How we can right-size Canada’s health system as the population grows

2023/07/04 Leave a comment

Good illustration of the impact of current and planned high levels of permanent and temporary immigration, offering little hope in the near and medium-term:

Last year, while knocking on doors during her campaign to be mayor of Whitby, Elizabeth Roy got a firsthand feel for the community’s top concerns.

The town of 150,000, on the shore of Lake Ontario about 50 kilometres east of Toronto, is among the fastest-growing communities in the country.

As she fielded questions about building new roads, preserving green space and upgrading infrastructure, Roy also heard resident after resident describe how difficult it was to get much-needed medical care, with many saying they feared the situation would get even worse amid Whitby’s population boom.

“Whether it was a young family needing a doctor for their newborn or a senior who just had their doctor retire and was left stranded, about one out of every five residents expressed concern about some type of medical care that they required,” says Roy, who is serving her first term as mayor after 17 years as a member of council.

“It’s clear we have gaps in our health-care system, and they need to be dealt with now, today. We need to start being proactive.”

The population of Durham Region, which includes Oshawa, Ajax and Pickering as well as Whitby, is likewise swelling rapidly. It’s expected to almost double over the next 20 years, surging from about 697,000 in 2021 to 1.2 million by 2041.

Municipal and health-care leaders worry its health system, straining to meet the community’s needs even now, won’t be able to cope with the influx of new residents.

Already, Durham faces an escalating family doctor shortage. Figures from the Ontario College of Family Physicians reveal more than 44,000 Durham residents don’t have a family doctor, though a recent report from the Town of Whitby puts the number much higher, citing estimates that suggest a third of the region’s population — some 230,000 residents — lack a family physician who practises in Durham.

Lakeridge Health, the region’s medical network, is unable to keep up with demand. Its four acute-care hospitals typically operate above capacity and wait times in its ERs continue to be “higher than usual,” according to a June alert to the community. The hospital system, Roy notes, will need 1,793 beds by 2041 — more than double its current count.

Noting that it’s primarily a provincial responsibility, Roy says “One would think that at the municipal level health care wouldn’t be a concern for us to be advocating for. It’s actually far from that. It’s actually the reverse. Daily, I hear about the health care needs in our community.”

With Canada’s population recently hitting 40 million — a milestone that arrived faster than expected — and the country set to welcome 500,000 people a year by 2025, health policy experts are warning that bolstering our fragile system, still recovering from years of pandemic pressures, has never been more important.

Across Ontario, where the head count is racing toward 16 million, communities face struggles similar to Whitby’s. More than 2.2 million people do not have access to a family doctor or a nurse practitioner, which puts their long-term health at risk and makes them more likely to visit the ER, placing further strain on the system.

Hospital emergency departments continue to overflow; the most-recent data from Ontario Health shows that patients admitted to the hospital from the ER wait an average of 19 hours before getting a bed.

And despite efforts to strengthen the health-care workforce, ongoing shortages are triggering temporary closures — and in a recent case in Minden, the permanent shuttering — of some of the province’s hospital emergency departments. 

“We are in an extremely difficult moment in our health system in Ontario,” says Dr. Jane Philpott, former politician and dean of Queen’s Health Sciences and director of its medical school.

“It’s probably in a more critical state than at any other point in the four decades that I’ve been involved in health care. The only thing that makes me hopeful is that it’s reached such a state of crisis that there is a broad public and political imperative to find solutions and to do the things that we should have done long ago.”

Among the first steps to propping up the system in the near term — and preparing it for future demand — is to ensure everyone in the province is connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner.

“It’s the only way we’re going to be able to cope,” Philpott says. “We need to get a very firm commitment from all orders of government to establish a primary-care-for-all system.”

Across the country, calls are growing for targeted reforms to primary care, including the expansion of team-based care, which connects patients to interdisciplinary groups made up of pharmacists, social workers, dietitians and other health-care professionals, in addition to nurses and physicians. Evidence suggests such teams improve patient outcomes.

Health leaders also want to see primary care shift to a geographic model to ensure every resident has access to a family doctor within a 30-minute drive of where they live or work. As well, there is a push to allow patients in a team-based environment have a non-physician health professional co-ordinate their care. 

Such reforms are necessary given the scale of primary-care needs in the province, says Dr. Rick Glazier, scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Health Services and Policy Research. 

Even as the need grows for more family doctors to fill the gaps, research shows about 17 per cent of Ontarians are attached to a physician over the age of 65 who is nearing retirement. Glazier says there aren’t enough MDs graduating medical school to replace the aging workforce.

“We don’t have the generation coming behind those people who are retiring,” says Glazier, a family doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital, a part of Unity Health Toronto.

“We will need these interprofessional teams for primary care. We will not be able to do this with doctors alone.”

Dr. Andrew Boozary, a primary-care physician and founding executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at Toronto’s University Health Network, agrees governments must firmly commit to primary-care expansion and reform.

