Todd: The summer job is threatened by Canada’s misguided migration strategy

2025/08/11 Leave a comment

Good op-ed, featuring comments by David Williams of Business Council of British Columbia, David Green of UBC, Pierre Fortin, Anne Michèle Meggs and food service data compiled by me.

The search for a summer job is a rite of passage.

Filled with anxiety and reward, the quest in Canada offers young people an introduction to the marketplace, where they will spend a large portion of their lives, hopefully leading to independence and self-confidence.

But this summer in Canada, opportunities for people between the ages of 15 and 24 are abysmal. Their hunt is full of dead ends and discouragement. Talk about making hope-filled young people feel unwanted.

What can we make of the contradictory economic signals? Young Canadians are increasingly facing an employment brick wall. But at the same time many corporations say they’re struggling with “labour shortages.”

For clarity, we should listen to the economists, business analysts and migration specialists who say a big part of the problem for young job seekers is Canadian industries are increasingly addicted to low-wage foreign workers, especially of the temporary kind.

There are now 2.96 million non-permanent residents in the country, most of whom work. And that doesn’t count more than half a million who are undocumented or have remained in the country after their visas expired.

In a typical summer of the recent past, young people would look for jobs in the restaurant, hospitality, tourism, retail, landscaping and food and beverage industries.

But Postmedia reporters Alec Lazenby and Glenda Luymes are among those who have noted that unemployment among people between 15 and 24 is at a record 20 per cent across the country. That’s nine percentage points higher than three years ago.

And the real numbers could be worse. In B.C. in the month of June, for instance, more than 21,000 young people simply dropped out of the job market from discouragement.

The Liberal government has been doing young people a terrible disservice through its stratospheric guest worker levels, says David Williams, head of policy for the Business Council of B.C.

“If the government intends to expand the labour supply explicitly to fill low-skill, low-experience, low-paying job vacancies,” like those sought by young people, Williams said, “it is helping to keep Canada on the dismal path” to the lowest income growth among the 38 countries of the OECD.

Rather than trusting in the labour market to resolve wage and price imbalances on its own, Williams said the federal government’s high-migration strategy “is like believing Christmas dinner will be made easier if you invite more people because they can help with the washing up.”

Ottawa’s approach to migration is setting young people up not only for early job disappointment, he said, but long-term stagnant wages.

UBC economics professor David Green, who specializes in labour, is among many who say Canada’s immigration program is moving away from raising all Canadians’ standard of living.

“The research shows that immigration tends to lower wages for people who compete directly with the new immigrants, who often consist of previously arrived immigrants and low-skilled workers” — such as young people, Green says.

As the UBC professor makes clear, high migration rates “can be an inequality-increasing policy.” They hurt inexperienced workers and “improve incomes for the higher-skilled, and business owners who get labour at lower wages.”

To illustrate, it’s worth looking at migration numbers related to the food industry, where many young people in Canada used to find summer jobs.

Figures obtained by a former director in the Immigration Department, Andrew Griffith, reveal a rise in temporary foreign workers in Canada’s food industries since 2015, when the Liberals were first elected.

There has been a 666 per cent jump in a decade in the number of temporary foreign cooks, as well as a 970-per-cent hike in “food service supervisors.” There has also been 419 per cent increase in “food counter attendants” and “kitchen helpers.”

Ottawa approved a 419% jump in foreign “food counter attendants” and “kitchen helpers” in a decade. Those are decent starting positions for inexperienced job seekers. (Source: IRCC / Andrew Griffith)

The problem extends beyond summer jobs, says Pierre Fortin, past president of the Canadian Economics Association. Too many Canadian bosses who don’t find it easy to hire staff, he said, now think it’s their “right” to hire non-permanent migrants.

“But immigration is a public good, not a private toy,” Fortin said. “The employer gets all the benefits and the rest of society is burdened with all the time and costs for the successful integration of the newcomers, in the form of housing, services and social and cultural integration.”

