per cent of Canada’s population.

“Temporary immigration has surpassed permanent immigration for the first time last year in a context where permanent immigration was already close to a record high,” said Charbonneau.

Andrew Griffith, a former director general at the federal Immigration Department, said Ottawa has a well-managed immigration system of permanent residents, but the exponential growth of the temporary resident admission has made the population growth unsustainable.

Ottawa has an annual plan that sets admission targets for different classes of permanent resident, but the entry of temporary residents is uncapped.

“We have to have an integrated immigration plan that actually looks at both the permanent residents and the temporary residents, given that the temporary residence is largely uncontrolled and has been increasing at a very high rate,” Griffith said.

“If you look at its explosive growth over the past few years, the past 20 years, that obviously contributes to all the pressures on housing, health care, infrastructure and the like.”

He said the government’s immigration plan is developed in silos and doesn’t address infrastructure capacity issues when it comes to health care, housing, education and transportation.

Although public sentiment still largely favours the continued immigration boost and its economic and workforce benefits, many regions are already struggling to manage housing and health-care shortages.

Across Canada, rising prices and limited supply create difficulties for those seeking home rental and ownership. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said in a Sept. 13 report that Canada needs 3.5 million more units, on top of those already being built, to restore affordability. Sixty per cent of the demand for housing is in Ontario and B.C., largely due to supply lagging behind demand for 20 years.

On the health side, about six million people across Canada lack access to a family doctor, according to Canadian Medical Association data. Of those who have a family doctor, about a third experience overly long wait times to access them.

It’s a system already under strain, with doctors and nurses increasingly reporting stress and burnout, and some quitting.

An increasing population doesn’t necessarily dictate a health-care calamity, said Ruth Lavergne, a Canada Research Chair in Primary Care at Dalhousie University.

But she said the segment of the population supporting and working in health care needs to grow proportionately to the population. And we need to “rethink the organization of health care, to make it more efficient and better use the capacity that we have.”

Some of that capacity exists within the ranks of the newcomers, in the guise of foreign-trained health professionals. The problem is Canada doesn’t have a great record in helping them work here.

But streamlining the credentialing process can’t be the only fix, said Canadian Medical Association president Kathleen Ross.

She said the country will have to reconsider health-care delivery.

And that, to her mind, means reconsidering who’s doing what, where and when in the health system, and how to plug gaps without opening up new ones.

It also means changing how primary care works, reducing the administrative burdens on health professionals and better retaining them.

“We’re in a really unique time. Our emergency rooms, which are sort of the backstop, if you will, for a primary care system that’s not functioning well, are already over capacity and struggling with closures relating to our human health resource challenges.”

“These are all things we need to take into consideration, whether or not our population increases by a half a million or one-and-a-half million this year. It still behooves us to get back to the big discussion about how we are going to deliver access to care for all residents in Canada, whether they’re temporary or permanent.”

On the housing shortage side, the responsibility falls on provincial and federal governments to ensure Canada can withstand rising demand, said John Pasalis, president of Toronto brokerage Realosophy Realty. Over the past decade, he feels that has broken down as governments failed to scale investments in vital services in line with population growth.

Although immigrants often feel the brunt of the blame for these pressures, Pasalis said culpability lies with leaders who set ambitious immigration targets and allow universities to accept significant numbers of international students without investing in upgrading capacity.

“The people who are moving here are the ones that are kind of paying the biggest price in many, many cases.”

If governments don’t step up, all Canadians will eventually feel the squeeze, said Mike Moffatt, assistant professor in business and economics at Western University.

“We certainly either need to increase the amount of infrastructure built and housing built or slow down population growth,” Moffatt said. “If we continue to have this disconnect, we’re just going to have more housing shortages, less affordability and more homelessness.”

Instead of looking at newcomers as the source of housing strain, Moffatt says leaders should impose stronger restrictions on investors taking advantage of scarcity to drive up prices.

But it’s not just the supply of houses; it’s the type of supply. Those stronger regulations will need to be aimed at developers, too, said Marc Lee, a senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The housing in highest demand — for low- and middle-income families — is not as profitable to build.

David Hulchanski, a University of Toronto professor of housing and community development, noted that Airbnb has also taken up available housing across the country, something he said could be curbed through stronger regulation.

“There’s this effort to blame our housing problem on an increase in population,” said Hulchanski. “It isn’t just supply, it’s the type of supply.”

Against this backdrop, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has talked about the need to rein in admissions of international students — around 900,000 this year — by developing a “trusted system” to enhance the integrity of the international student program.

Griffith said that’s not enough — Canada needs to impose a hard cap, though that will take a strong political nerve.

“The business sector will squawk about the fewer temporary workers. Education institutions will go bankrupt if they don’t have their international students. The provincial governments will get in the way because they have to actually pay for university (education) rather than allowing the universities to be subsidized by foreign students.”

Shutting down the international student program and the temporary foreign worker program, or making major reductions to those programs, seems unlikely, he said, but freezing at current levels and gradually reducing those numbers might be viable.

“It would be very contentious,” he said. “It boils down to a lot of political will.”

Source: Canada’s population sees biggest one-year increase on record, StatCan reports

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Integration – General Deck 2022 data

2023/09/07 Leave a comment

This is an updated version of my earlier deck with 2022 numbers across immigration, citizenship, settlement and multiculturalism, OECD integration indicators and polling data. The narrative has also been updated to reflect the ongoing shift to two-step immigration, and arguably a shift from an immigration-based country to a migration-based country.

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Will reining in the number of international students in Canada help the housing crisis — or bring more harm?

2023/08/24 Leave a comment

Some good comments by immigration lawyer Raj Sharma and if I do say myself, me:

Canada’s post-secondary education sector is pushing back on a proposed cap on international student admission, arguing it won’t help address the country’s current housing crisis but threatens the economy.

“Although implementing a cap on international students may seem to provide temporary relief, it could have lasting adverse effects on our communities, including exacerbating current labour shortages,” said Colleges and Institutes Canada, the largest national post-secondary advocacy group.

“We want to emphasize that students are not to blame for Canada’s housing crisis; they are among those most impacted.”

The group, which represents 141 schools across Canada, was responding to a suggestion by Housing Minister Sean Fraser at the federal cabinet retreat in Charlottetown to restrict the number of international students to help ease the housing crunch.

“That’s one of the options that we ought to consider,” the former immigration minister told reporters on Monday.

On Tuesday, Marc Miller, his successor, echoed the need to rein in the growth of international enrolment.