Finding new ways to connect people to a family doctor or nurse practitioner will be key, not only in anticipation of the growing population but also because of the country’s aging demographics, as older patients typically have greater health care needs.

Boozary sees an expanded role for community health workers in primary care, noting that they played a crucial part during the pandemic by bringing health services including COVID-19 vaccines into neighbourhoods, building trust with residents who wouldn’t otherwise have easy access to health care.

“Through the pandemic, community health workers supported people in apartment buildings, in parks and basketball courts, in religious settings,” Boozary says. “They brokered the trust. They had the lived experience and understanding of the needs of their communities.”

Including such workers in primary-care delivery would lead to more equitable access and could mean helping patients connect with social supports, accompanying them to medical appointments, helping with medication (including adherence to prescription renewals), and working closely with a nurse practitioner. 

This kind of model could be especially important in marginalized communities, Boozary says, including refugee and newcomer populations.

“We can’t say we have a universal health-care system when millions of people don’t have access to primary care,” Boozary says. “This mirage of universality was exposed during the pandemic and has been further eroded.”

In his role at CIHR, Glazier is leading an initiative that’s mobilizing research teams to better understand the country’s health-care workforce. That data, he says, will be used for “evidence-based planning” to help Canada meet its future health-care needs.

Ivy Bourgeault, a professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa and lead of the Canadian Health Workforce Network, says when political and health leaders talk about capacity within the health system, they are primarily talking about its workers.

“This is a labour-intensive industry,” she says. “Three-quarters of the costs of the health system are related to the workforce, which means that health system responsiveness — in wait times, in backlogs — it’s the workforce that’s the rate-limiting factor.

“Primary care issues. Long-term-care issues. These are workforce issues.”

Boosting nursing numbers is among the top priorities, Bourgeault says. This includes finding ways to retain nurses working in the system, bring back those who left (through retirement or a profession change or dropping to part-time), and strategically recruit new nurses to fill gaps in the system.

All of this, though, is to only solve the crisis at hand, she says. Preparing for the more-populous future will require understanding the gaps in the system, collecting and analyzing workforce data and studying and evaluating new models of care.

“We need to build a culture of planning,” Bourgeault says. “The most expensive situation is continuing to do what we do now: Not plan. Not retain. Just constantly trying to recruit to fill a system that is like a sieve.”

Sara Allin, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, says Canada doesn’t track health-workforce numbers thoroughly enough. Data that is available is often fragmented, inconsistent between regions and not easily available to policymakers.

And while having a view of regional and professional gaps in the workforce is key, Allin says it’s also imperative to collect data on patients’ medical needs to help inform planning. For example, she says, an aging population, the rise in chronic disease, such as diabetes, and social risk factors, including food insecurity and unsafe housing, all play into population health. 

“We need to project and model our future medical needs and map those against future capacity,” Allin says, adding that there is currently a “mismatch” between the two. “Good data is fundamental to both exercises. And we’re not able to accurately and effectively measure these things right now.”

Given the health system’s current “precarious” state it will be difficult to meet the needs of the growing population, she says. This sentiment is shared by Farah Ahmad, an associate professor in York University’s School of Health Policy and Management, who agrees solutions must be found to the workforce challenges ahead of the country’s projected population growth. 

“We are going to have a lot of newcomers, which is great for our overall economic development,” she says. “But if we are not preparing our health system, who will take care of them?”

Ahmad points to the most recent figures from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that show Canada has only 2.8 physicians for every 1,000 residents, a rate well below other countries. In the 2021 OECD data, Canada also graduates far fewer physicians than other countries, ranking 33rd out of 36.

While Canada’s immigration goals provide a partial solution to the country’s worker shortage by bringing in internationally trained professionals, Ahmed worries too much burden is being placed on newcomers. “The answers, they cannot all come from new immigrants.”

Philpott, a family physician and a former federal health minister, says the country should be able to build and train its own health-care workforce even as it removes barriers to let internationally educated professionals work here, also an important strategy.

She points to a unique initiative from Queen’s University and Lakeridge Health, designed to train and graduate family physicians, as one type of solution. In September this program will see 20 medical students interested in family medicine train in Durham, with the goal of having them graduate and set up their practice in the region. 

Eight months into her term as mayor, Roy says advocating for more health-care services gets pushed higher and higher on Whitby Council’s list of priorities.

Last month, council approved funding to help support the Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Physician Training Program as well as a plan to establish an incentive program to recruit and retain family doctors to the region. And Roy herself is advocating for the province to approve a $3-million planning grant for a new hospital in Whitby, the location recommended by an independent task force. 

She notes a provincial task force in 2015 recommended a new acute-care hospital for somewhere in Durham. Eight years later, and with the region’s population ballooning faster than ever, that plan remains stalled.

“This crisis is one that’s here today,” says Roy. “Lakeridge Health Oshawa is operating at one and a half times what it was first built for, and it will take at least 10 years after approval for that hospital — anywhere in Durham — to open its doors.”