B.C. and Ontario have the highest proportion of temporary residents in Canada. The rate is 9.3 per cent in B.C.; 8.6 per cent in Ontario. The national average is 7.1 per cent. And that level is far above what it was before 2020, when it was just three per cent. 

Canada’s temporary foreign worker, and international experience, programs were initially supposed to provide employers with short-term relief during a specific labour shortage, says Anne Michèle Meggs, a former senior director in Quebec’s immigration ministry who writes on migration issues.

But too many employers now rely on the programs as a long-term strategy, including to keep wages low. Meggs is surprised, for instance, the food-services industry relies so heavily on migrants.

“I admit I was shocked that Tim Hortons would be hiring through the temporary foreign workers program.”

Meggs is also taken aback that so many food chains even find it profitable to hire foreign workers over local ones. “It costs a lot, and there’s considerable bureaucracy,” she said. That includes spending more than $5,000 on each visa worker’s labour market impact assessment, to convince Ottawa a local worker isn’t available for the position.

To make matters worse, guest workers themselves often get exploited by employers, said Meggs. “Many are still expecting to be able to settle in Canada, obtain permanent residency and bring their families. But for those with limited education and language skills, that is very unlikely.” She points to how last year a U.N. report said Canada’s temporary guest worker programs are a “breeding ground” for contemporary slavery.

It’s hard to say if Prime Minister Mark Carney is ready to revise the Liberal party’s long-standing strategy of handing industries what they want: large volumes of low-skilled foreign labour.

Since its peak at the end of last year, the proportion of temporary residents in Canada this June has gone down only slightly, by less than three per cent.

Unless Carney orchestrates a bigger drop, it suggests he is ready to maintain his party’s record migration rates. That will mean young Canadians unable to find summer work will continue to suffer.

And, since migration policies have ripple effects on wages throughout the economy, they won’t be the only ones.

Source: The summer job is threatened by Canada’s misguided migration strategy

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Focus Canada: Public support for immigration falls sharply amid affordability concerns

2023/10/31 Leave a comment

Yet another poll showing a decline in support for current high levels of immigration over the past year given the impact on housing, in particular.

Public support for immigration has fallen sharply over the past year as Canadians increasingly tie affordability and housing concerns to a historic influx of newcomers, according to survey results published on Monday.

Forty-four per cent of Canadians think immigration levels are too high, up from 27 per cent last year, according to a survey conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with the Century Initiative, an organization that advocates for Canada’s population to hit 100 million by 2100. This was the largest change in sentiment between surveys that Environics has observed in four-plus decades of polling on the topic.

Just a year ago, public support for immigration was stronger than ever, Environics found. But since then, Canadians have been consumed by a number of economic worries, including high inflation, rising interest payments and a worsening housing crisis, which is pushing up resale prices and rents across the country.

At the same time, Canada is growing rapidly. Over the 12 months through June, the population expanded by around 1.2 million people, bringing the total number of residents to 40.1 million. At 3 per cent, this was the largest 12-month increase since 1957; international migration accounted for almost the entirety of the expansion.

This surge has led to a spirited debate about immigration and Canada’s ability to absorb so many people so quickly. The results from Environics are similar to other recent surveys, including a Nanos poll for The Globe and Mail that found more than half of Canadians want the country to accept fewer immigrants than Ottawa’s plan.

“We see these results as a clarion call for action,” said Lisa Lalande, the chief executive officer of the Century Initiative. “You cannot address demographic decline through immigration without having these corresponding investments” in housing and other areas.

The survey was published just before the federal government unveils its next three-year plan for immigration this week, covering 2024 to 2026. Last year, Ottawa said it was aiming to admit 500,000 permanent residents annually by 2025, part of a steady increase since the Liberal Party came to power in 2015.

As the Liberals struggle with weaker support in the polls, the Century Initiative is hoping the government doesn’t water down its immigration plans. “Now is not the time to pull back on immigration,” Ms. Lalande said.

Of late, the population increase is mostly driven by the arrival of temporary residents, such as international students and workers, many of whom wish to settle permanently in Canada. There are no limits on the issuance of temporary visas, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that his government was considering a cap.

