Prousky: Canada’s housing crisis is fuelling a population crisis

2024/07/20 Leave a comment

Interesting turning around debates over immigration levels. But yes, levels have to come down given the time it takes to increase housing:

…The global pool from which to attract smart, employable immigrants is slowly shrinking. Africa is now the only region on Earth whose population is expected to grow by the end of the century. Meanwhile, the world’s population is expected to decrease in that time period. So in the coming century, rich nations – all of which have birth rates well below 2.1 – may be competing for the same small pool of working-age migrants.

Beyond immigration, there are a host of pro-natal policies that countries have devised to boost fertility. Governments in Asia have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to stave off looming population crises. Singapore, with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at just 0.97, offers generous grants and tax rebates to parents with two or more children. But its fertility rate hasn’t budged.

It’s only a matter of time, it seems, before the Canadian government begins throwing big money at the country’s nascent fertility problem. The lesson from abroad is, don’t wait. Increasing the country’s housing supply today could be the best defence against a population crisis down the road.

Source: Canada’s housing crisis is fuelling a population crisis

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Prousky: Beyond international students: The other problem with Canada’s private education industry

2024/01/27 Leave a comment

Yet another crack in international and domestic students:

…It’s not that hard for Canadian high-school students to buy their seats in the country’s most coveted university programs. For a few thousand dollars, students can enroll at private credit-granting “schools” – usually in strip malls – where they’re almost guaranteed top marks. What these students pay in fees, they can often recoup in scholarship money.

…

The whole thing bears a striking resemblance to the issue of pay-for-citizenship private colleges. At some of these institutions, as many as 90 per cent of students are “no shows,” and in all likelihood are just paying the college for the visa and work permit it affords them. Morally, it’s no different than a domestic student who buys a grade they don’t deserve.

Clearly something beyond a cap on student visas needs to be done to restore the country’s meritocratic values. Shoddy private schools need to be held accountable, regardless of whether they target international or domestic, or high-school or college students.

The problem is, there doesn’t appear to be much data on these private schools, and any available data is wanting. At a minimum, provinces would need to know the acceptance, enrolment, graduation and employment rates at each of these schools. Ontario purports to make this data available, but it’s chock full of missing fields.

There are thousands of these private secondary schools across the country, but do the provinces know how many students attend them and on average how inflated their grades are? If they do, they aren’t sharing this information with universities, and despite auditing these private schools, rarely if ever shut them down.

Some universities have taken matters into their own hands. The University of Waterloo in Southwestern Ontario made headlines in 2018 for its “secret list” of high schools for which they adjust applicants’ grades. But if this effort is going to bring about meaningful change, it requires provincewide co-operation.

Jonah Prousky is a management consultant and freelance writer who focuses on business, technology and society.

Source: Beyond international students: The other problem with Canada’s private education industry

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