Opinion | Canada’s working-age population is shrinking. Should we keep immigration near zero or rethink the plan?

2026/02/16 2 Comments

Good discussion (I lean towards the BMO assessment):

In this Bridging the Divide conversation, Robert Kavcic, senior economist and director of economics at BMO Capital Markets, argues the slowdown is a responsible course correction. Lisa Lalande, CEO of the Century Initiative, warns that pulling back from population growth without a strategy risks weakening Canada’s long-term prosperity and global standing.

Robert Kavcic: We are in a period of adjustment. Population growth accelerated to three per cent in 2022 and 2023, placing a strain on housing, rental affordability, health care, public services and youth employment. I believe the government’s short-term immigration targets, which will keep population growth just above zero through 2028, are a reasonable and necessary correction.

Lisa Lalande: Population growth itself isn’t the problem. Growth without a plan is. Canada’s working-age population is shrinking, a shift that poses long-term risks to economic growth and public services. The pullback in immigration is too severe and has not been replaced with a national plan.

Kavcic: Immigration levels need to align with Canada’s capacity to provide housing, health care and essential services. If there is one thing that the last couple of years have taught us, it’s that population can grow very quickly. Every person who comes to Canada needs a place to live immediately. They need a doctor. They need services.

But it takes years to build adequate housing and services. So, maintaining a steady and predictable pace of immigration is very important.

Lalande: I don’t disagree, but zero population growth is bad for the economy. While urban centres such as Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary continue to attract newcomers, many small towns and rural areas are experiencing sustained population decline. Provinces such as Newfoundland and Labrador are projected to lose up to 10 per cent of their population by 2043. 

Municipalities have fixed costs, such as water treatment plants, but those costs are spread among fewer people as residents retire or pass away. Affordability will worsen without a national population plan that considers aging and health care.

Kavcic: Another concern is the quality of immigration. We cannot bring in people simply to meet numerical targets if they are not improving per capita economic growth. We need to recruit workers in industries where shortages exist.

But even when we recruit needed workers, such as plumbers, electricians and carpenters for residential construction, they still need a place to live. In that sense, adding workers to build homes can increase pressure on the housing market in the short term because they need housing before they can add to overall output.

Lalande: I agree that we need to have more housing. But the debate of the past two years oversimplified the issue by blaming immigration for the housing crisis. We know from Statistics Canada research that immigration accounted for only about 11 per cent of the rise in median house values and rents across municipalities.

We need to recognize that we need population growth. We have shortages in many areas. In health care, we need to double the number of personal support workers by 2032 to accommodate our aging population. Without population growth, ER wait times will grow and smaller communities will lose access to care.

Kavcic: I don’t think we’re far apart on this. The market speaks pretty clearly about where the balance is. For most of the period after the 2008 financial crisis through the pandemic, housing affordability was not a major issue in Canada. Prices were rising, incomes were rising and interest rates were falling. The market was mostly balanced. The rental market was relatively stable, and population growth averaged about one per cent.

What changed between 2021 and 2023 when population growth tripled was extreme stress in the rental market. Once population caps were introduced in 2024, the rental market peaked and began to cool. As population growth slowed, rents started falling in most major Canadian cities and vacancy rates rose.

This is a strong indication that Canada cannot sustain three per cent population growth. A rate closer to one per cent appears to be what the country can manage — and likely what it needs.

Lalande: I agree there was pressure on the rental market. But we need to address the housing crisis with greater urgency. Housing should not prevent us from bringing a doctor or nurse into a community that needs one.

Population growth also needs to be part of our national security conversation. For the country to remain strong, independent and sovereign, we need a growth-oriented mindset, with smart policy choices, innovation and responsible population planning. If Canada wants to rebuild its defence capacity, secure the Arctic, strengthen domestic supply chains and reduce reliance on allies, that will require people, talent and a healthy tax base to fund major investments.

Kavcic: I agree there is an important role for a well-managed and robust immigration program in Canada. I worry public sentiment is turning against immigration, even though the country will need strong immigration over the long term. That concern may be one reason policymakers moved quickly to reduce immigration levels, to prevent opposition from becoming entrenched.

Lalande: It was a drastic pullback, a political decision rather than a smart policy one, and the consequences are now being felt. Consider the revenue impact on our post-secondary education system, which has fewer foreign students. We are also losing our competitiveness against other countries for the world’s best and brightest.

When you dig into national polling, most Canadians still see the value of immigration. Environics Institute research shows three-quarters say immigrants make their communities better or have no net effect, while only 15 per cent believe newcomers make them worse.

We are facing a looming population cliff. Canada’s demographic outlook is shaped by three forces: an aging population; declining fertility rate; and immigration. Research shows there is only one way to meaningfully influence this trajectory: immigration. Policy should focus on whether immigration serves Canada’s interests within a coherent national strategy.

Kavcic: I think the population targets the federal government is using now are about right. Imposing temporary limits on growth for two or three years is reasonable, given how much population growth was compressed into a short period.

It will likely take two or three years of near-zero growth to bring the long-term trend back to the pace seen before inflows of non-permanent residents such as temporary foreign workers and international students surged. The projected changes from 2026 to 2028 are driven by scaling back flows of these non-permanent-residents to previous. The targets for permanent residents (people granted the right to live, work and study in Canada indefinitely) remain about 380,000 annually

 Lalande: We need to look beyond the next year or two and assess the impact over four, 10, even 30 years. Countries with long-term plans are more likely to succeed and safeguard their independence.

Kavcic: I agree that, over the long term, Canada faces a serious demographic challenge. The baby boom generation is aging into retirement, and the country is nearing a period of negative natural population growth. By 2028, for the first time, more people are expected to die than be born in Canada.