Under Mr. Trudeau, the Liberals have made high immigration a cornerstone of their economic agenda. They argue that not only will immigration lead to stronger growth, but it will also help fill jobs as Canada gets progressively older.

David Williams, vice-president of policy at the Business Council of British Columbia, said this is a naive view of how economies work. He pointed to a stagnation in gross domestic product per capita as a sign that average living standards were not improving, despite the high intake of newcomers. Furthermore, there is ample research that indicates immigration has little effect – positive or negative – on per-capita output or average wages.

“Canada’s immigration policy has really become disconnected from the academic evidence,” Mr. Williams said. “There seems to be a view in Ottawa that ever-increasing immigration levels is a panacea for all of the structural problems in Canada’s economy.”

Rupa Banerjee, a Canada Research Chair in immigration and economics at Toronto Metropolitan University, said the country has struggled for a long time to build homes in sufficient quantities. “People are getting this wrong impression that the immigration situation is causing the housing crisis,” she said.

The Environics survey found the largest declines in support for immigration in British Columbia and Ontario. There was a sharp divide by political party: Nearly two-thirds of Conservative Party supporters agreed with the statement that “there is too much immigration to Canada,” compared with 29 per cent of Liberals and 21 per cent of New Democratic Party backers.

Still, the results suggest that Canadians see the upsides of immigration. Around three-quarters of people agreed that immigration has a positive impact on the economy, down from 85 per cent last year.

The survey was based on telephone interviews conducted with 2,002 Canadians between Sept. 4 and 17. The results are accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples.

The Century Initiative was co-founded by Mark Wiseman, chair of Alberta Investment Management Corp., and Dominic Barton, the former global managing partner of consulting giant McKinsey & Co. Mr. Barton also served as chair of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which recommended to the Trudeau government in 2016 that it raise its annual intake of permanent residents by 50 per cent over five years.

“We do not believe in growth at all costs,” Ms. Lalande said. “That growth must absolutely be accompanied by investments in infrastructure, both physical and social.”

Dr. Banerjee said the federal government could do a better job of communicating its plans for how these newcomers will integrate into Canada. Otherwise, she said, people are left with the impression that there is no plan.

“For several years now, I’ve been slightly concerned that we shouldn’t take this high support for immigration for granted,” she said. “It’s very precarious, to be honest.”

Source: Focus Canada: Public support for immigration falls sharply amid affordability concerns

Interesting to contrast Canadian and foreign-born along with party. Striking that more immigrants feel levels too high compared to Canadian born. Party differences less surprising:

Overall, there is too much immigration to Canada: Canadian-born 43 percent, Foreign-born 47 percent, Liberals 29 percent, CPC 64 percent, NDP 21 percent

Many people claiming to be refugees are not real refugees: Canadian-born 33 percent, Foreign-born 45 percent, Liberals 29 percent, CPC 49 percent, NDP 21 percent

There are too many immigrants coming into this country who are not adopting Canadian values: Canadian-born 48 percent, Foreign-born 46 percent, Liberals 38 percent, CPC 65 percent, NDP 27 percent

Overall, immigration has a positive impact on the economy of Canada: Canadian-born 72 percent, Foreign-born 81 percent, Liberals 85 percent, CPC 64 percent, NDP 89 percent

The other question that is interesting to look at the breakdown between Canadian and foreign-born pertains to those immigrants considered to be high priority. Not surprisingly, immigrants place higher priority on family immigration and international students but a lower priority on refugees. Both give priority to higher skilled compared to lower skilled:

People with good education and skills who move to Canada permanently: High priority: Canadian-born: 66 percent, Foreign-born: 67 percent

Family members of current residents of Canada, including immigrants: Canadian-born: 38 percent, Foreign-born: 43 percent

Refugees who are fleeing conflict or persecution in their own countries: Canadian-born: 58 percent, Foreign-born: 47 percent

Workers with specialized skills that are in high demand in Canada: Canadian-born: 76 percent, Foreign-born: 80 percent

Students who come to study in Canadian colleges and universities: Canadian-born: 29 percent, Foreign-born: 45 percent

Lower skilled workers who are hired to come to Canada for a short time to take on hard-to-fill jobs: Canadian-born: 34 percent, Foreign-born: 33 percent

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Douglas Todd: Remarkably popular book on baby boomers distorted by politicians

2023/09/02 Leave a comment

More on some of the false or at least misleading demographic arguments underlying current government immigration policies and organizations like the Century Initiative:

Daniel Stoffman was co-author of one of the most popular books written in Canada.