“Abuses in the system exist and must be tackled in smart and logical ways,” Bahoz Dara Aziz, Miller’s press secretary, told the Star. “This potentially includes implementing a cap.

“But that can’t be the only measure, as it doesn’t address the entire problem. We’re currently looking at a number of options in order to take a multi-faceted approach to this.”

The post-secondary educational sector has increasingly relied on revenue from international students to subsidize the Canadian tertiary education system after years of government cuts.

According to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, there were 807,750 international students in Canada at all levels of study last year, up 43 per cent from five years ago.

So much is at stake with international students, who pay significantly higher tuition rates than Canadians, contributing more than $21 billion to colleges and universities, local communities and the economy nationwide, creating 180,000 jobs.

Fraser’s remarks also marked a change from when he was overseeing Immigration and staunchly defended the Liberals’ record immigration levels and strategy to stimulate economic recovery through immigration.

“I find this a little bit disingenuous,” said Calgary immigration lawyer Raj Sharma. “The minister who’s talking about capping international students is the same minister that eliminated the 20-hour limit of working in a week for the international students.”

“It’s very odd for Mr. Fraser to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth.”

While concentration of international students in particular urban hot spots has contributed to the rising rental costs and strained housing supplies in the GTA, the Lower Mainland in B.C. and parts of Alberta and the Maritimes, Sharma said the housing challenges predated the influx.

International students have become such an integral part of the immigration system and the Canadian economy that it’s hard to just turn the tap on and off, he said.

Canada has made it a policy a decade ago to attract more international students and eased the rules by offering postgraduate work permits and a pathway for permanent residence.

International students have been touted as ideal immigrants because of their Canadian education and employment credentials. However, critics have warned that international education has been misused as a shortcut for those only here for a shot at permanent residence.

“There’s a lot of stakeholders, a lot of vested interest in keeping international student intake high. These students are exploited from basically before they come to Canada and then after they come to Canada up until they become permanent residents,” said Sharma.

“So there’s employers that are using them as cheap labour. These international students are causing even concern among various diasporic communities that they’re driving down wages.”

The immigration minister’s office said it recognizes the important role international students play in local communities and to Canada’s economy, but something has to be done.

“To tackle these challenges around fraud and bad actors, we also have to have some difficult conversations with the provinces around the threats to the integrity of the system, and outline the perverse incentives that it’s created for institutions,” Aziz said.

“We must also reward the good actors because there is so much real value in the international students program, and those who do it well are essentially mentoring the future of this country.”

The surge of international students is only part of the problem as the number of temporary foreign workers and work permit holders are also going through the roof in recent years, said Andrew Griffith, a retired director general at the federal immigration department.

The number of temporary foreign worker positions approved through a Labour Market Impact Assessment annually have skyrocketed from 89,416 in 2015 to 221,933 last year, according to federal data.

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

“They picked international students because they probably calculated it’s the easiest group to go after. There are enough stories about abuse that it’s a way to get into Canada,” said Griffith.

“It’s by no means a slam dunk, but it does signal that the government is starting to realize that there are some impacts of large immigration. You can’t just expand immigration and expect that society will automatically adapt.”

Griffith said any immediate relief to the housing market won’t be felt in at least a year until the next round of intake because it’s already September and incoming students have been issued student visas or are in Canada.

In Ontario, international students accounted for 30 per cent of the public post-secondary student population and represented 68 per cent of total tuition revenue in the 2020-21 school year, said Jonathan Singer, chair of the College Faculty Division of OPSEU, which represents 16,000 college professors, instructors, counsellors and librarians.

Singer said any cap on international students would need to be accompanied by a model of stable and predictable post-secondary provincial funding. When such a funding model was last in place in Ontario, he added, the schools had no need to seek out a number of international students that they or the province couldn’t manage.

“One role they shouldn’t have to play is filling in the fiscal gaps left by an erosion in public funding,” Singer explained. “Our colleges and universities need to ask how many international students they have the resources to accommodate — including supports related to housing, academics and health care, including mental health.”

Although education is a provincial jurisdiction and admissions are the responsibility of the schools, both Sharma and Griffith said the federal government does have the leverage to raise the bar for language proficiency and financial assets in granting visas to students as a control mechanism.

“If you increase the quality of the intake and necessarily that may result in a decrease in the hard numbers,” said Sharma. “But instead of capping it, I think it’s time for us to optimize it and ensure that we’re getting the best bang for our buck.”

Colleges and Institutes Canada said its members have long recognized housing shortage challenges and have fast-tracked the development of new residences and approvals for building accommodations. It has also asked Ottawa to invest $2.6 billion in a new Student Housing Loan and Grant Program.

Source: Will reining in the number of international students in Canada help the housing crisis — or bring more harm?

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – June 2023 update

2023/08/12 Leave a comment

Given IRCC delays in issuing citizenship data, have combined the May and June report.

At the half year mark, the government is on target to meet the levels plan for Permanent Residents (however misguided), with 263,000 to date or 57 percent of 465,000. The percentage of Temporary Residents transitioning to Permanent Residents averages about 50 percent for both time periods.

The number of temporary residents continues to grow, with 385,000 compared to 185,000 for the January-June 2002 period for the International Mobility Program and 114,000 compared to 75,000 for the Temporary Foreign Workers program.

The same pattern applies to International students: 242,000 compared to 202,000 for the January-June 2002 period.

For asylum claimants: 53,000 compared to 37,000.

Unlike the above, the number of new citizens has no impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure as they are virtually all here in Canada. Interestingly, this is the only program that has seen a decline in the January-June periods: 177,000 compared to 184,000 although still historically strong.

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Griffith: Canada badly needs an immigration reset 

2023/08/10 Leave a comment

My latest, hoping to provoke a more concrete discussion on what a reset needs and what it would mean:

The government has largely ignored the impact of high levels of immigration on housing availability and affordability, health care and infrastructure. Belated recognition that current policies are not working to the benefit of all Canadians may be the reason behind the appointment of a new minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, and the reassignment of  the former minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser, to housing and infrastructure.

Minister Fraser arguably will have to deal with some of the mess he and the government created with the large increases in both permanent and temporary residents, pushing up housing costs and burdening existing infrastructure. Minister Miller will likely be more attuned to concerns about immigration given that he is from Quebec and thus more familiar with immigration critiques regarding the demographic impact on Quebec.