Roy fears that as time passes, and the population grows, the health-care gap in the community, already stark, will continue to widen, putting residents health even further at risk.

“I’m really concerned,” she says. “We have to have a community that provides all the health-care supports. But if we don’t have them in place, we may end up having residents whose ailments are further along, their cancer diagnosis not diagnosed at an earlier stage, that it takes longer for treatments or medications to be prescribed.

“We know early intervention is key. And that may be at risk.”

Source: How we can right-size Canada’s health system as the population grows

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , , ,

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?

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

Barutciski: Quebec’s caution about immigration is a lesson for all of Canada

2023/06/21 Leave a comment

I wouldn’t necessarily characterize as this driven by ideology as much as misplaced emphasis on demographics and overall GDP growth, along with siloed approaches that ignore the impacts of high levels of permanent and temporary immigration across all levels of government. And if driven by ideology, it is more by economic ideology than anything else.

But the demographic impact on lower levels in Quebec compared to the rest of Canada is significant, as it is with respect to Indigenous peoples:

Plans to boost immigration levels in Canada are raising questions. The recent suggestion that Canada will become a country of 100 million inhabitants created controversy particularly in Quebec. Large increases in permanent and temporary residents at a time when there is a housing shortage suggests federal policy is increasingly influenced by ideology, in contrast to past pragmatic approaches.

Although temporary permits increased under the Harper government, they exploded under the Trudeau government. Quebec’s new French language commissioner recently pointed out the impact of large numbers of foreign students in Montreal, a city worried that the use of French is being replaced by a generic North American culture and its English language. As a key actor in the historic compromise that established the federation, Quebec’s concerns should be taken seriously by any Canadian committed to successful immigration outcomes.

Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stated that the 100 million is not governmental policy, it is impossible to ignore the context. Immigration is simply a more sensitive issue outside the English-speaking world. European countries such as Germany and France are open to immigration, but they handle language and culture prudently because of their stronger sense of identity. For example, nobody in Hamburg would accept basic demographic shifts that result in the local population being born largely outside of Germany, let alone brag about this development as a symbol of openness to diversity. While inclusive Torontonians have been doing this for years, it is clear that Quebec’s sensibilities are closer to continental Europe’s than to the rest of Canada.

The modern version of the ambitious 100-million project has been debated for more than a decade. It was notably proposed as a geopolitical project that focused on the multi-faceted benefits of a larger demographic base. The idea was then appropriated by the Toronto-based advocacy group known as the Century Initiative. This influential group focused on economic liberalization and transformed the goal into a more one-dimensional project responding to issues such as labour supply.

Yet two important constituencies were absent from the early stages of the Century Initiative’s deliberations: Quebec and Indigenous peoples. Their concerns about demographic submersion were ignored. This was the “diversity is our strength” approach within a Toronto-centric worldview that emphasized certain economic benefits while excluding other perspectives.

Congruence with the agenda of progressive ideologues was just a matter of time. As soon as Trudeau came to power in late 2015, some cabinet members pushed for a massive increase in immigration. In the burgeoning atmosphere of identity politics, anyone opposed to increased immigration could be accused of racism. Trudeau’s first minister of immigration, John McCallum, proved to be a moderate voice to the extent that the increases in overall immigrant numbers under his watch were a fraction of what was advocated by some other cabinet ministers. He even expressed reservations, acknowledging the risk that newcomers would converge on the country’s largest urban centres, thereby creating the impression of saturation which could in turn undermine public support for future increases.

Yet Trudeau’s ideological instincts tend to align more with establishment thinking in Toronto than in Quebec City. A clash with Quebec was inevitable given that it has more difficulty attracting immigrants who can integrate within its distinct francophone society. While steady increases may be possible, as recently suggested by Premier François Legault, demographic submersion is a real threat if the rest of Canada enjoys population growth that largely outpaces other G7 members.

The underlying tension results from English-speaking Canada’s overconfident multicultural policy, which allows the short-term welcoming of massive numbers of immigrants while dismissing potentially destabilizing effects of long-term demographic shifts. Just as for Quebec, this may prove to be an existential issue for Indigenous people who risk carrying even less weight in overall population numbers and accompanying political representation.

Any national party genuinely committed to unity should consider these challenges if the vast country is to remain pro-immigration. With regard to Quebec’s hesitations, it would help national cohesion to understand the challenges faced by francophone jurisdictions that are competing with the Anglosphere for immigrants from around the world. Condescension in relation to the specific integration difficulties experienced by Quebec is misplaced.

After all, no country has ever transformed its demographic base in such a way that the numerically dominant ethnic group voluntarily cedes its leading position to migrants invited from culturally diverse places. Canadians could be reassured that the transformation is not driven by ideology if the unique nature of this societal experiment were to be acknowledged and openly debated.

Michael Barutciski is coordinator of Canadian Studies at Toronto’s Glendon College, York University. He spent the spring in both Quebec and Germany comparing migration policies.

Source: Barutciski: Quebec’s caution about immigration is a lesson for all of …

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Meggs and Fortin: Are We Heading for 100 Million Canadians?