Boom, Bust and Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift sold more than 300,000 copies after it was published in 1996, with a followup in 2000. Stoffman, who died this summer in Vancouver, shared the royalties equally with University of Toronto economist David Foot.

The theme of Boom, Bust and Echo was that “demographics explains two thirds of almost everything.”

Stoffman and Foot maintained the baby-boomer bulge of Canadians, born between 1947 and 1966, would have a huge impact on trends in real estate, the stock market, eating habits, health care, and leisure activities, including, for instance, the future of birdwatching.

But an odd thing happened largely because of this best-selling book. Its spotlight on Canada’s baby-boom cohort of almost 10 million people has often been misinterpreted, if not distorted, by corporate leaders and federal politicians. That did not please Stoffman, a journalist, author and secular Jew who described himself as a “radical centrist.”

Stoffman, who once worked as a reporter at The Vancouver Sun and edited the University of B.C. student newspaper, The Ubyssey, wrote 13 books before he died in Vancouver at age 78 on July 3. They included profiles of Canadian Tire, Barrick Gold, Boston Pizza and McCain Foods, plus The Money Machine, an unusually readable look at the mutual fund industry.

But the more risky book for Stoffman, in contrast to the crowd-pleasing Boom, Bust and Echo, was the one he wrote to challenge business leaders and politicians who maintain, to this day, that aging baby boomers are the No. 1 reason Canada needs one of the highest immigration rates in the world.

Most commentators, scholars and journalists have only recently been catching up with some of Stoffman’s analysis in his book Who Gets In: What’s Wrong with Canada’s Immigration Program — and How to Fix It, which was a finalist for the Donner Prize in public policy.

Stoffman was pro-immigration. But in the early 2000s he wanted Canadians to think seriously about the complex, almost taboo subject. That’s what he did after winning an Atkinson Fellowship from his liberal newspaper, The Toronto Star, to write a groundbreaking series on it.

Today, more mainstream voices are joining Stoffman in questioning the platitudes streaming out of Ottawa, particularly from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is currently justifying increasing Ottawa’s immigration target to a record 500,000 this year, double the 250,000 when the Liberals came to power.

Stoffman also anticipated the questions pundits are now raising about the federal Liberals’ related migration decisions to allow the number of foreign students and other non-permanent residents to reach almost two million, a figure CIBC’s Benjamin Tal cited this week. That compares to about half a million when Trudeau was first elected.

Former immigration minister Ahmed Hussen, echoing Trudeau’s talking points about the need to welcome immigrants, foreign students and guest workers to “grow our economy,” often justified his approach by referring to what he characterized as the baby boom problem.

“The question is: Why do we need immigration? Well, five million Canadians are set to retire by 2035. And we have fewer people working to support seniors and retirees,” he said, echoing similar remarks by other immigration ministers about the high costs of public health care for the elderly.

Stoffman’s book, Who Gets In, laid out some of the counter arguments economists are making today, which is that high in-migration can never replace an aging workforce.

The main reason is that immigrants also age. The baby boom generation is now aged 56 to 77, a cohort that includes millions of immigrants.

The second reason is many immigrants bring dependants. That is especially true under the Liberals, who quadrupled the number of parents and grandparents that could be sponsored.

The University of B.C.’s David Green and McMaster’s Byron Spencer, both economists, have their own unique way of responding to the supposed dilemma of aging baby boomers. Wryly, they say, the only conceivable way high immigration could offset Canada’s retiring workforce would be if every newcomer was a 15-year-old orphan. That’s because it would take 50 years for the teens to reach retirement age and, as orphans, they would not seek to bring in parents or grandparents.