I do not dispute that we need a strong immigration program. We do. The issue is the numbers and the quality of immigration.

Lalande: I see more urgency around the need to plan with a long-term perspective, not anchor the conversation only in numbers and quality.

The focus should be on understanding what communities need. It should be on responding to those needs and supporting people once they are here. Only then can the country grow in a sustainable way into the future.

Source: Opinion | Canada’s working-age population is shrinking. Should we keep immigration near zero or rethink the plan?

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Women landing more leadership jobs, but racialized, Indigenous and disabled women lag: study

2021/02/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

The share of women in senior leadership positions at Canadian companies is on the rise despite the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. But the number of racialized, Indigenous and disabled women in top roles remains small, and many companies don’t disclose any leadership diversity data, according to a new report that is among the first to explore the varied experiences of women in Corporate Canada.

Over all, women’s representation improved between March, 2019, and September, 2020, among 48 public and private-sector companies surveyed by the Prosperity Project, a non-profit founded by a volunteer group of 62 female leaders.

Women held more than 40 per cent of seats on boards of the surveyed corporations as of September, up from 37 per cent in March, 2019. Nearly 31 per cent of executive roles were held by women, up from 28 per cent. More than 80 per cent of the companies also had at least one racialized woman in the pipeline leading to executive office, up from 68 per cent.

But the gains have been uneven. Black and disabled women each made up fewer than 2 per cent of directors and saw their share of executive positions rise from none to 0.8 per cent. Indigenous women made up only 1.6 per cent of executives and just 2.1 per cent of directors, and saw their share of senior positions relatively unchanged over the 18 months.

The toll of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests of the past year have thrust issues of representation and equality into the spotlight. Companies have responded by joining corporate diversity efforts such as the BlackNorth Initiative and the 50-30 Challenge. But the report shows many corporations have yet to turn those efforts into results.

“We know that companies are pivoting and making some really good decisions,” said Kristine Remedios, chief inclusion and social impact officer at KPMG Canada, who is among the Prosperity Project’s founding members. “But I think that there is a lot of hard work ahead for many organizations to actually lift this off the ground.”

The report also exposed how few companies are willing to share gender and diversity data. Of the 120 organizations invited to participate, 72 either declined or didn’t reply.

Many companies complain about survey fatigue, or are reluctant to require employees to self-identify, making it difficult to understand whether employees of diverse backgrounds are experiencing the workplace differently, said Pamela Jeffery, who founded the Prosperity Project. But the biggest barrier to collecting data is often a reluctance among top leaders to set diversity targets and then track their progress, she said.

Crown corporations have actually achieved gender parity in leadership roles, largely because they’ve set specific gender-representation targets and worked to meet them. “They’ve been deliberate,” Ms. Jeffery said. “Those organizations achieve results because they focus on it. They measure it.”

The Prosperity Project is looking to work with other companies on its planned annual report card of Canada’s 500 largest corporations by revenue, and has developed a process to help companies securely collect anonymized data on employees.

Governments and regulators should also require companies to set and disclose diversity targets, rather than allowing them the option of providing reasons why they don’t have targets – a practice known as comply or explain. “There’s been too much explaining and not enough complying,” said Ms. Jeffery, who previously founded the Women’s Executive Network and Canadian Board Diversity Council.

The recovery from the pandemic offers companies a unique chance to increase representation among diverse groups, said BMO’s Ms. Goulet.

She points to a project the bank worked on last year to create an on-reserve Indigenous technology hub at Batchewana First Nation in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. When the pandemic shifted much of the bank’s work force online, BMO turned the project into a virtual hub, opening up job opportunities for Indigenous workers in other remote and northern communities across the country. “I call this the kind of silver lining of the pandemic, in that we now have remote rules that are enabling us to access new and untapped talent nationwide,” she said.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-women-landing-more-leadership-jobs-but-racialized-indigenous-and/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Morning%20Update&utm_content=2021-2-23_7&utm_term=Morning%20Update:%20Parliament%20declares%20China%20is%20conducting%20genocide%20against%20its%20Muslim%20minorities&utm_campaign=newsletter&cu_id=%2BTx9qGuxCF9REU6kNldjGJtpVUGIVB3Y

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One-fifth of New Canadians arrive with no money: report

2015/04/16 Leave a comment

Interesting survey by Pollara (BMO sponsored) on immigrant savings and spendings:

Immigrants arrive in Canada with an average of $47,000 in savings – but are left with less than half of that once they get initially settled, says a new BMO Wealth Management report.

And about one-fifth, or 19 per cent, come with no money at all, finds the study being released Wednesday.

“It can be incredibly stressful – financially and otherwise – to pick up, move to another country, and begin the process of creating a new life for yourself, so it’s great to see that new Canadians do have a bit of a nest egg remaining,” said Julie Barker-Merz, president of BMO InvestorLine.

After all the initial expenses associated with getting settled — including moving costs, flights, food, clothing and shelter for their family — immigrants are left with an average of $20,000, says the inaugural study Making the Financial Transition.

It found new Canadians spend their remaining money to save for various things, including retirement at 53 per cent, their children’s education at 49 per cent, large purchases like a home or a car at 44 per cent and a trip at 36 per cent.

Two-thirds send an average of $2,300 back home to friends or family, with 17 per cent doing so monthly and one-quarter sending money a few times a year, says the report examining a variety of financial issues for those who have moved to Canada less than 10 years ago.

Immigrants face numerous challenges when arriving to their new country, including lack of familiarity with the financial system combined with language barriers, Barker-Merz said.

“What will be critical is to make sure they make their remaining money work for them by acquainting themselves with the basics of saving and investing in their new environment,” she noted.

All banks compete actively for this business.

One-fifth of New Canadians arrive with no money: report | Toronto Star.

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