ICYMI: Concerns mount over new federal immigration policy that would grant permanent residency to low-wage workers 

2024/08/26 Leave a comment

Valid concerns:

Economists and policy experts are expressing growing concern over a potential new federal immigration program that would immediately grant permanent residency to temporary residents who are in low-wage jobs.

The program, if launched, would target people who already have Canadian work experience in what Ottawa classifies as TEER 4 and TEER 5 occupations – delivery service drivers, caregivers, food production workers and retail staff, to name a few.

TEER stands for Training, Education, Experience and Responsibilities, and it is a job categorization system the government uses for immigration purposes. TEER 4 and TEER 5 workers typically have a high school diploma or little or no formal education at all.

….This is perhaps exactly why Ottawa is thinking of introducing a new path to permanent residency for low-wage workers, Prof. Skuterud and Toronto immigration lawyer Ravi Jain both say.

“The easiest way to deal with this problem is to create a new pathway to permanent residence,” Prof. Skuterud said. “But it’s not smart policy. It will more likely suppress wages and undermine public support for immigration.”

Source: Concerns mount over new federal immigration policy that would grant permanent residency to low-wage workers

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John Ivison: How do the Liberals fix skyrocketing immigration? By lowering the entry standards

2024/08/17 Leave a comment

Beyond the header and the analysis, there is a need for a number of lower-skilled immigrants, both temporary and permanent. The question revolves around the level and the percentage of all immigrants and of course, many family class and refugees already provide a source of lower skilled levels, as does the Provincial Nominee Program in some cases.

Hopefully, the annual immigration plan will provide some clarity and not result in any further deskilling of economic immigrants as Skuterud fears.

But all too true about the aversion of the government to deport visa overstayers and undocumented migrants, noting correctly that “every single one has the potential to be a front-page Toronto Star sob story.”

…But the growth in college-level foreign student enrolments and the expansion of the low wage stream of temporary workers mean there are many migrants who would not meet the requirements of the skills-based points system.

Ottawa has now revealed its solution — that from this fall, it will create a new economic class of permanent residency candidates for people with high school education or less, who would not otherwise have qualified to stay.

Mikal Skuterud, a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, said this is a first for Canada. He said he believes the measure is, at least in part, a “release valve” to address the bulging population of visa overstayers.

“Many of these non-permanent residents will never obtain skilled jobs and the current economic class selection system makes it difficult to prioritize applicants working in less-skilled jobs over high-skilled applicants. That’s the trade-off being made to avoid a growing undocumented population,” he said.

It is not clear yet how many of the 300,000 slots allocated for economic immigrants in 2025 will be filled from the new stream, but every one that is will be at the expense of a higher qualified person applying from abroad and going through the Comprehensive Ranking skills-based points system that has been the backbone of Canada’s successful immigration policy.

OECD data from 2021 showed that Canada was by far the most successful of its peers in picking immigrants with high levels of education — more than 70 per cent — compared to just 20 per cent with medium (high school level) education. That could soon change.

As Skuterud notes, there are going to be many frustrated foreign computer science graduates from Canada’s top universities who find their chances of coming to Canada permanently are now much reduced. “That’s not good if we’re genuinely concerned about labour productivity in this country,” he said.

The Immigration Department said no information is available on numbers or a timeline because “this initiative is at the proposal stage, with no certainty of being implemented.” But it is hard to see what else the government can do.

Ottawa obviously has no stomach to dramatically increase outflows of undocumented immigrants — deportations reached 16,205 in 2023 and every single one has the potential to be a front-page Toronto Star sob story.

The Liberals have already cut student visas by 35 per cent and limited the percentage of any given workforce that can be made up of low-wage foreign workers to 20 per cent from 30.

But these measures will take time to work — most students are here on multi-year visas and are eligible for a three-year work permit after graduation.

Against that background, turning temporary workers and students into permanent residents looks like a work of political genius.

But at a stroke, it undermines the integrity of a skills-based immigration system; reduces Canada’s ability to attract the best and brightest; and, rewards those who have overstayed their visa by providing them with an option to permanent residency.