Stoffman maintained there are two main reasons corporate leaders lobby Ottawa to keep immigration levels high, roughly triple per capita those in the U.S.

“I think the main purpose of Canada’s high immigration policy is to lower wages — and inflate real estate values,” he said in 2015.

The authors of Boom, Bust and Echo were aware, decades ago, of the two dangers. They recognized hiking immigration rates does indeed, as the politicians boast, increase the country’s overall GDP. But it also tends to lower GDP per capita, especially for low-skilled workers.

Stoffman said struggling immigrants best understood this downward pressure because they were the ones most likely to come to him after his speeches to express their worries.

In recent years, economists like Don Wright, former head of the B.C. government’s civil service, Mikal Skuterud of the University of Waterloo, and the B.C. Business Council’s David Williams have been strongly making the argument about lagging wages.

And a host of housing analysts, such as Steve Saretsky, John Pasalis and Ben Rabidoux, have also been warning about how high in-migration, including by foreign students and guest workers, puts intense pressure on rent and housing prices, which are at crisis levels in Vancouver and Toronto.

Stoffman was among the first to argue that Canada could deal with the societal costs of a large baby boom (which once made up 31 per cent of the population, but is now down to 23 per cent) by increasing productivity through innovation. Alas, in recent years productivity has fallen.

Another way is to offer incentives for Canadians to stay longer in the workforce, which the baby boom is doing. Canada could also encourage more people to have children, he said, particularly by providing better and cheaper daycare.

What would be an optimum number of permanent residents coming to Canada, leaving aside guest workers and foreign students? Eight years ago, Stoffman suggested a balanced number for Canada would be about 150,000 new immigrants annually.

Stoffman said he understood why right-wing people — “who think wage inflation is worse than income equality, and don’t want to see cab drivers and cleaning ladies earn more” — would promote “apocalyptic visions” about the need for higher in-migration targets.

“But it’s weird,” he wrote in Who Gets In, “that so many Canadians, who pride themselves on their social consciences and progressive politics, hurl nasty names at those who call for a more limited immigration program.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Remarkably popular book on baby boomers distorted by politicians

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Douglas Todd: B.C.’s housing-addicted economy not sustainable, experts fear

2022/07/18 Leave a comment

Same could be said for Canada as a whole. Good observations by those quoted in the article (Don Wright, David Williams, Stephen Punwasi):

B.C.’s economy is not as healthy as it might appear, since it relies too much on housing and newcomers to keep it above water, say prominent economists and analysts.

The real estate sector makes up a much larger section of the B.C. economy than in the rest of the country. The B.C. economy is heavily reliant on large-scale flows of people arriving each year from other provinces and countries, say the specialists.

They maintain B.C. has not been effective at developing its resources, businesses and industrial capacity in a way that increases wages and improves productivity. This B.C. phenomenon, going on for two decades, puts demand pressure on housing prices.

Don Wright, former head of B.C.’s civil service, says there is a general feeling among British Columbians that the economy is healthy because unemployment is relatively low and government revenues stable.

But there is a distinct possibility the economy is not sustainable, Wright says.

B.C.’s trade deficit has been growing steadily since 2005. The province, he said, is “spending about $28 billion more per year than we are earning.”

Both Wright and David Williams, senior policy analyst for the Business Council of B.C., say the provincial economy is too dependent on large-scale in-migration to bring in capital, which fuels the housing sector and props up spending on goods and services.

Last year, according to the B.C. government, the province welcomed a record 100,000 new people. About 33,000 came from other provinces, which is the highest amount in three decades. The other 67 per cent arrived from other countries, a lower proportion than normal, and most chose Metro Vancouver.

B.C. has an unusual economy because it hinges so heavily on “outside money;” on new arrivals coming in to “buy real estate and support consumption with income earned elsewhere,” says Wright, an economist who gives presentations on the issue to Ottawa politicians and business organizations.