Moreover, the nature of conversations has changed. When, some two years ago I wrote an article for Policy Options entitled Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast, there were few voices questioning the government’s planned expansion of immigration. Now, there are almost weekly commentaries and reports, ranging from the banks to economists, the International Monetary Fund and others, noting deteriorating productivity, housing availability and affordability, stress on health care and infrastructure. Even the major boosters of increased immigration have shifted their messaging to “growing well” or even calling for a pause in increases.

While immigration is not solely responsible for the increase in housing costs, the link is being seen and could lead to newcomers being the scapegoats for poor policy decisions. The significant drop in support for the Liberal government may reflect this very personal issue to Canadians.

While at Immigration, Fraser was able to increase levels easily, whereas as housing and infrastructure minister, he will be confronted with the real time lags, making it impossible to show concrete results before the 2025 election. So it’s not a matter of “better communications” but rather of complex delivery with a wide range of government and private sector actors.

Miller, depending on his mandate letter, has an opportunity to reset or at least adjust  immigration policies and programs to take account of recent commentary and realities. He will not be able to ignore these issues even if his initial comments confirm planned increases. The annual plan on the number of immigrants this fall provides an opportunity for a reset should the government choose to do so.

Given that a complete pivot to a more evidence-based approach is unlikely, here are some modest suggestions that make sense from an immigration and economic perspective that may be politically sellable.

To start with, the plan should be broadened to include plans for temporary residents levels rather than just permanent residents levels, given that some 60 per cent of all new residents are temporary workers and students, many of whom transition to permanent residency.

Given time lags in building housing, increasing the capacity of the health-care system and addressing infrastructure gaps, the government should freeze 2023 levels of 465,000 for the next few years. More ambitiously, the government could reduce future levels to the lower 2024 range of 410,000.

The current open-ended levels on temporary residents (students and workers) should be replaced by hard ranges based on 2023 levels for similar reasons. Furthermore, the government needs to consider seriously the introduction of a cap-and-trade system for temporary residents to reduce the numbers over time to address weak productivity, as the University of Waterloo’s Mikal Skuterud has suggested.

Lastly, the government needs to take steps to further broaden the plan to include the impacts of immigration on housing, health care and infrastructure, including measures to address these impacts, rather than as a discrete program.

Miller’s mandate letter will indicate the extent to which this is possible. But these changes would not necessarily be perceived as divisive or xenophobic given that the impacts on housing, health care and infrastructure affect everyone, immigrants and Canadian-born alike. Failure to pivot to a more comprehensive approach that incorporates these considerations into immigration programs will not only worsen the quality of lives of Canadians but may prove politically damaging to a government long-in-the-tooth and losing popular support.

Source: Griffith: Canada badly needs an immigration reset

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Annual public service report to PM should prompt ‘serious conversation’ about bureaucracy’s future, says former PCO clerk Wernick

2023/08/01 Leave a comment

Civil service renewal is ‘fairly low down on the political radar screen,’ says bureaucracy expert Andrew Griffith. 

Begs the question, if nobody in Parliament is paying attention, what is the value of the report? Part of the problem, as in many (most?) such reports, is the lack of frank language on failures and challenges and general bureaucratic tone (been responsible for comparable reports).

My comments on the relative success of government in increasing representation among the equity groups part of the article:

Michael Wernick, the former clerk of the Privy Council Office, says the annual report on the public service of Canada, released on July 19, should serve as a “jumping-off point” for a “serious, more grown-up conversation about the state of the public service going forward,” especially since the government has lost traction and focus on public-sector capability, but he says the report is usually ignored by Parliament.

“You want to tell a positive story. It’s a rare opportunity to push back against the usual negative feedback loops where people only pay attention to things that go wrong, and highlight some of the hidden stories and what’s going on and tell us the bigger picture,” Wernick explained to The Hill Times after last week’s massive cabinet shuffle. “The risk is always getting it right—you want it to also be candid about where there were issues, and you want it to sort of set up a conversation about the state of the pubic service ideally.”

Anita Anand (Oakville, Ont.), who most recently served as defence minister, was appointed as Treasury Board president in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s (Papineau, Que.) cabinet shuffle on July 26. Her arrival into the role comes not long after John Hannaford’s appointment as Clerk of the Privy Council following Janice Charette’s retirement.

Charette officially ended her time in the role and in the public service on June 24, telling The Hill Times that “anything that’s on the prime minister’s desk is on my desk; anything that he’s dealing with, I’m dealing with.”

Wernick told The Hill Times that, during his time in the top job, he signed off on annual reports four times between 2016 and 2019.

Wernick said his point was not to be critical of the report, given that “it’s a difficult balancing point.”

The former top bureaucrat called it “frustrating” that Parliament passed a law requiring an annual report on the state of the public service “and then has never shown any interest in it.”

The government first introduced the annual report in 1992, a requirement under section 127 of the Public Service Employment Act, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

“I tabled four of them, and was never, ever asked to go to a parliamentary committee and discuss the report or the state of the public service,” said Wernick.

Wernick also said that there was nothing in the report about the service review which was alluded to a few years ago, and that digital government projects are “waiting in a queue.”

“And that’s where finance comes in—if you were going to be serious about public-sector capability, you’d have to spend money,” said Wernick. “You’d have to invest in training and leadership development, you’d have to put some money into it and buildings and equipment … it won’t come for free. And so far, this government has lost any sort of focus and traction on public-sector capability.”

“The idea of having a serious discussion at parliamentary committees about the public service would be a good start,” said Wernick, alluding to a Globe and Mail opinion article he penned earlier this year where he argued that the government “should work with Parliament to create a new Joint Committee of the House of Commons and Senate on the Public Service” as well as create a “permanent Better Government Fund in the care of the Treasury Board.”

“I’m not sure that the timing is great, which goes back to the cabinet shuffle, where we’re in this phase of the government where the hourglass sands are running out, there’s less than two years left, two budgets, maybe about 200 days of parliamentary time,” said Wernick. “The last two years of a mandate of a government that’s 10 points behind in the polls is probably not where you’re going to see bold ideas on the public sector.”

The disruptions caused by the pandemic were “enormous,” said Wernick, and the opportunities for some parts of the public service that hybrid work creates “are interesting.”

“Their promise in the strike settlement to add seniority to the algorithm for laying people off could be very relevant two years from now,” said Wernick. “If I was a younger public servant I’d be quite worried.”

Any return to the size of the public service when the Liberals took power in 2015 would involve tens of thousands of job losses, said Wernick. 

“Is this government going to try to tap the brakes in its last two years? I don’t know,” he said. 