“The deskilling of Canadian economic immigration continues,” said Skuterud.

No wonder the public is losing confidence.

Source: John Ivison: How do the Liberals fix skyrocketing immigration? By lowering the entry standards

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Oreopoulous and Skuterud: Once the envy of the world, Canada’s immigration system now lies dismantled

2024/07/10 Leave a comment

Another good sophisticated critique of current immigration policy:

…Labour market earnings are our best indicator of the value of workers’ skills to the economy. Studies of earnings reveal that not all skills are valued equally and not all schools are equally good at attracting and producing skills. Yet in screening applicants, our current immigrant selection system ignores the schools, fields of study and academic grades of applicants.

We’re completely ignoring the lessons of history. 2001 saw the introduction of a new Immigration Act that doubled down on the human capital model of economic immigration. Canada’s annual immigration rate was kept at a steady and predictable 0.8 per cent of the population, mandatory premigration language testing and credential assessment were introduced, and a new selection system regularly selected applicants with the highest predicted future earnings.

The result? After decades of deteriorating immigrant earnings, research from Statistics Canada and a separate study by the Parliamentary Budget Officer shows unambiguous improvement in the average earnings of new immigrants up to 2019.

Why are we now undoing everything we learned?

Philip Oreopoulous is Distinguished Professor in Economics of Education Policy at the University of Toronto and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mikal Skuterud is a professor in economics at University of Waterloo, director of Canadian Labour Economics Forum and the Rogers Phillips Scholar of Social Policy at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Source: Once the envy of the world, Canada’s immigration system now lies dismantled

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Big majority of Canadian Gen Z, millennials support values-testing immigrants: poll

2024/06/26 Leave a comment

No easy approaches to value testing, ranging from defining the values, managing, implementing, monitoring and enforcing them. The valid general interest in common values generally breaks down when specifics are discussed beyond the general respect for the rule of law, the constitutional order and respect for others. And terminology becomes an issue: “barbaric cultural practices” versus stating which practices like FGM are against the law; one inflames, the other informs.:

Gen Z and millennials are split on whether Canada’s aggressive immigration targets are good for the country, and 70 per cent say the government should be ensuring new arrivals “share common Canadian values,” such as respect for minority groups, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.

Since 2021, Canada has been aiming for an intake of 500,000 new Canadians each year and the government plans to keep this steady until 2026. But only 11 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 39 say this is overall a good thing, while 34 per cent say it is generally good for the country but has also created some problems.

Twenty per cent say it has created more problems than benefits, while 19 per cent say it is overall a bad thing. Atlantic Canadians are more likely to be skeptical of the higher immigration levels, while people in B.C., and the Prairies are more likely to favour it.

“The attitudes are shifting a little bit with respect to immigration. I think it’s actually becoming a little easier for people to start to raise the concern about immigration, because it’s not necessarily about the people coming into the country, but it’s the country’s ability to support the people coming in,” said Leger vice-president Andrew Enns.

Women are more likely to say the current immigration levels are generally good for Canada, at 38 per cent, compared to 31 per cent for men. Men are more likely to say it has created more problems than benefits, at 24 per cent, compared to 17 per cent for women.

Canadians are seeing the effects of the government’s intentional increase of permanent residents, but also a largely unanticipated cohort of millions of temporary immigrants who arrived through student visas and the temporary worker program, said Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist at the University of Waterloo.

“I think most Canadians understand that the absorptive capacity may be pushed a bit. We might be pushing up against it too much in the past couple of years. And there’s concerns around that,” said Skuterud….

Source: Big majority of Canadian Gen Z, millennials support values-testing immigrants: poll

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Douglas Todd: Canada should warn guest worker, student applicants they’re taking a big gamble

2024/06/26 Leave a comment

Good comments by Kurland, Skuterud and Lee:

….Their plight is the direct fault of Ottawa, say migration specialists.

“Over the past four years the number of people with temporary status in Canada has skyrocketed” because of an executive decision from the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, says Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer.