2023/06/13 Leave a comment

Excerpt from good long and thoughtful conversation between a former senior Quebec immigration official and prominent economist, highlighting the weaknesses of the arguments used by governments, Century Initiative and the business community in favour of current levels and approach:

….

Meggs: In fact, Ottawa needs to base targets on the total number of arrivals, whatever the immigration status, to be able to welcome newcomers properly. The increased arrival numbers should not be so large that the host communities feel overburdened by inclusion and integration. Accommodation of the newcomers means ensuring that they have a roof over their heads, that they can integrate rapidly into the labour force, that they have access to language training, that they can obtain financial services, and that government services such as public transit, child care, education and health care are available and affordable for them. Canada’s recent immigration policy proposes huge increases in permanent immigration targets while refusing to set targets for the even higher levels of temporary immigrants.

This cavalier policy is in great danger of transforming immigration to Canada from a successful operation to a painful breakdown. To answer your question, nobody really knows the right target because planning in line with welcoming and settlement capacity has never been properly undertaken. Canada needs to set guidelines and targets for both permanent and temporary immigration, looking at the number and pace of arrivals rather than the type of permit. Otherwise, the newcomers will not be able to participate adequately in their new communities, and Canadians will lose confidence in immigration policy.

Fortin: I agree that optimal immigration is not maximal immigration. First, the expansive immigration policy inspired by the Century Initiative is generating chaos at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. More than 1.7 million temporary and permanent applications are waiting in the pipeline, which doesn’t include asylum seekers and their applications for a work permit.

Second, as I said above, the increased inflow of immigrants is likely to have a zero or negative impact on the average living standard of Canadians; it will not attenuate the pace of population aging, and it will not reduce global labour shortages. It may make them worse.

Third, I add to your last observation, Anne, that overly expansive immigration targets risk not only producing some “loss of confidence” in immigration but fuelling an anti-immigration movement as has exploded in the United States and Europe. Canadians in general like to vaunt the good performance of their immigration system and their generosity toward immigrants. Unfortunately, this is a vision of the past. A recent online Environics survey (in which respondents are more likely to express their true feelings than in an interactive telephone survey) found that about half of Canadians think that there is too much immigration to Canada.¹⁰ It would not take much to metamorphose Canada’s proverbial generosity into generalized xenophobia. This has recently occurred in one of the world’s most progressive societies, Sweden. In the 2022 election, the Social Democrats there were defeated and the anti-immigration vote exploded. We must avoid slipping into this kind of political quagmire.

My bottom line is that immigration is an imperative work of civilization. It must increase over time, but going too fast is a dangerous course to follow. We should do it “allegro ma non troppo,” as in Italian classical music.

Source: Are We Heading for 100 Million Canadians?

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Globe editorial – Immigration: Canada needs a strategy, not a numbers game [the penny drops…]

2023/06/12 Leave a comment

The Globe completes its shift from earlier “cheerleading” the Century Initiative, business leaders, governments and others in favour of high and higher levels of immigration to recognizing the realities of housing, healthcare and infrastructure deficiencies and raises the need for considering lower immigration levels. Fitting culmination to a good series of editorials and analysis by their journalists.

An “I told you so” moment for me (Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast.) and others. Better late than never…

There have been many waves of immigration that have transformed Canada in decades past. Eastern European migrants headed to the Prairies at the start of the 20th century, forever altering the heart of the country. Canada welcomed Hungarians in the 1950s, opened its doors to non-European immigrants in the 1960s, embraced Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and, more recently, gave a new home to those fleeing the chaos of Syria.

…

Source: Immigration: Canada needs a strategy, not a numbers game

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Globe Editorial – Immigration: Canada’s economy can’t rely on temporary workers and study permits forever

2023/06/09 Leave a comment

The Globe continues its shift towards being more critical of Canadian immigration policies and distancing itself from Century Initiative and other large scale immigration advoccates:

Canada has big, enduring demographic challenges ahead. So why are we trying to paper them over with ever-larger temporary band-aids?

…

Source: Immigration: Canada’s economy can’t rely on temporary workers and study permits forever

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What’s the right number of immigrants for Canada?

2023/06/06 Leave a comment

In contrast to Globe editorial, Immigration: Canada needs more newcomers and (much more) housing, this article asks the needed questions, featuring business and academic economists who are increasingly challenging the current general political and economic consensus:

How many immigrants should Canada be admitting?

Economists are asking that question with increasing intensity – and for good reason. Canada’s population jumped by more than a million people last year. The surge was the largest annual increase in the country’s history, and one that was driven nearly entirely by immigration.

The skyrocketing number of new Canadians is putting added pressure on an already drum-tight housing market. People are scrambling “for a place to live in a market with no housing supply,” Bank of Nova Scotia warns. Home prices are climbing, while the rental vacancy rate is at “a generational low,” according to National Bank of Canada.