But Wernick also noted that this government, at this point in its mandate, “wants to deliver stuff.”

“Climate change, green transition, hugely ambitious immigration numbers, housing, reconciliation, the defense policy review and implementing something out of that, the review of the foreign service—they’re going to run out of time in June of 2025, which is not so far away,” said Wernick. 

Data shows growth in public service, progress in diversity and inclusion

In terms of the diversity goals, Andrew Griffith, a former director general for Citizenship and Multiculturalism who keeps a close eye on public service survey results and reports, said that “virtually, for all visible minority groups, their relative share in promotions has increased.”

There has been significant growth in the size of the federal public service recently, with the report noting that the number of employees grew from 319,601 in March 2021 to 335,957 in March 2022.

The number of executives grew from 7,972 to 8,506 during that time period, with the number of deputy ministers increasing from 37 to 41. The number of associate deputy ministers fell slightly, from 39 in March 2021 to 36 a year later.

In the report’s “year ahead” section, Charette notes that the government’s agenda on diversity and inclusion “must be inclusive” and must advance commitments around reconciliation, accessibility, combating transphobia and better support for 2SLGBTQIA+ communities.

Charette also writes that the government must continue to prioritize the recruitment and retention of persons with disabilities, and “ensure employees in religious minority communities feel safe and supported in their workplaces.”

Griffith told The Hill Times that “the overall pattern of the public service becoming more diverse with better representation is there, at both the executive level and non-executive level.”

Griffith also said that based on the data he sees and analyzes surrounding the bureaucracy, the visible minority category as a whole is doing better in the last six years than the non-visible minority community—which applies to both men and women.

According to the report, which outlines disaggregated employment equity representation and workforce availability, the number of women in the public service increased from 127,043 at the end of March 2021, to 132,299 one year later.

The number of Indigenous Peoples in the public service increased from 11,977 to 12,336 over the same time period, with the number of persons with disabilities increasing from 12,893 in March 2021 to 14,573 in March 2022.

In terms of visible minorities, the total increased from 43,122 to 47,728, with Black employees increasing from 8,754 to 9,809. Non-White Latin Americans and persons of mixed origin both saw increases of 0.1 per cent in the public service population.

Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and South Asian/East Indian employees also saw increases within the bureaucracy’s ranks, as well as Non-White West Asians, North Africans or Arabs, Southeast Asians, or other visible minority groups, according to the report.

At the executive level, the percentage of women increased from 52.3 per cent to 53.2 per cent, persons with disabilities increased 5.6 per cent to 6.5 per cent, and members of visible minorities increased from 12.4 per cent to 13 per cent.

Public service renewal ‘fairly low down on the political radar’

When asked about recent changes both at the top level of the public service with a new clerk, as well as a new Treasury Board president in Anand, Griffith said he thought “sometimes one reads a bit too much into these changes.”

“Public service renewal isn’t [something] that directly affects [most] Canadians,” said Griffith. “It’s fairly low down on the political radar screen—this is largely managed through the bureaucracy—there are checks and balances as there always are, but I don’t really think that any of these changes will drastically modify the path that the current clerk was on, and that likely the new clerk will have more important issues that take up his time.”

Wernick noted that the Liberals left Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne (Saint-Maurice-Champlain, Que.), Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland (University—Rosedale, Ont.) and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault (Laurier-Sainte-Marie, Que.) where they already were in cabinet, but “it doesn’t explain moving Anand out of defence, frankly, because now you’ve got to bring a new person in in the middle of a defence policy review.” 

Wernick also said going through the disruption of the pandemic and now trying to adapt in some places to hybrid work possibilities, there’s now a government “in the late stages, pedal to the metal, trying to deliver stuff.”

“So it’s going to be hard to pay attention to its actual capabilities,” said Wernick, who added that he agreed with what is flagged in the report in terms of organizational health, burnout, mental health, and diversity.

“But there’s not a lot in there about the basic capabilities of the public service,” said Wernick.

‘I know getting here has not always been easy,’ writes Charette on hybrid work

The report also highlights the shift in the past year towards a hybrid work model, a change that made headlines for months and raised the ire of many public servants both in mainstream media and on social media. 

“Once we were able to safely welcome more employees back into the workplace, I outlined my expectations for deputies, including that they encourage employees to test new hybrid work models, wrote Charette in the report. “The shift to a hybrid model was about putting our effectiveness first and making a change that would best enable us to support government and serve Canadians, while giving employees flexibility to support their well-being.”

Direction on the common hybrid work model was released in December 2022, which set out guidelines requiring that employees work on-site at least two to three days per week.

“I know getting here has not always been easy,” wrote Charette, noting that the public service is the largest employer in the country and is made up of hundreds of thousands of public servants in a wide range of roles across Canada and abroad.

Source: Annual public service report to PM should prompt ‘serious conversation’ about bureaucracy’s future, says former PCO clerk Wernick

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Despite end to visa program Ukrainians will still seek refuge in Canada, group says

2023/07/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

As the war in Ukraine continues, some Ukrainians will still want to seek safe haven in Canada despite the end of a special visa program, according to the head of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

The group’s CEO Ihor Michalchyshyn said he knows many Ukrainians who returned to their country after coming to Canada in the early days of the war, but that could change depending on what happens in Ukraine.

“It’s a good opportunity to remind people that the war is still on. People are still moving around, there is a lot of uncertainty. I don’t think anybody knows where they will end up or what they’re going back to.”

Over the weekend, the government allowed a special visa program, the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel, to expire. The program allowed Ukrainians to apply to come to Canada with limited barriers and allowed them to stay for up to three years, work legally and receive settlement supports.

The government rejected calls to extend that program and will not accept new applications, though anyone who has already applied and been approved will still be able to come to Canada until March 2024.

The government first unveiled the new program in March 2022, just weeks after the invasion. In total, the government received 1.1 million applications, roughly 800,000 of them have been processed and approximately 166,000 people have come to Canada.

The program was initially set to expire in March, but was extended until July 15. During that extension period 140,000 people applied.

Michalchyshyn said there has been a slowdown in the number of new arrivals from Ukraine, but with the war still threatening civilians, many Ukrainians who hold one of the special visas may decide to come.

“There isn’t a city or a region that hasn’t been touched. Every Ukrainian knows somebody who’s fighting or who’s been killed,” he said. “Ultimately, we need Ukraine to win the war and establish a peace for people to have that context and make decisions.