“So there is now a chicken in the python problem,” he said.

“People with study permits, and then post-graduate work permits, who can’t qualify for permanent resident status face taking an airplane ride home in shame and poverty. Or they’ll find a way to stay.”

Kurland expects to see “increasing trends of marriages of convenience, refugee claims and applications for humanitarian and compassionate relief.”

A sign of what’s to come might have already arisen at Seneca College in Toronto, where asylum claims from international students increased from 300 in 2022 to almost 700 in 2023. At Kitchener’s Conestoga College, claims jumped from 106 to 450 during that same period.

University of Waterloo economics professor Mikal Skuterud, a specialist in labour, said “lots of non-permanent residents in Canada are seeing their permits expire and the government is worried that large numbers have no intention of leaving the country.”

The Liberal government created the predicament a few years ago, said Skuterud, when it signalled to the world, particularly those with low skills, the easiest way to become a citizen of Canada is to show up as a temporary resident.

“For migrants, Canada’s immigrant selection system now looks like a lottery, in which a work or study permit is the ticket. That’s a big problem. And it wasn’t like this before 2021.”

The Liberal government made the mistake of dismantling the country’s skills-based immigration system because of a “post-pandemic obsession with labour shortages, which is economic nonsense fuelled by corporate Canada,” Skuterud said.

George Lee, an immigration lawyer in Burnaby, said the “federal government created this problem: They’ve brought in too many people. The government wanted to address labour shortages. But now they say,  ‘It’s too much!’ In effect the government is blaming itself.”

Last week, StatCan reported 2.8 million temporary residents in Canada, comprising a record 6.8 per cent of the population. That’s up from 3.5 per cent two years ago.

More than one million are foreign students, most with work permits. Others are classified as “temporary foreign workers” or “international mobility” workers. Another 360,000 are asylum claimants.

In light of Immigration Minister Marc Miller promising this spring to reduce the number of study visas, partly in response to the pressure on housing prices and social services, Kurland said Canada should warn would-be migrants they’re taking a big gamble.

“They now face a loss of their significant investment in time and money. The problem is that the majority of people are unaware that every (newcomer) takes the risk that Canada’s immigration regulations may be changed at any time,” said Kurland, who publishes the newsletter, Lexbase, which previously reported on how Canada’s border services are better tracking when people actually exit the country.

Canada’s problem with an influx of temporary residents is different from what’s facing the U.S. and Europe. Those regions have experienced waves of millions of undocumented migrants. But, for the most part, Canada has explicitly welcomed the record flow of newcomers, most of whom are unskilled.

Skuterud questions the immigration minister’s May announcement that he would like to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada simply by turning them into permanent residents, particularly through the provinces’ so-called nominee programs.

“The irony of all this is that the government is providing more ad hoc openings to permanent residency to relieve the bulging non-permanent population.” It’s thereby “inadvertently” encouraging more people to start in Canada on a temporary basis with the dream of staying forever, he said.

The surge of temporary residents has not only exacerbated Canada’s housing crisis, Skuterud said rapid population growth, almost entirely from international migration, correlates with Canadian wages staying stagnant.

Lee, who came to Canada on a study visa from China in 1992, supports Canada’s efforts to bring high numbers of international students to the country, saying they’re primed to become engaged citizens since they have learned the culture, to speak English or French, and have developed Canadian-based job skills.

The problem, Lee said, is that when Ottawa tried to address a perceived labour shortage, it went too far and embraced too many newcomers at once. “We need a more balanced approach.”

Kurland suggests Ottawa adopt a “consumer protection” model to more honestly process people who want to move to Canada.

Canada’s immigration department, he said, should ask people who apply online for temporary residency: “If you are planning to possibly immigrate to Canada, do you acknowledge that your plan may fail if Canada immigration law and regulations were to change?”

Skuterud offers a different way forward. He says Ottawa has recently been over-promoting a “two-step immigration” scheme that pushes aspiring immigrants to first enter the country on a temporary basis.