For now, the Liberal government in Ottawa is sticking to the aggressive pro-immigration policy that it introduced after being elected in 2015. It is targeting nearly half-a-million immigrants a year– roughly double the 261,000 that Canada admitted annually in the 2010 to 2014 period.

However, a growing number of critics are challenging the logic behind Ottawa’s great immigration ambitions.

Prominent business economists say they are baffled by the government’s insistence on sticking to supersized immigration quotas at a time of widespread housing shortages. Stéfane Marion, chief economist at National Bank of Canada, and David Rosenberg, president of Rosenberg Research, have urged Ottawa to consider revising its targets to allow housing supply to catch up to demand.

Meanwhile, a new working paper from a trio of Canadian academic economists digs deeper into the issues around immigration. The paper, currently circulating in draft form under the title, The Economics of Canadian Immigration Levels, offers a scholarly but withering critique of current policy.

The authors – Matthew Doyle and Mikal Skuterud of the University of Waterloo, and Christopher Worswick of Carleton University – argue that policy makers are mistaken to conclude “that if some immigration is good for the economy, then more must be better.”

Granted, how you view this issue depends on how you define “better.” The three economists acknowledge that if Ottawa’s goal is simply to swell Canada’s geopolitical clout then, yes, it does make sense to fling open the doors and welcome a massive influx of newcomers. More workers and more consumers will mean a larger economy.

But size isn’t everything. Imagine a case in which Canada’s economic output doubled while its population did, too. Would this improve life for a typical Canadian? Not really. The average person would wind up seeing no improvement in their standard of living. The increase in the size of the economic pie would be matched by an equivalent increase in the number of people sharing it.

There is also morality to consider. On paper, it’s possible to show that a country can generate an “immigration surplus” by bringing in masses of low-skilled workers to take menial jobs. This underclass of low-paid immigrants can free up the existing population to pursue better-paid occupations.

However, it’s questionable how far this idea can or should be pushed in an egalitarian country such as Canada. The notion of an immigration surplus downplays the stresses faced by low-paid immigrants. It ignores issues of income inequality and focuses only on the benefits reaped by the people already in the country.

The three professors argue for a more equitable, more inclusive approach. They say the fairest and most reasonable test of Canadian immigration policy is whether it helps to grow output per person – or gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, in the jargon.

Research has demonstrated that measures of per capita GDP are closely tied to feelings of well-being and life satisfaction. If immigration offers a surefire way to boost this number, then there is good reason to think it is benefiting the nation as a whole.

Unfortunately, for the pro-immigration camp, there is no evidence that it does much of anything to help accelerate growth in GDP per capita.

The opposite is often true. When immigration is limited and labour is in short supply, businesses can find it profitable to invest in new capital – tools, computers, factories and other gear – to boost the productivity of scarce workers. This capital investment can help to swell per capita GDP.

In contrast, when immigration is surging, the case for capital investment may look less attractive. Businesses can find it cheaper to hire an additional worker to meet new demand instead of investing in new equipment. The result can be a larger work force, but one with lower productivity and lower per capita GDP.

The three professors look back at past decades and see nothing to indicate that immigration has ever been an economic tonic.

“Using evidence for Canada and the U.S., we find either a negative relationship, or no relationship, between periods of high immigration and subsequent growth in GDP per capita,” they wrote in their paper.

Just to be clear here: The lack of any obvious economic payoff from immigration doesn’t mean Canada should slam the door shut on newcomers.

The economists point out that federal legislation lists 12 goals for immigration, ranging from family reunification to supporting minority official languages communities. Many of those goals aren’t economic in nature and can still justify substantial levels of immigration.

But the dubious economic case for immigration raises questions about why Ottawa has been basing so much of its immigration policy on economic rationales. The government’s most recent targets allot roughly 60 per cent of immigrant slots to economic-class applicants – that is, people who are, in theory, being chosen for their ability to contribute to Canada’s prosperity.

This emphasis on economic-class immigrants may reflect misconceptions.

Consider, for instance, the idea that immigration is needed to fill low-skill, essential jobs. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, according to the economists. Admitting people to fill low-wage jobs pulls down, rather than pushes up, GDP per capita.

Just as questionable is the idea that immigration can offset the effects of Canada’s aging population.

Immigrants age and eventually retire just like anyone else. While there may be a short-term demographic dividend from immigration, “leveraging this demographic dividend to produce ongoing growth would require a Ponzi-type strategy of continually increasing the immigration rate to undo the increasing size of the retirement-age population,” the economists wrote.

So what can Canada do to improve its economic-class immigration system?

The three co-authors suggest that Ottawa should focus on admitting immigrants with higher levels of skills and education than it is currently targeting. They argue that the goal should be to select immigrants who can earn at least as much as, if not more, than the average Canadian within 10 years of arrival. Over time, this policy should boost GDP per capita.

The economists don’t offer any estimate of how such a policy would affect the number of immigrants being admitted, although Prof. Skuterud and Prof. Worswick both acknowledged in interviews that the impact, at least at first, would likely be a significant decline in the number of newcomers.