Ukraine had a pre-war population of just over 40 million, but estimates suggest as many as 10 million people have fled the country since the invasion began on top of others who have been internally displaced. The country’s population has been in decline for decades and could continue to shrink in the years ahead.

Michalchyshyn said when the war is over he believes many Ukrainians will return, but some may decide to start new lives here. Canada is currently home to the largest Ukrainian disapora in the world outside of Russia.

“The government of Ukraine is going to do everything it can to encourage people to come back when they feel safe, and there are lots of people going back now,” he said. “It’s a family decision. It’s an individual decision based on circumstances, based on what they see in their future.”

Mary Rose Sabater, a spokesperson for the immigration department, said after the previous extension, they decided now was the time to wind down the program. She said that doesn’t mean Ukrainians can no longer immigrate.

“Ukrainians are still able to come to Canada by applying through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s existing temporary resident programs. In recognition of the continued danger while Russia’s invasion continues, we’re implementing these new measures to ensure continued support to Ukrainians in Canada,” she said.

While it ended the special visa program, the government did announce a new process for Ukrainians with family in Canada to become permanent residents.

Sabater said Canada still wants to help for as long as the war continues.

“The Government of Canada continues to do everything possible to help those fleeing Russia’s invasion, which includes providing a safe haven and peace of mind.”

Andrew Griffith, a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and former director general with Citizenship and Immigration, said the Ukrainians who have travelled to Canada are largely younger people with post-secondary educations — the kind of people Canada is usually looking for.

He said balancing the collective good of Ukraine and the individual good for people fleeing the war is part of the balance of any immigration policy, but he said Canada tends not to be overly concerned about what happens to source countries.

“I have never seen any evidence that we consider the interest of the source country in any meaningful way.”

He said the government’s choice to end new applications for the special visa program is a reasonable measure and a sign to those people who have been approved that they need to make a decision.

“It sends a signal to people that if they want to use this pathway, they’ve got a certain limited amount of time to do it.”

Source: Despite end to visa program Ukrainians will still seek refuge in Canada, group says

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John Ivison: The Liberals are too eager to erode the singular power of the citizenship oath

2023/07/18 Leave a comment

Powerful commentary against the proposed change permitting self-administration of the citizenship oath:

I have vivid memories of taking the oath of Canadian citizenship 18 years ago, a humbling, life-changing experience.

The day before the ceremony, I was looking down on the House of Commons from the press gallery with vaguely anthropological interest in a curious but distantly related species.

The day after being welcomed to the Canadian family with a roomful of wide-eyed new arrivals, the sense of detachment was gone, replaced by a common purpose, summed up in the citizenship certificate that bound me to uphold “the principles of democracy, freedom and compassion which are the foundations of a strong and united Canada.”

That is the experience that the government wants to deny to a future generation of Canadians, who will be asked to take the oath of citizenship by clicking a box online in order to save a few bucks.

In January, Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Sean Fraser said his department would begin making the necessary changes to allow self-administration of the oath. This would replace the requirement to take the oath in person before a citizenship judge, along with a room full of other new Canadians, which has been the law since 1947.

The reason, according to the government’s explanation in the Canada Gazette, is that citizenship applications have doubled in recent years to around 243,000 in 2021/22, and are set to keep rising as we move towards the Liberal immigration target of 500,000 newcomers in 2025. During the pandemic, citizenship tests migrated online, which, in the second half of last year, accounted for around 90 per cent of all ceremonies. In April, Fraser said his department was holding 350 virtual ceremonies a month.

The government has been delighted by the time and cost savings and says self-administration will save people roughly three months between taking their citizenship test and officially becoming Canadian.

The Liberals say that they will always maintain in-person ceremonies. The government says it doesn’t track how many people asked for an in-person ceremony and didn’t get one. But if self-administration of the oath is adopted, it says it expects fewer people to attend a ceremony and for there to be fewer ceremonies overall.

Andrew Griffith, a former director general at IRCC, said the anticipated savings of $5 million is only a small portion of the cost of administering the oath. Much greater savings in time and money could be made by focusing on administration and processing efficiencies prior to the citizenship ceremonies. “This actually does matter,” he said of “the rare positive celebratory moment in the immigration journey.”

There are some things that transcend bureaucratic efficiencies, and the citizenship ceremony is one of them. It is about a sense of participation and belonging, the culmination of a long and often difficult immigration process.

The minister’s press secretary said in an email that the intention is to make public ceremonies available for those who request them. “Those who choose to do an online attestation will still have an opportunity to attend an IRCC organized citizenship ceremony,” said Bahoz Dara Aziz.

But it is clear that the government would be happy to let the ceremonies wither on the vine.

The minister and his department are starting to get a sense of a backlash as prominent Canadians, including former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, ex-Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi and former Liberal immigration minister Sergio Marchi, have argued that the government is robbing future citizens of a deeply meaningful moment. Nenshi said the reasons are “bureaucratic and puerile.”

The public comments during the consultation process, which were overwhelmingly hostile, suggest many Canadians agree. “This proposal takes what should be one of the most meaningful things a person will ever do in their lives and equates it with ordering a new pair of underwear from Amazon,” wrote one person (commenters’ names were removed before the feedback was made public).

A petition has been launched in Parliament (petition e-4511), where people can sign up and urge the government to support the in-person ceremony as a unifying bond for Canadians.

The petition urges the government to reverse the trend of moving the oath online by limiting virtual ceremonies to 10 per cent of all citizenship events.

Fraser can hardly be immune to the power of the argument in favour of in-person ceremonies. He swore in nine new Canadians on Canada Day in front of 41,813 baseball fans at a Toronto Blue Jays game at the Rogers Centre this year, with the crowd joining in a noisy rendition of the national anthem.

There is a magic to the tradition that goes beyond a pledge of allegiance to the King and the Constitution.

Before becoming a citizen, I remember feeling it was vaguely treasonable to forsake the land of my fathers and adopt the common sympathies of another nation.

Yet, it was strangely comforting to be in a room with 50 or so others from all over the world, who were, in all likelihood, wrestling with their own doubts.

Qualms quickly turned to elation on being called to receive my citizenship certification in front of friends and family.

There was something extraordinary about watching all those newcomers experience true patriot love for the first time as citizens by singing O Canada.

I feel sorry for my future countrymen and women if that time-honoured tradition is replaced by the click of a mouse.