He would like the government to return to emphasizing the more traditional economic-class pathway to permanent resident status, which relied on a transparent, above-board ranking system to select candidates.

Source: Douglas Todd: Canada should warn guest worker, student applicants they’re taking a big gamble

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Ottawa focuses on French-speaking economic immigrants – and often bypasses stronger candidates

2024/04/16 Leave a comment

The federal government is prioritizing French-speaking economic immigrants, a shift that has often seen higher-ranking applicants bypassed in the selection process, according to a Globe and Mail analysis of figures published by the Immigration Department.

Since it overhauled the Express Entry system for skilled immigration last year, Ottawa has invited 19,700 people to apply for permanent residency based on their French skills, easily more than in other new categories for selection. The government has also extended 36,150 invites to the broad pool of candidates, whose selection is based solely on points rather than specific attributes.

To pick these French speakers, the government is effectively reaching deeper into the pool of immigration candidates, which means the cutoff score for entry is frequently much lower in this category than in others. These individuals have lower expected earnings in Canada than people with higher scores.

“What’s the objective here? If it’s about economic growth, then this is not a smart policy,” said Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo. “But clearly, that’s not what this is about. They’re using economic-class programs to achieve different objectives.”

…“It is definitely going to affect our ability to select the top talent,” said Parisa Mahboubi, a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute….

….Anne Michèle Meggs, a former director of planning and accountability at Quebec’s Immigration Ministry, said it was unlikely Ottawa was selecting French speakers to curry favour with certain communities ahead of the next federal election. “There are not a lot of votes to find among francophones outside Quebec,” she said….

Source: Ottawa focuses on French-speaking economic immigrants – and often bypasses stronger candidates

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Des experts se sentent ignorés par le ministère de l’Immigration

2024/03/30 Leave a comment

More on this sorry episode although unclear how widespread these perceptions shared among IRCC staff (but not unique…):

Une personne employée au sein d’IRCC, n’était pas surprise de ce développement. Elle voit le travail de fonctionnaires ignoré depuis des années quand leurs conclusions ne vont pas dans le sens des plans du gouvernement.

Nous donnerons à cette personne le nom fictif de Marie. Francopresse a accepté de protéger son identité, parce qu’elle craint des répercussions au travail.

Un travail qui dérange

Selon elle, la plupart des fonctionnaires n’oseraient jamais aller contre le courant : «Dès que tu dis un peu la vérité, fearless advice, dis ce que tu penses, c’est fini.»

Elle voit donc peu de gens qui osent présenter des points de vue divergents dans la fonction publique. «Il n’y a rien de pire dans une démocratie.»

Elle doute d’ailleurs que même les avertissements émanant de fonctionnaires se rendent toujours au bureau du ministre de l’Immigration.

«Je pense que plusieurs sous-ministres et sous-ministres adjoints croient que leur mission est de protéger [le ministre]. Ils empêchent que des choses soient écrites ou s’assurent que ça ne monte pas pour pouvoir dire “le ministre n’était pas au courant, donc il a continué sa mauvaise idée, mais il ne le savait pas”.»

La vérité étouffée

Selon Andrew Griffith, directeur général à IRCC de 2009 à 2011, un certain degré de tension est normal, même bénéfique.

«La bureaucratie est censée offrir des conseils sans peur en fonction de son analyse et de son expertise et le niveau politique doit apporter sa perspective», explique-t-il.

Mais la transmission des conseils à travers l’échelle bureaucratique est floue, prévient-il. La parole est habituellement plus franche chez les directeurs, mais «plus haut, les sous-ministres adjoints et les sous-ministres sont moins directs en fonction de leurs efforts à répondre aux besoins politiques».

«C’est probablement là que réside la majeure partie de la frustration liée à l’ignorance de l’expertise», précise M. Griffith.

C’est au sein même de la fonction publique que l’information semble bloquer, corrobore Marie. «Les politiciens préfèreraient éviter de faire des erreurs, mais ils se sont entourés de hauts fonctionnaires opportunistes, ambitieux, peu compétents qui étouffent la vérité.»