They suggest this might be wise, given the stresses being put on social systems by today’s massive influx of immigrants. Their paper cautions that “the strains currently being placed on the public health care system, the public education system and the highly regulated housing sector suggest even more reason to be cautious about setting high levels of economic immigration.”

Pro-immigration voices can, of course, find plenty here with which to take issue. That is absolutely fine. A vigorous debate over immigration is exactly what Canada now needs.

Source: What’s the right number of immigrants for Canada?

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Trudeau can’t keep juicing the economy with more spending

2023/05/31 Leave a comment

Some interesting nuggets in this op-ed by Argitis and Asselin, suggesting that some of their “cheerleading” of increased immigration may be undergoing a rethink. Needed greater emphasis on productivity and per capita GDP is an implicit admission that their support for the government’s permanent and temporary immigration has run counter to increased productivity.

And their suggestion for a slowdown in immigration, albeit not for economic class, to give housing a chance to “catch up” again is an implicit admission that their focus on levels (“more”) neglected the very real impacts on housing (in addition to healthcare and infrastructure).

Further (needed) cracks in the overall consensus?

The unexpected pick up in Canadian inflation last month — even if it turns out to be a blip — is a fresh reminder that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is facing a more perilous economic policy landscape going forward, with difficult trade-offs on the horizon.

The natural economic instinct of this government has been generous budget spending and open international migration.

Yet, Trudeau doesn’t need to look much further than Statistics Canada’s inflation numbers or last week’s call from the G7 for global “de-risking” to see how things are changing.

With the world entering a period of scarcity — from more expensive money to supply constraints — the rationale to juice the nation’s economy is weakening.

The housing crisis is a manifestation of that, as are broader price pressures and the Bank of Canada’s historically aggressive run of interest rate hikes.

Trudeau came to power in 2015 on an anti-austerity platform to reverse his Conservative predecessor’s sluggish growth record which, as the Liberals were quick to remind Canadians at the time, was the weakest since R.B. Bennett was prime minister in the 1930s.

The economics were sound at the time, even if the growth dividend didn’t pay off.

Canada’s economy was demand deficient early in Trudeau’s mandate as commodity prices slumped, while the extra spending helped ease financial stability risks by taking some pressure off the Bank of Canada to stoke growth.

Higher international migration drove gains in labour income and provided support to a housing market that was still largely within reach of affordability. Inflation wasn’t a worry. In fact, the concern for policymakers was it may not have been high enough.

New social programs, meanwhile, allowed the government to make significant strides on equality and redistribution — particularly with respect to lowering poverty.

The Trudeau administration’s weighty policy objectives were synergetic to the economic environment. Policies were rowing more or less in the same direction.

The current post-pandemic environment, though, is no longer as accommodating.

While many policymakers and economists still buy into a moderately optimistic outlook, with continued growth and inflation brought into check, less favourable outcomes are increasingly plausible.

There is a real possibility that inflation and interest rates will remain well above pre-pandemic levels, growth becomes more anemic, budget dynamics worsen and the climate transition proves costly.

Instead of working in concert, the government’s three core economic policy objectives — growth, equity and price stability — could become increasingly in conflict.

For example, increasing immigration is a long-term positive for an economy threatened by aging demographics. And more social spending is typically associated with less inequality.

But higher borrowing costs stoked by large increases in population and government spending will impact disproportionately lower income Canadians and young families, potentially creating divisions and threatening new sorts of inequality.

Add energy transition to the mix and national security issues and the landscape becomes a minefield.

The policy arena will be more ambiguous and the government pulled in multiple directions. Policy paralysis, wasted effort and poor allocation of resources are real risks.

There are certain fundamentals and policy guardrails, however, that can help the government navigate this challenge.

First, policymakers should prioritize growing GDP on a per capita basis and increasing productivity over expanding the overall aggregate economy. Both are important, but the former is where true prosperity lies and where Canada is failing. Masking underlying weakness with gains in national income is just a recipe for stagnant wages. Enhanced productivity also helps dampen inflationary pressures.

Second, toolkits and policy precision matter.

For example, supply side solutions are critical to productivity, but policymakers also need to be cognizant of short-term impacts in an inflationary world. Focusing more on economic migration and temporarily slowing the pace of new entrants to allow housing supply to catch up appears a reasonable solution to the current housing crisis.

Another example is industrial policy, which needs to become more sophisticated. Advanced economies will compete in advanced industries, where there is a concentration of R&D and skilled workers. Quick fixes through corporate subsidies, however, are not the answer. Canada needs a modern science and technology architecture that translates ideas into economic outputs, higher wages and better living standards.

The third guardrail is the most Canadian: be reasonable and pragmatic.

This seems obvious but we should not take this principle for granted, particularly as we rush (rightly) to meet ambitious climate targets. Canada remains a resource economy. The sector pays a lot of bills, keeps our currency stable and government finances flush with cash.

It’s also where any global power we may have as a nation lies. That makes an orderly climate transition paramount.