Source: John Ivison: The Liberals are too eager to erode the singular power of the citizenship oath

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Why Canada’s ‘citizenship on a click’ is proving controversial

2023/07/17 Leave a comment

Star coverage of the petition opposing self-administration of the citizenship oath:

Andrew Griffith says he used to drop by a citizenship ceremony whenever he felt depressed or frustrated at work.

The former director general at the federal immigration department says seeing new citizens walking the stage, being greeted by a uniformed RCMP officer and congratulated by a citizenship judge, reminded him of the importance of his work at the citizenship and multiculturalism branch.

“This is the one time that you actually get recognition for all that hard work and all that patience. Most people remember their citizenship ceremony,” he said.

“It’s like graduating from high school or university or other such moments. I think it really helps people have a sense of belonging and attachment to Canada.”

It’s why Griffith says he finds it troubling that the federal government is going to allow new citizens to take their citizenship oath online and on their own with a click on the keyboard rather than having to declare their loyalty to Canada before a citizenship judge.

In February, the federal government published the proposed change in the Canada Gazette. It is part of the modernization and digitalization of immigration processing in this country.

It said the online self-administration of the oath is expected to reduce the current citizenship processing time by three months and make it more accessible, because ceremonies are currently scheduled mainly on weekdays during working hours. According to the immigration department website, there are currently 308,000 citizenship applications in the system and the processing time stands at 19 months.

A chorus of prominent Canadian leaders, including former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, former Liberal immigration minister Sergio Marchi and former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi have voiced their opposition to the plan.

It has also prompted Griffith to start a petition to the Parliament, sponsored by Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec, demanding the government abandon the proposed change permitting what he calls “citizenship on a click.”

“There’s something meaningful about becoming a citizen. Citizenship is more than just sort of the paper process of having a Canadian passport and all the rights and responsibilities of Canadians,” he said. “It actually matters to the country. It matters to social inclusion, and I think it matters to all immigrants.”

During the pandemic, citizenship processing time doubled from the prior 12-month service standard. Officials brought in virtual citizenship ceremonies as of April 2020.

Since then, more than 15,290 of the ceremonies have been held online in front of an authorized official, generally a citizenship judge.

Kmiec, MP for the Calgary Shepard riding, said the government is trying to eliminate the backlog, but doing it at all costs.

“You click a button and you click your terms of reference the way you do it on your iPhone or on your Samsung. There’ll be no application that would be delayed, right? That’s why they’re doing it,” said Kmiec, who came to Canada from Poland with his family in 1985 and became a Canadian citizen in 1989.

“Why should these new citizens who pass their test and have all the time be robbed of having a special symbolic ceremony that’s required under the Citizenship Act?”

If the goal of the change is really to improve flexibility and accessibility for new citizens, Kmiec said, immigration officials should consider holding more citizenship ceremonies after hours or on weekends. An in-person ceremony should be made the default option, and virtual ceremonies are used only as a last resort, he added.

“You only get to swear an oath once in your life to Canada. That should be done in person. It should be a special ceremony. The government should honour you in this way,” said Kmiec. “I’ve never had anyone complain to me that they had to appear at a citizenship ceremony to become a citizen of Canada. Never.”

More than 700 comments were left on the notice of the citizenship change published in the Canada Gazette during the consultation period that ended in March.

Jenny Kwan, immigration critic for the NDP, says she, too, recognizes the significance of the in-person ceremonies but said people should have the option to do it online and that the proposed change would strike a balance.

An immigrant from Hong Kong, Kwan came to Canada with her family in the 1970s when she was nine. While she recalled the family’s excitement at their citizenship ceremony, she also saw the stresses her working-class parents experienced to make it to the event.

“They had to take time off work and we were a low-income family. For them to have missed work, it meant that they lost a day of income. And for a family of eight who’s struggling to survive, and for my parents to put food on the table, that was a big deal,” said Kwan, whose mother worked as a dishwasher and father did multiple part-time shift jobs to support the family.

“In offering alternatives for people to have their citizenship oath taken, I think this is an important consideration. I think that should be offered for new Canadians so that they can choose what is the best option for them.”

However, both Griffith and Kmiec say they fear many new citizens would simply opt for the self-attestation option given the convenience to do so.

“Of course, that’s the easiest thing to do. If they told you you’re going to have to wait maybe a few weeks and we’ll send you a paper copy, before you accept it, you’d say, ‘No, give me the digital,’” said Kmiec.

“You’re not going to pay much attention to it. You’ll just click the button and you’ll carry on.”

The online petition is open until Oct. 10 and must collect at least 500 signatures during that period. The Clerk of Petition would then validate the signatures and issue a certificate so it can be presented in the House. The government must then respond to the demand within 45 days.

“Depending on the quality of the response, I’m going to follow up with the minister. I’m not going to let this go,” Kmiec said.

Source: Why Canada’s ‘citizenship on a click’ is proving controversial

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Canada is getting bigger. Are we setting the country and its newest citizens up for success?

2023/07/03 Leave a comment

Good overview of some of the issues:

Debbie Douglas was 10 when she came from Grenada to join her parents in Canada.

On her first day of school in 1973, her family had to fight with the principal, who wanted to put her back a year and have her take ESL because she spoke English with a Grenadian accent. In the end, she was allowed to attend Grade 5.

“But by the end of the first week on the playground, I got called the N-word, and it shook me to my core,” Douglas recalls. “And I looked around to see if anybody had heard and nobody said anything … In a school of 500, there were three Black kids and I don’t recall any other kids of colour.”

Despite a degree in economics from York University, her stepfather could only find a job as a financial planner. Her mother, a teacher back home, ended up working in a nursing home. 

But if you were to ask Douglas’s mother what her migration experience has been, Douglas says, she would say Canada has been very good to her family.

“My parents worked hard. We went to school. We now have a middle-class life. It’s a great migration story,” Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, told a forum about Canada’s immigration narrative this past May.

“Great” has never meant “easy” for newcomers arriving in this country. Douglas says the stories of immigrants’ struggles and sacrifice were just often not heard.

Yet Canada has long maintained its status as a destination to which newcomers aspire. The immigration story that’s told has, for decades, been one of perceived success — both from the perspective of those forging new lives here, and from the viewpoint of a country eager to grow.

Today, that national narrative appears to be under new strains that are threatening the social contract between Canada and its newcomers.

Canada’s population has just passed the 40-million mark, and it’s growing thanks to immigration. 

Immigration accounts for almost 100 per cent of the country’s labour-force growth and is projected to account for our entire population growth by 2032.