«Les hauts fonctionnaires qui pensent seulement à leur carrière sont le pire problème, la pire plaie. Les ministres peuvent influencer leur carrière, alors ils s’autocensurent, censurent les autres et s’entourent de gens peu compétents ou qui leur ressemblent», poursuit-elle.

Manque d’expertise chez les cadres supérieurs

Dans le rapport d’un examen effectué par l’ancien sous-ministre d’IRCC, Neil Yeates, ce dernier parle de tensions à IRCC qui seraient «exacerbées par la forte baisse d’expertise en matière d’immigration parmi les [sous-ministres adjoints] et les [directeurs généraux]».

Selon lui, cette baisse d’expertise est relativement nouvelle et crée un «manque de crédibilité vis-à-vis des employés de première ligne et des gestionnaires» qui connaissent bien la Loi sur l’immigration et la protection des réfugiés.

«Qui voudrait d’une douche froide?»

L’immigration a toujours été très politisée, fait remarquer Andrew Griffith. «Là où les choses se sont gâtées, c’est dans l’encouragement de l’immigration à grande échelle qu’a défendu l’Initiative du siècle, diverses organisations commerciales [et d’autres] sans qu’aucun d’entre eux, jusqu’à trop tard, ne commence à dire : “Attendez une minute, il va y avoir des implications à cela. Avons-nous les capacités d’absorption pour tous ces immigrants?”»

Il ne croit pas que l’argument selon lequel il faut hausser les seuils d’immigration afin de remédier au vieillissement de la population ait été assez remis en question. Surtout lorsque l’on considère le nombre de démographes qui ne partageaient pas cette analyse.

Plusieurs économistes ont aussi critiqué cette approche, dont Mikal Skuterud, professeur d’économie à l’Université de Waterloo, en Ontario. Il a l’impression que parmi tous les experts en immigration, ce sont surtout les économistes qui sont ignorés.

«Qui voudrait d’une douche froide? Pourquoi voudraient-ils nous parler si on ne leur donne pas les réponses qu’ils veulent?», demande-t-il.

Le gouvernement avance que l’augmentation de l’immigration permet la croissance économique, «mais pour l’économiste, ce n’est pas vraiment honnête».

«Pour l’économiste, la croissance économique vient de l’augmentation du PIB par habitant, explique-t-il. Et rien ne prouve que l’augmentation de l’immigration fasse croitre le PIB par habitant.»

En fait, dans les dernières années, celui-ci a chuté. «Les économistes avaient donc raison, mais ils ont été complètement ignorés sur cette question», déplore Mikal Skuterud.

«Je ne pense pas que l’identité de la personne qui transmet le message soit importante, tant que le message est conforme aux objectifs du gouvernement», ajoute-t-il.

Étant lui-même immigrant, le professeur aimerait pouvoir dire qu’une hausse de l’immigration améliorera le sort économique de tous. «C’est une très belle histoire à vendre, mais c’est juste faux, martèle-t-il. Ce n’est pas si simple.»

Les affaires, ce n’est pas l’économie

Christopher Ragan, professeur en économie à l’Université McGill, à Montréal, était membre du Conseil consultatif en matière de croissance économique mis sur pied par le gouvernement libéral en 2016 et présidé par Dominic Barton, ex-directeur de la firme McKinsey et cofondateur de l’Initiative du siècle.

«Je ne voyais aucune raison à l’époque, et je n’en vois aucune aujourd’hui, de penser que l’augmentation de l’immigration puisse être le pivot d’une stratégie de croissance. Du moins, pas le type de croissance qui devrait nous intéresser. J’ai mené ce combat au sein du Conseil et j’ai perdu», a déclaré l’économiste sur X en janvier 2024.

Sa position n’a pas été retenue dans les rapports du Conseil, probablement parce qu’«un consensus entre 12 personnes n’arrivera jamais», déclare-t-il en entrevue avec Francopresse.