“In essence we are ‘exporting’ the right to reside in B.C.,” Wright says.

“This has become our largest ‘export industry.’ It accounts for more than twice the annual level of forest industry exports. In the short run, this injection of dollars does create the impression of a healthy economy, but how long can this go on?”

The business council’s Williams generally agrees. A tremendous amount of B.C. money is going into “housing-related consumption,” he says.

But investment dollars are not flowing strongly enough into such things as new machinery and equipment and intellectual property rights, said the business economist. Those sectors can much more add to the “economy’s future productive capacity” and potentially increase stagnant wages.

In-migration should not be seen as a cure-all for the economic woes of Canada or B.C., says Williams.

He questions the way Canada, particularly B.C., depends on “record immigration levels to turbocharge population growth and housing demand.” Canadian economists believe immigration numbers have an overall neutral effect on real wages and gross domestic product per capita.

According to Stephen Punwasi, of Better Dwelling, B.C.’s economy is almost twice as reliant as neighbouring Alberta on real estate, which accounts for 20 per cent of B.C.’s GDP.

That compares to an average of 13.5 per cent across the country, a proportion that is still much higher than in the United States. If B.C.’s construction industry is included, it adds up to almost one third of B.C.’s GDP coming from real-estate related services.

Canada, and especially B.C., are “addicted” to real estate-driven growth, says Punwasi, who maintains it’s an unhealthy dependence that won’t be easy to break.

Wright, who was NDP Premier John Horgan’s deputy minister until stepping down last year, cites the danger of over-relying on new arrivals.

When 100,000 people move into B.C. and buy houses and services “it creates the illusion that the economy is strong. But for me the question is, ‘Is it sustainable?,’” Wright says.

“Let’s say somebody from outside B.C. retires to Comox and buys a place. And they’ve accumulated a lot of net wealth over their life. Whenever they spend money, it’s money that’s not being earned in B.C. In the short term it’s not bad for the economy, because it creates employment when somebody goes out and eats at a restaurant.”

But Wright doesn’t think relying on imported wealth is sustainable — for two reasons.

The first is that “you only get to sell off a piece of real estate to somebody outside the province once,” he said.

“And another reason is it’s not socially sustainable: Young people cannot afford a house anymore.” And too many new real-estate units are not suitable for families.

“A whole generation is going to be frozen out of the housing market, unless they have a well-capitalized, generous bank of mom and dad.”

What might happen to B.C. “when the party stops?” Wright asks, referring to a time when newcomers stop bringing in tens of billions of dollars each year from beyond provincial borders?

B.C., he said, will need to restructure by strengthening sectors such as forestry and mining, manufacturing and high tech — all of which are capable of producing superior middle-class wages.

“We better know,” Wright says, “how to rebuild the standard of living of the next generation.”

Source: Douglas Todd: B.C.’s housing-addicted economy not sustainable, experts fear

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Douglas Todd: Why Canadian wages never seem to go up

2022/05/10 Leave a comment

Good summary of concerns regarding low GDP per capita growth:
There is a startling admission buried in Chart #28 of the budget released this month by Canada’s Liberal government.
The chart in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s budget quietly acknowledges a forecast by the OECD, a club of mostly wealthy nations, that Canada will likely come in dead last in the next four decades in regard to GDP growth per capita.The downplayed chart, one tiny aspect of the 304-page document, serves as a warning that individual Canadians, compared to the citizens of 39 other economically advanced countries, will in the next decades likely suffer the lowest real growth in their wages.

Freeland puts the blame for tepid wages almost entirely on Canadian businesses, which she claims “have not invested at the same rate as their U.S. counterparts.” The finance minister then boasts that Ottawa’s policies on housing and immigration will “strengthen the middle class and leave no one behind.”

But more than a few people suggest they are doing the opposite. Why, when the country’s GDP is expanding, have individual Canadians not been getting ahead? Why is their wage growth projected to lag so far behind citizens of other nations? And why are millennials taking the brunt of it?