Governments and employers from coast to coast have been clamouring for more immigrants to fill jobs, expand the economy and revitalize an aging population. The more, the merrier, it seemed, even during economic recession of recent years.

Post-pandemic, Ottawa is set to bring in 465,000 new permanent residents this year, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025 to boost Canada’s economic recovery after COVID.

Amid this push, there have been critiques that immigrants are too often being reduced to numbers — to units meant to balance the equations of our economy. While it is clear our economy needs immigration, what is it that newcomers need of Canada to ensure they can settle and thrive here? Are those needs being met?

Meanwhile, the federal government’s plan to bring in a historic level of immigrants has been met with some reservations domestically, as Canadians struggle with stubbornly high inflation amid global economic uncertainty resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and volatile geopolitics.

There is a sense of scarcity emerging in Canada, despite the country’s seemingly great wealth — whether it manifests in the housing crisis, a strained health-care system, or in the lack of salary increases that keep up to inflation. 

While a national dialogue about Canada’s immigration strategy is overdue, some fear anti-immigrant or xenophobic backlash amid news, op-eds and social-media conversation that ties immigration to the strains already being felt.

One poll by Leger and the Association of Canadian Studies last November found almost half of the 1,537 respondents said they believe the current immigration plan would let in too many immigrants. Three out of four were concerned the levels would strain housing, health and social services.

“Canada is at a crossroads in terms of being able to continue to be a leader in immigration. It’s at a crossroads in its ability to provide the Canadian dream to those who move to the country,” says University of Western Ontario political sociologist Howard Ramos. 

“It’s at a crossroads in terms of the infrastructure that’s needed to support this population, and it’s at a crossroads potentially at having widespread support for immigration.”

How Canada got to 40 million

Canada’s immigration strategy has long been about nation-building to meet both the demographic and economic aspirations of the country.

In 1967, Canada introduced the “points system,” based on criteria such as education achievements and work experience, to select economic immigrants. It was one of a series of measures that have gradually moved the immigration system away from a past draped in racism and discrimination.

The point system shifted a system that favoured European immigrants and instead helped open the door to those from the Global South for permanent residence in this country. The 2021 Census found the share of recent immigrants from Europe continued to decline, falling from 61.6 per cent to just 10 per cent over the past five decades. 

Ottawa had turned the immigration tap on and off depending on the economic conditions, reducing intake during recession, until the late 1980s, when then prime minister Brian Mulroney decided to not only maintain but to increase Canada’s immigration level amid high inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment. 

“There are real people behind those numbers — people with real stories, real hopes and dreams, people who have chosen Canada as their new home,” Mulroney’s immigration minister, Barbara McDougall, said back in 1990 of a five-year plan to welcome more than 1.2 million immigrants.

The plan, too, was met with what today sound like familiar criticisms of the country’s ability to absorb the influx of people.

“We don’t think the federal government is taking its own financial responsibility seriously. The federal government is cutting back. They’re capping programs,” Bob Rae, then Ontario’s NDP premier, commented.

“They’re not transferring dollars to match the real cost, whether it’s training, whether it’s (teaching) English as a second language, whether it’s social services.”

Another big shift under Mulroney’s government was the focus on drafting well-heeled economic and skilled immigrants to Canada, which saw the ratio of permanent residents in family and refugee classes drop significantly from about 65 per cent in the mid-1980s to about 43 per cent in 1990s, and about 40 per cent now.

Mulroney’s measures severed Canada’s immigration intake from the boom-and-bust cycle of the economy. Successive governments have stuck to the same high-immigrant intake, regardless of how good or bad the economy was performing.

It has set Canada apart from other western countries, where immigration issues are often politicized. Coupled with the official multiculturalism policy introduced by the government of Pierre Trudeau in 1971 in response to Quebec’s growing nationalist movement, it has contributed to Canada’s image as a welcoming country to immigrants.

Public support for immigration has remained fairly high and Canada seemed to have fared well despite such economic challenges as the burst of the dot-com bubble from the late 1990s to mid-2000s, the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, and the economic downturn driven by the oil-price slump in the mid-2010s.

Observers, however, note the challenges and circumstances of those economic fluctuations were different than what we see today: there was enough housing stock in the 1990s and the impacts of the crashes in the financial, tech and oil markets since were sectoral, regional and temporary.

Canada’s infrastructure problem

Except in Quebec, which has full control over its newcomer targets and selection, immigration is a federal jurisdiction in Canada, planned in silo from other levels of governments that actually deliver health, education, transportation and other services. Yet the impacts of immigration are felt locally in schools, transits and hospitals. 

A lack of infrastructure investments and the rapid immigration growth have finally caught up with the country’s growth. “We spent decades not s upporting our communities,” says Douglas.

“We were not paying attention to building infrastructure. We were all under-resourcing things like community development and community amenities. We haven’t built adequate affordable housing.

“It’s now become a perfect storm. We have all these people and not enough of what is needed for everybody.”

While the majority of newcomers have historically settled in the big cities such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, a growing number are moving to smaller cities and towns that in some cases are not ready for the influx. The share of recent immigrants settling in the Big Three dropped from 62.5 per cent in 2011 to 53.4 per cent in 2021, with second-tier cities such as Ottawa-Gatineau, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London and Halifax seeing significant growth.

“I don’t think it occurred to them that they need to build infrastructure to be able to welcome people in. It’s a lack of planning. It is a lack of funding,” Douglas says.

“We’ve raised these immigration numbers without paying attention to what it means, what it is that we didn’t have. We are already facing a crisis and we are bringing in more people without addressing the crisis.”

Canadian employers are champions for more economic immigrants. Half of employers surveyed told the Business Council of Canada they were in favour of raising the annual immigration targets — provided there are greater investments in the domestic workforce, as well as in child care, housing and public transportation.

Goldy Hyder, the council’s president and CEO, says many of the day-to-day challenges Canadians and immigrants face are in fact driven largely by labour shortages, whether it’s in health care, housing, or restaurants and retail.

Around the world, he says, countries build infrastructure to spur population — and economic — growth, but in Canada, he contends, it’s been vice-versa.

Hyder sees this moment as a crucial one for raising immigration targets and maintaining public support. “We are at a seminal moment in the life of this country, because we’re at a seminal moment in the life of the world right now,” he says.

Hyder says the country’s immigration policy shouldn’t be just about bringing in people, it should be part of a bigger workforce and industrial strategy to ensure skills of all Canadians and immigrants are fully utilized in the economy in order to maintain the public support for immigration.