«Le gouvernement perçoit mal l’immigration et son rôle dans la croissance générale et je crois que le Conseil y est pour quelque chose», assure-t-il.

Christopher Ragan était l’un des seuls économistes au sein de ce conseil : «La plupart étaient des gens d’affaires, ce qui est problématique pour un conseil sur la croissance. […] Leur point de vue est important, mais ils n’ont généralement pas beaucoup de compétences en termes de politiques.»

«Je pense que le gouvernement a aussi écouté le lobby des affaires qui a demandé plus d’immigration, en particulier d’immigration temporaire, pour remplir des pénuries de main-d’œuvre, parce qu’ils préfèrent embaucher des immigrants que d’augmenter les salaires», se désole-t-il.

Source: Des experts se sentent ignorés par le ministère de l’Immigration

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Douglas Todd: Population growth squeezing Canada’s young adults like never before

2024/03/02 Leave a comment

More on the generation squeeze and immigration with good quotes from Wright and Skuterud:

… But that hasn’t stopped politicians and business people from constantly raising the spectre of aging baby boomers, with Ottawa making it the primary rationale for “supercharged levels of immigration,” Wright said.

“Sometimes I talk about the ‘baby boom derangement syndrome.’ So much of public policy has been driven by this apprehended catastrophe of the baby boom retiring and then putting great demands on the public purse,” he said. The trouble is it’s creating a population bubble of people under 40.

“We should not be at all surprised that all of a sudden housing markets are under great stress now. It’s absurd that politicians pretend to be surprised by it,” Wright said, pointing to a February report revealing then-Immigration Minister Sean Fraser had been warned that Canada was accepting newcomers at a far higher rate than houses could be built. Early last year Wright predicted this would affect public opinion about immigration, and that has been borne out.

“What Ottawa is doing is making it damn difficult for young people to get a proper start in life,” Wright said. “That’s primarily in the housing market, but in the labour market as well, because you’re competing with a lot of people your age.”

Ontario’s University of Waterloo labour economist, Mikal Skuterud, has been among those tracking how the federal Liberals have drastically hiked the number of guest workers and study-visa-holders, most of whom work while in Canada and intend to apply for permanent resident status.

Last year more than one million foreign students were in Canada, three times the number when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was first elected. (B.C. had 176,000 in post-secondary schools). While wages in some sectors are up, gross domestic product per capita has been flat for six years. Skuterud suggested low-skill workers, whose wages are actually declining, could be the most impacted by the surge of new residents.

In regard to life choices, Wright also wonders how much the country’s housing crunch — including the prospect of “living in a 700-square-foot hamster cage” — might be a significant factor behind why some young Canadians aren’t having larger families.

Cardus, a think-tank, commissioned the Angus Reid Institute to conduct a poll last year of 2,700 women in Canada ages 18 to 44. It found nearly half have fewer children than they desire. Canadian women intend to have, on average, 1.85 children per woman, but desire 2.2 children.

Given such personal strains, especially for millennials and Gen Z, the National Bank’s economists have declared Canada is caught in a “population trap” in which the population is growing faster than can be absorbed by the economy, society and infrastructure.

With so many facing stagnant wages and housing distress, National Bank economists Stéfane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme said: “At this point we believe that our country’s annual total population growth should not exceed 300,000 to 500,000.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Population growth squeezing Canada’s young adults like never before

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Government was warned two years ago high immigration could affect housing costs

2024/01/12 Leave a comment

Public service providing “fearless advice” while government, as is its right, rejected it in favour of ongoing increases in permanent and temporary immigration. Advice to former immigration minister Fraser who now, ironically, and perhaps deservedly so, is now the housing minister who has to clean up this mess (not doable in substantive terms before the election).

Eerily similar to some of my earlier opinion pieces, Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast.:

Federal public servants warned the government two years ago that large increases to immigration could affect housing affordability and services, internal documents show.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request show Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada analyzed the potential effects immigration would have on the economy, housing and services, as it prepared its immigration targets for 2023 to 2025.