Theo Argitis is managing director at Compass Rose Group. Robert Asselin is senior vice-president, policy at the Business Council of Canada.

Source: Trudeau can’t keep juicing the economy with more spending

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“The Times They Are A-Changin’?” – Immigration debates and discussions

2023/05/29 Leave a comment

A few years ago, it was rare to find critiques of the government’s expanding levels of immigration, and the overall consensus among the provinces, business organizations and lobby groups, media and academics organizations in favour of this approach.

However, over the past year or so, there has been significant commentary questioning the approach given the impact on housing availability and affordability, healthcare and infrastructure. In addition to my 2021 Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast, former head of the British Columbia public service, Don Wright, wrote one of the stronger critiques, Will Trudeau make it impossible for Eby to succeed?

National unity and the demographic weight of Quebec in Canada has become a second major critique. A series of articles in Quebecor papers (LE QUÉBÉC PRIS AU PIÈGE PAR OTTAWA) highlighting an accelerating decline of Quebec’s population relative to the rest of Canada, reflecting different immigration rates has provoked considerable political debate and commentary in Quebec and English Canadian media.

While the Quebecor were written in an incendiary manner, the substance was correct. The approaches continue to diverge, there is, IMO, an unhealthy consensus in favour ot the current and projected levels of permanent and temporary migration among federal and provincial politicians, business organizations, academics among others.

Some of the commentary recognized that. Stuart Thompson the The Hub, A new era of immigration politics has started in Canada was one of the first to recognize the potential importance to immigration debates and discussions. Chris Selley chimed in, noting that Ottawa has no answer to Quebec’s anti-immigrant narrative. Campbell Clark stressed that Two solitudes emerging on immigration in Quebec, and noted the lame arguments on both sides of the debate. Formally, the Quebec government reject[ed] Trudeau’s immigration plan, fears decline of French.

The role of the Century Initiative received increased prominence given that these debates were happening around the time of one of its Globe and Mail sponsored conferences. Immigration Minister Fraser’s denial that the government had not adopted the 100 million population goal of the Century Initiative was met with understandable cynicism by Robert Dutrisac, Blanc bonnet, bonnet blanc, Konrad Yakabuski, L’«initiative du siècle» n’est pas l’idée du siècle among others, along with more reporting and analysis, Serons-nous vraiment 100 millions de Canadiens en 2100?.

English media commentary focussed more on the politics, with Chantal Hébert asking whether Hébert: Quebec’s separatists were searching for a way to revive their cause. Is this it? and Konrad Yakabuski, another rare journalist who writes in both English and French media, noting that François Legault’s anti-immigration crusade is coming back to bite him. Andrew Phillips in the Star dismissed Quebec concerns, framing it as a Panic attack in Quebec over immigration threat. Althia Raj, also in the Star, argued that: Pierre Poilievre is courting voters by capitalizing on immigration fears in Quebec, both discounting the substance of Quebec concerns and not questioning the federal government approach.

And of course most English language was focused on the less important issue of the passport redesign (not a fan, but my worry is that the controversy will make the government even more skittish about releasing the revised citizenship guide, Discover Canada, first promised in 2016).

Surprisingly, Andrew Coyne focussed more on Quebec, politics and demography, rather than contributing his usual economic take on issues. Almost a childish approach in 100 million Canadians by 2100 may not be federal policy, but it should be – even if it makes Quebec howl, largely ignoring the negative impacts on housing, healthcare and infrastructure and, more bizarrely, falling into the trap of overall GDP rather than productivity and per capita GDP (which most of his economic-related columns focus on).

All this being said, the Quebec government took advantage of the controversy to announce changes to its immigration program Six éléments à retenir des annonces de Québec en immigration, including increased levels to 60,000 new permanent residents while allowing ongoing temporary resident growth. This slight-of-hand was of course noted by Michel David, Et la lumière fut and Plus d’immigrants pour éviter une « louisianisation » ici ? 

This modest increase will not, of course, make any significant change to the ongoing divergence in population growth between Quebec and the Rest of Canada and Quebec’s relative weight in the country.

A recent Statistics Canada study, Unemployment and job vacancies by education, 2016 to 2022, highlighting the disconnect between immigration policy, which favours university-educated immigrants, and immigrant employment, which favours lower-skilled immigrants, provides another example of how our immigration policies appear more to be “policy-driven evidence” rather than “evidence-based policy.”

Questions on immigration levels have broadened from housing, healthcare and infrastructure impacts to the impact on the Canadian federation given the imbalance between Quebec and the Rest of Canada. A potential sleeper issue, parallel to Quebec’s relative share of the population is with respect to Indigenous peoples, given that high immigration levels dwarf Indigenous growth (visible minorities increased by 26.5 percent, Indigenous peoples by 9.4 percent, 2021 compared to 2016).

As I have argued previously, we need to find a way to have more productive discussions on immigration rather than the various solitudes between the “more the merrier” and “great replacement” camps (where most Canadians are). The disconnect between Quebec and the Rest-of-Canada is a long-term threat to the federation.