“We need to plan better. We need to be more strategic in that plan. And we need to work together to do that: federal, provincial, municipal governments, regulatory bodies, professional bodies, business groups,” he says.

“Let’s address the anxieties that Canadians are facing. You don’t sweep them aside or under a rug. We must have honest discourse with Canadians, fact-based about what we’re trying to do to make their lives better.”

The tradeoffs that come with population growth

The case made for increased immigration is often an economic one. That said, research has generally found the economic benefits of immigration are close to neutral. That’s because when it comes to population growth, there are always tradeoffs.

While bringing in a large number of immigrants can spur population growth and drive demand for goods and services, it will also push up prices even as the government is trying to rein in out-of-control costs of living, warn some economists. 

When more workers are available, employers don’t have to compete and can offer lower wages. Further, just adding more people without investing into social and physical infrastructure such as housing and health care is going to strain the society’s resources and be counterproductive, economists say.

“For housing and health care, it takes a long time to catch up with the increased demand,” says Casey Warman, a professor in economics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, whose own family doctor is retiring. (He is now on a wait list seeking a new one, with 130,000 ahead of him.)

One of the main metrics of economic success has traditionally been a country’s overall GDP. Immigration and population growth can fuel the pool of labour and consumers and boost the overall GDP.

But there’s an emerging chorus of economists arguing that there is a better reflection of the standard of living and economic health in a country. That’s GDP per capita — productivity per person. The growth of Canada’s GDP per capita has been quite flat over the recent years, growing marginally from $50,750.48 in 2015 to $52,127.87 last year. Despite the recovery and high inflation amid the pandemic, it’s still below the $52,262.70 recorded in 2018.

Uncertainty about rapidly changing economic conditions, as well as the fast pace of technological adjustments, have also created uncertainty about what skills and labour will be in demand as the country moves forward.

“One big unknown now is how automation and especially AI is going to change the landscape for labour demand in the next five, 10 years … Is it going to decrease demand for labour?” Warman asks. 

How to adapt in the face of this uncertainty, and how immigration should be approached in light of it, is a conversation Canada needs to have, experts say.

Ivey Business School economics Prof. Mike Moffatt says that who Canada is bringing in matters as much as immigration levels, and what’s happening with the economy is nuanced.

Economic, family and humanitarian classes are the three main streams of permanent residents coming to Canada, and each group has different impacts on the economy, generally with those who come as skilled immigrants having the highest earnings and weathering economic downturns best.

The profiles of the incoming immigrants and their ability to integrate into the economy matter, says Moffatt. Bringing in foreign-trained doctors and nurses who can’t get licensed from stringent regulators, for example, won’t help address the health-care crisis.

Still, Moffatt says his critique of Canada’s immigration plan is less about the ambitious targeted numbers than the pace of the increases, as well as the short notice for provinces and cities in planning for the influx.

“Whether it be on education, immigration support programs, labour market programs, all of these things, there’s no time to adjust,” says Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, a think tank with a stated goal of advancing solutions for a stronger, cleaner economy.

“I do think we can have robust increases in the targets. I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem, but let the provinces and cities know what you’re doing.

“There’s no collaboration. There’s no co-ordination. They are not working with the provinces and municipalities and the higher-education sector in order to come up with any kind of long-term thinking. It’s very short-term in nature.”

Should Canada cap international students and migrant workers?

Aside from questions about the immigration plan Canada has, there are also questions about the plan it doesn’t have.

The national immigration plan sets targets for the number of permanent residents accepted yearly, but leaves the door wide open for temporary residents. 

That has become a bigger issue over the years as Canada has increasingly shifted to a two-step system to select skilled immigrants who have studied and worked in Canada, bringing in more international students and temporary foreign workers than permanent residents.

According to Statistics Canada, there were close to a million (924,850) temporary residents in Canada in 2021, making up 2.5 per cent of the population.

The majority of them, including asylum-seekers, can legally work here; the remaining 8.7 per cent who don’t have work permits includes visitors such as parents and grandparents with the so-called super visa, who can stay for up to five years.

Temporary residents, who don’t have credit history for loans and mortgages in Canada, are more likely to be renters and public transit users (but eligible for some provincial health care), says Anne Michèle Meggs, who was the Quebec Immigration Ministry’s director of planning and accountability before her 2019 retirement.

“In the past, it wasn’t an issue, because we had a relatively small temporary migrant population, so we managed, even though we took the approach that we just bring them in and we don’t look after what happened to them afterwards,” says Meggs, whose book “Immigration to Quebec: How Can We Do Better” was recently published.

“That’s fine. That population wasn’t out of control. So that’s why we still successfully managed and it didn’t become a crisis.”

However, under tremendous pressure from post-secondary institutions to recruit international students, and from employers to quickly bring in foreign workers, she said the balance has tipped. To not set targets for temporary immigration is to get into trouble, Meggs warns.

“We want people to come and we want people to stay. You want things to be good for everybody, including immigrants and including children. And I think the objective has to be to make sure that everyone gets treated with dignity,” she says.

“Immigrants are not just sources of labour or sources of financing of institutions or spending money to increase our national GDP. These are people. We have to get back to talking about the immigrants and not just immigration.”

Canada ‘cannot afford to allow for polarization’

Canada immigration overall has been a success in terms of forging positive public attitudes toward immigration and the political participation by immigrants, says Andrew Griffith, a retired director general of the federal immigration department.

He feels Canada now has the maturity to have an honest and informed conversation about immigration without the fear of being labelled as racist and xenophobic. The focus of the discussion, he says, should be on Canada’s capacity to ensure a good quality of life for those who are already here and those who will be coming.

“It’s not about keeping the immigrants out. It’s more that if we’re going to do this, we have to do it right,” says Griffith. “We have to make sure we have the right infrastructure, the right housing policies and everything like that.”

Any immigration plan, Griffith says, should go beyond the intake levels but study the potential socio-economic impacts and include inputs from provincial and municipal governments.

Canada has grown to become a country of 40 million, and it has not always been smooth sailing.

But Canadians have worked hard to make immigration work for everyone and the success has come down to how the growth has been managed and how the public support for immigration has been maintained.

“We cannot afford to allow for polarization, populism and xenophobia to kick in here because it’s a very slippery slope,” says Hyder, whose family arrived in Calgary from India in 1974 when he was seven. “Other countries have seen it. It can go downhill very fast.

“Immigration is part of the arteries of our soul. It is who we are as a people.”

Source: Canada is getting bigger. Are we setting the country and its newest citizens up for success?

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