The deputy minister, among others, was warned in 2022 that housing construction had not kept up with the pace of population growth.

“In Canada, population growth has exceeded the growth in available housing units,” one slide deck reads.

“As the federal authority charged with managing immigration, IRCC policy-makers must understand the misalignment between population growth and housing supply, and how permanent and temporary immigration shapes population growth.”

Immigration accounts for nearly all population growth in Canada, given the country’s aging demographics.

The federal government ultimately decided to increase the number of permanent residents Canada welcomes each year to 500,000 in 2025, a decision that drew considerable attention and scrutiny. It means in 2025, Canada will welcome nearly twice as many permanent residents as it did in 2015.

The document reveals federal public servants were well aware of the pressures high population growth would have on housing and services.

“Rapid increases put pressure on health care and affordable housing,” public servants warned. “Settlement and resettlement service providers are expressing short-term strain due to labour market conditions, increased levels and the Afghanistan and Ukraine initiatives.”

Housing affordability has now become a political liability for the Liberal government. The Conservatives have gained considerable momentum over the last year as the party pounces on affordability issues, while avoiding the issue of immigration in particular. These pressures have forced the Liberal government to refocus its efforts on housing policy and begin to address the spike in international students with new rules.

Recent data shows Canada’s pace of population growth continues to set records as the country brings in a historic number of temporary residents as well, largely through international student and temporary foreign worker programs.

The country’s population grew by more than 430,000 during the third quarter of 2023, marking the fastest pace of population growth in any quarter since 1957.

Experts spanning from Bay Street to academic institutions have warned that Canada’s strong population growth is eroding housing affordability, as demand outpaces supply.

The Bank of Canada has offered similar analysis. Deputy governor Toni Gravelle delivered a speech in December warning that strong population growth is pushing rents and home prices upward.

Public opinion polls also show Canadians are increasingly concerned about the pressure immigration is putting on services, infrastructure and housing, leading to waning support for high immigration.

The Liberal government has defended its immigration policy decisions, arguing that immigrants help bring about economic prosperity and help with the country’s demographics as the population ages.

However, amid the heightened scrutiny of the Liberal government’s immigration policy, Immigration Minister Marc Miller levelled out the annual target at 500,000 permanent residents for 2026.

The documents from 2022 note that Canada’s immigration targets have exceeded the recommendations of some experts, including the Century Initiative, an organization that advocates for growing the country’s population to 100 million by the end of the century.

However, attention is now shifting from these targets to the steep rise in non-permanent residents. Between July and October, about three-quarters of Canada’s population growth came from temporary residents, including international students and temporary foreign workers.

That trend is raising alarms about the increase in businesses’ reliance on low-wage migrant workers and the luring of international student byshady post-secondary institutions.

Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo who specializes in immigration policy, says the federal government appears to have “lost control” of temporary migration flows.

Unlike the annual targets for permanent residents, the number of temporary residents is dictated by demand for migrant workers and international students.

He also notes there is a link between the targets for permanent residents and the flow of temporary residents.

“To the extent that you increase permanent numbers, and migrants realize the way you get a PR is to come here as a temporary resident … then migrants are incentivized to kind of come and try their luck,” he said.

Skuterud, who has been a vocal critic of the federal government’s immigration policy, says the benefits of high immigration have been exaggerated by the Liberals.

He said that starting around 2015, when the Liberal government was first elected, a narrative developed in Canada that “immigration was kind of a solution to Canada’s economic growth problems.”

And while the professor says that narrative is one that people like to believe, he notes higher immigration does little when it comes to increasing living standards, as measured by real GDP per capita.

Public servants at IRCC are in agreement, the released documents suggest.

“Increasing the working age population can have a positive impact on gross domestic product, but little effect on GDP per capita,” public servants noted.