A focus on the practicalities – housing, healthcare and infrastructure impacts – is likely the best way forward and may provide a means to reduce the divergence between the “two solitudes.”

Ideally, of course, some form of commission examining demographics, immigration, and these impacts would provide deeper analysis and recommendations than current IRCC consultations or any other internal review.

To end with a quote from another favourite musician of mine:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

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Scofield: Believe it or not, Canada’s population will hit 40 million in June. It’s time we learned how to retain newcomers [IMO, also question levels and impacts]

2023/05/10 Leave a comment

Disappointing in that Scofield doesn’t question some of the assumptions behind the immigration levels and their support by the business community, education institutions and others. So much easier to turn up the immigration dial, so much harder to address housing, healthcare and infrastructure needs:

Canada’s population is about to break the 40 million mark this June.

Chief Statistician Anil Arora took to the stage last week to illustrate Canada’s surging society, and that number was his starting point for a very good reason.

Canada’s population is growing quite quickly by historical standards and compared to the rest of the world, and almost all of that growth is thanks to immigration. At the same time, it’s important to note that in any given year, there are thousands of Canadians who leave the country — either permanently or temporarily. You can actually see it happening in real time, thanks to a “population clock” built by Statistics Canada, which shows a couple thousand people per day coming into Canada mainly as immigrants or non-permanent residents.

And what’s true for the country is even more so for the GTA, the centre of the country’s vibrant and dynamic diversity.

The implications are far-reaching and profound, as Arora pointed out in the prestigious, annual Manion lecture to public servants — especially for the economy.

To make the obvious point, it’s essential that policymakers and employers alike anticipate the change coming at us, and make the most of it. That’s not lost on any employer desperately trying to fill job postings these days, nor is it lost on our political leaders.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser and his entourage are travelling the country, looking for bold ideas for the long term, practical ideas for the short term, and tight timelines to deliver a new vision to his colleagues in cabinet.

At stake is our standard of living, our ability to compete with other countries, our regional development and, importantly, our ability to get along with one another.

Here are a few more numbers to add to Arora’s headline.

Last year, permanent residents coming into Canada reached a historic high, and the same goes for temporary workers. In other words, Canada has a healthy flow of people moving here for the long term, along with a more haphazard intake of stopgap workers whose future is uncertain.

Employers are scrambling to fill more than 731,000 positions right now, but this is down from the one million job vacancies that dominated the news last fall. The vacancies reflect an underlying labour shortage in Canada as the population ages and retirements pile up. But layered on top of that is an expected shorter-term slowdown in hiring as the country’s employers grapple with rising interest rates and stagflation.

House prices in the GTA were up four per cent in April but down 7.8 per cent from a year ago. Similarly, the volume of sales was up nine per cent on the month, but down 5.2 per cent compared to a year ago. In other words, Toronto homes are really expensive and the market is very much in flux. It’s a confusing array of short-term mismatches and long-term demographic trends that require a nuanced approach, if the country’s economy is to set itself on a growth trajectory.

There’s no doubt that we need a growing labour force over the long term, and that immigration is the source of that growth. There’s also no doubt that business leaders routinely list labour supply as their top challenge, and they’re constantly reassessing the mix of skills that they need. There’s no doubt that the challenge of expensive housing repeatedly throws a wrench in the best-laid plans. And there’s also no doubt that Canada’s reputation as a magnet for the world’s best and brightest is under pressure because other countries are mirroring our approach and taking us on.

Canada has fallen behind on key issues that impact our reputation, including administrative backlogs, inadequate housing, and poor recognition of foreign credentials. In the 2022 Global Talent Competitiveness Index, Canada fell to 15th place — down from 9th place in 2015, with its lowest scores for immigrant retention. 

Helpfully, the federal government separates out the “acute” short-term dynamics from the “chronic” longer-term pressures and is actively talking to business about how to collaborate and make sure the mix of newcomers adds to our ability to build homes, fill job vacancies and set the stage for longer-term productivity.

There’s talk of fast-tracking the flow of newcomers attached to trusted employers and trusted institutions such as universities. There’s creative thinking around how large-scale employers can work together to recruit pools of workers overseas. The discussion with professional organizations to streamline credential recognition is vigorous. And there’s some promising use of technology to speed up approvals in a way that also helps with matching people with jobs and smooths out integration.

And of course, on top of the push for speed and the right mix of workers, Canada’s immigration policy is also about a humanitarian approach to refugees and family reunification, as always.

We’re in the midst of a promising collective brainstorming around how — a brainstorming that will become more complicated in the next months as government drives towards decisions and as the economy slows down.

Luckily, most of the public, the government and business are on the same wavelength in making immigration work well for the economy, and the country as a whole.

Let’s keep that consensus in mind as policymakers and employers figure out how.

Source: Believe it or not, Canada’s population will hit 40 million in June. It’s time we learned how to retain newcomers

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