The OECD predicts Canadians will experience the lowest growth in real wages out of 40 advanced economies. A downplayed version of this chart appeared in the Liberal budget. (Source: OECD / B.C. Business Council)
The OECD predicts Canadians will experience the lowest growth in real wages out of 40 advanced economies. A downplayed version of this chart appeared in the Liberal budget. (Source: OECD / B.C. Business Council)

David Williams, policy analyst for the Business Council of B.C., is helping ring the national alarm bells.

“Past generations of young Canadians entering the workforce could look forward to favourable tailwinds lifting real incomes during their working lives. That’s no longer the case,” he said.

“If the OECD’s long-range projections prove correct, young people entering the workforce today will not feel much of a tailwind at all. Rather, they face a long period of stagnating average real incomes that will last most of their working lives.”

Ottawa’s economic strategy is based on several “shaky pillars,” which include using “record immigration levels to turbo-charge population growth and housing demand in major cities,” Williams said.

“The political class appears to have lost interest in efforts to raise workers’ productivity and real wage growth through higher business investment per worker.”

Toronto-based analyst Stephen Punwasi says Canada is on its way to becoming the “next Greece,” referring to the way Greeks’ personal incomes tanked more than almost anywhere else after 2009 because of the housing-mortgage-ignited recession.

“Canada has embraced cheap growth by way of residential investment and debt,” Punwasi says. Canada has been putting too much emphasis on home construction, he said, as well as on printing money at a faster rate than almost any other country.

Nowhere in Canada, or even in much of the world, does the economy rely on housing as much as it does in B.C., which has a lower GDP per capita than Alberta and Saskatchewan. Almost 30 per cent of B.C.’s overall economy is tied up in real estate and construction. But the housing sector struggles to grow the economy, or wages, like other industries, which are more able to innovate and export.

The Liberals’ commitment to record immigration targets focuses mostly “on the benefits immigrants provide to older Canadians,” Punwasi said, including in the form of “strong housing demand and tax revenues.”But he cautions that Ottawa’s policies often exploit newcomers, who end up coming to the country unaware of flat wages, especially for the young adults who make up the bulk of immigrants, foreign students and temporary workers.

Donald Wright, the freshly retired head of B.C.’s provincial civil service, notes discouragingly that six out of 10 Canadians recently toll Nanos pollsters they expect their standard of living to worsen.

“Isn’t it time we took Canadians standard of living seriously?” Wright asks in presentations to groups of Canadian Senators and to the Canadian Association of Business Economists.

In addition to Wright’s concern about Ottawa’s inability to promote technological advancement and productivity, he joins Punwasi in worrying that policymakers are over-relying on population growth and cheap labour. It’s not helping the middle classes, he says.

“It’s time for some nuance on immigration policy,” says Wright, who was B.C. Premier John Horgan’s deputy minister. While remaining pro-immigration, Wright hopes for a more thoughtful debate about immigration in Canada, otherwise anti-immigration populists could come to dominate, as they have in other countries.

As it is, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s economic plan relies on increasingly record-high immigration counts — of 432,000 in 2022, 447,000 in 2023, and 451,000 in 2024. That compares to 250,000 when the Liberals were first elected.These targets, far higher than those in the U.S. or almost anywhere else, will impact economic equity in Canada, Wright says. “The evidence is very strong that the demographic group most adversely affected by higher immigration is the previous cohort of immigrants.”

That’s in part because the largest group of immigrants is disproportionately those between 25 and 40 years old, which is the same cohort as the already large baby-boom echo, also known as millennials.

An increase in immigration at this time amplifies the challenges millennials are having, particularly in the housing market, Wright says. “So, even if there is a valid argument for raising immigration levels, this is being done approximately 10 years prematurely.”

What makes it all the more unsettling is that the corporate-backed organizations pushing Ottawa to hike immigration targets, such as The Century Initiative and the Conference Board of Canada, have acknowledged that higher immigration leads to lower GDP per capita.

“So why,” Wright asks, “has it become the core of the federal government’s economic ‘strategy’?”

Source: Douglas Todd: Why Canadian wages never seem to go up

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