Source: Government was warned two years ago high immigration could affect housing costs – Moose Jaw Today

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Mahboubi and Skuterud: Canada must stem the surge in temporary foreign workers and international students

2023/12/15 Leave a comment

More needed analysis and commentary:

Recent years have seen an unprecedented increase in Canada’s non-permanent resident population, far surpassing increases in annual admissions of new permanent residents. The unbalanced growth in Canada’s temporary and permanent migration inflows will inevitably result in a growing undocumented population and forced deportations. Both developments risk inflaming Canada’s immigration politics and undermining public confidence in the immigration system.

It is imperative that the government take immediate steps to stem the continuing growth in foreign student and temporary foreign worker entries.

Several factors have contributed to the non-permanent resident (NPR) population surge, including ad-hoc programs aimed at expanding eligibility for permanent resident (PR) status, increasing postsecondary reliance on international student tuition revenue and eased employer access to temporary foreign workers, most notably those in low-wage occupations.

Statistics Canada estimates that by the third quarter of 2023 Canada’s NPR population had reached 2.2 million, while entries of new permanent residents remained below 500,000 and which the government has announced will stabilize in 2025. The tightening bottleneck in temporary-to-permanent residency flows is, in fact, worse, because most PR slots continue to be filled by applicants residing abroad, not from Canada’s NPR population.

A key factor driving the growth in NPR inflows is the government’s repeated announcements of ad-hoc programs aimed at easing the pathway to PR status for lower-skilled migrants who would otherwise struggle to clear the hurdle of the Express Entry skills-based points system. Allocation of PR slots has increasingly become a lottery incentivizing large numbers of migrants to try their luck at obtaining Canadian PR status.

But given the limited number of PR admissions, large numbers of justifiably hopeful NPRs will be unable to realize their dreams. As their study and work permits expire, many will be unable or unwilling to return to their home countries. These migrants will become increasingly vulnerable to workplace exploitation, distorting wage outcomes in lower-skilled labour markets, and poverty, which government supports are unable to address because of their ineligibility.

Canada urgently requires a multipronged strategy to stem the continuing growth of the NPR population and restore the stability and integrity of the immigration system. In our view, policies should be aimed at augmenting migrants’ own incentives to seek NPR status in Canada.

On the international student front, we recommend reintroducing the cap on foreign students’ off-campus work hours at 20 a week; it was waived in October, 2022, and recently extended to April 30, 2024. The punting of this issue down the road is unhelpful in restoring predictability for prospective foreign students. Study permits have become de facto work permits incentivizing migrants whose primary objective is accessing Canadian jobs, not human capital investments.

We also recommend restricting study permits to institutions of a certain standard. Too many private colleges are essentially used as stepping stones to residency. Designated learning institutionswhose students are currently ineligible for postgraduation work permits should also be ineligible for study permits. The government should also seek to undesignate institutions based on the measured immigration and labour market outcomes of their graduates. Moreover, these metrics should be regularly published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to help prospective migrants make informed decisions and to combat false dreams pushed by education recruiters.

On the temporary foreign worker front, the government must reconsider extended measures allowing, for example, 30 per cent of the work forces of employers in specific industries to be composed of low-wage temporary foreign workers. Stemming the growth in the low-wage stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and restoring the pre-2020 hiring regulations would recognize recent evidence of the adverse effects of this program on wages and local unemployment rates.

Most important, the government needs to bring back predictability in its system for allocating PR admissions in the economic-class applicant pool. Though well-intentioned, ad-hoc programs aimed at easing the pathway to PR status are contributing to growth in TR inflow. IRCC needs to return to relying on the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) for allocating PR admissions, as it did before 2020. Given the transparency of the CRS “points system” and a stable CRS cutoff over time, unsuccessful applicants can see what human capital investments they need to be successful, thereby advancing the objectives of our skilled immigration program.

If these policy levers are collectively applied, they can stem growth in Canada’s NPR population, restore fairness and transparency in the PR system and secure the immigration system’s integrity and sustainability. In doing so, we can ensure that Canada continues to be a welcoming and prosperous country for all.

Parisa Mahboubi is a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute. Mikal Skuterud is a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum and a fellow-in-residence of the C.D. Howe Institute.

Source: Canada must stem the surge in temporary foreign workers and international students

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