Kirk Lubimov on X - "What jobs had the highest growth in Canada in 2023? Ride sharing/taxi services has saw an increase of 48.1% in drivers from 2022. The number of delivery drivers has increased by 19.2% from 2022. For a total of over 407,000. 57.5% of people who provided either service were landed immigrants. Liberals' mass immigration policy is literally immigrating Uber & DoorDash drivers or people straight into unemployment - which increased by 202,000 from the last 12 months. An arbitrary reckless policy ignorant to economy and utilization."
How record-high immigration could be hurting Canadian productivity - "former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge suggested that it is also eroding the country’s competitiveness and long-term productivity. “In the last years, we have altered an economic immigration system that stood as a model for the world,” declares a Dec. 11 report co-written by Dodge for the law firm Bennett Jones. But where Canada once oversaw a carefully managed immigration system that prioritized “highly skilled workers,” the report said Ottawa has now “ramped up significantly” the intake of foreign students and other low-skilled temporary workers. “Poor administration and the abuse of some programs are damaging the credibility of the system for immigrants and Canadians,” warned the report, which also cautioned that the “large and rising inflow of workers with lower skills” risks depressing wages. Most notably, Dodge and his co-author argue that by constantly flooding the Canadian market with cheap and often temporary labour, Ottawa is propping up “un-competitive” businesses — and ultimately doing long-term damage to Canadian productivity. “The last thing we want is a bunch of low-productivity businesses hanging on because we provide them cheap labour. That’s not the way we’re going to raise national income,” Dodge told the Globe and Mail in a Monday interview... Canada has disproportionately poured its investment dollars into real estate rather than areas better able to generate wealth, such as startups or research. “Over the last 20 years, Canadian (research and development) investment has been in perpetual decline, while all other G7 countries have seen increases,” it read. The Canadian economy is also disproportionately composed of giant oligopolies shielded from outside competition — such as telecoms, airlines and grocery chains. In October, the Competition Bureau released a report finding that Canada’s “competitive intensity” has been dropping for the last 20 years, with the result that “many industries have become less dynamic.” “Competition is the strongest incentive for innovation and productivity growth. We need more of it,“ read the Bennett Jones report. “Even in domains where Canada may claim or aspire to have an advantage, including energy and AI, it is struggling to punch at its weight.” While Canada has always been a high-immigration country relative to the rest of the world, in just the last two years the Trudeau government has dialled up the country’s immigration intake to an unprecedented degree. In 2022, for instance, Canada’s record-breaking intake of one million newcomers was roughly on par with the United States, despite the U.S. being 10 times larger. As outlined in the Trudeau government’s recent Fall Economic Statement, this has been done in an overt bid to boost overall GDP growth — even though per-capita GDP has been in decline since at least mid-2022. Meanwhile, the massive influx of newcomers is having noticeable effects on Canada’s existing housing shortage as well as overall employment numbers."
Weird. I thought wage suppression was a myth
Of course, we're told that if you think immigration is too high, it means you want 0 immigration (tellingly, even the PPC doesn't call for that)
Canada an 'outlier' as U.K. and Australia reduce migration - ""You look around the world and there is a move toward retrenchment, nationalism, othering the other, looking at borders," said Naomi Alboim, a Queen's University fellow in policy studies, who served senior federal and provincial government roles in immigration and labour. "We are the outlier."... Unlike Canada, where immigration levels refer only to permanent residents admitted to the country yearly, both the U.K. and Australia use net migration — arrivals minus departures of foreign nationals — as a barometer, where migrants are defined loosely because most people arrive on temporary status in order to transition to permanent status, after staying legally for an extended period."
Canada’s Immigration Plan Is Not Viable In Any Version of Reality: BMO - "It’s starting to become clear the plan isn’t to diversify the country, but stimulate home prices and validate a real estate bubble. Canada’s astronomical population growth continues, driven almost entirely by immigration. The population rose 430.6k people in the three months ending Oct 1st. It’s the third-largest quarterly increase on record, and brought annual growth to 3.2% (+1.25 million). In raw numbers, a 12-month period has never seen more people added. The annual growth rate is the strongest since 1958, when the population was considerably smaller... “Now, in the context of Canada’s affordability crisis, take a look at the accompanying chart and ask if supply is really to blame here,” says BMO economist Robert Kavcic. Adding, “Despite many commendable efforts, in no version of reality can housing supply respond to an almost overnight tripling in the run-rate of new bodies. This is (still) the case of a demand curve running loose.” Up until a few months ago, BMO argued exuberance was the issue—supply has kept up with demand. Policymakers took that as a challenge, and began relying even further on immigration to overrun demand... The industry is currently pushed to the max trying to churn out 220k homes per year. That’s a significantly higher number than previous years, but still roughly a quarter of the amount that would be needed to accommodate the supply-side plan. It’s easy to say, “we just need to build more houses.” However, demand for materials is already so high it’s inflationary. Trying to scale building, even if the skilled labor were available, would still require competing with global commodity markets for the materials needed, driving the cost of construction higher."
Canadians Flee The Country In The Fourth Highest Volume In 73 Years - "Canadians fled the country for a new home in such a large number, a 3 month outflow has only been larger 3 times in the past century. Yikes... this is a recent trend. Starting with the record high exodus in Q3 2016, higher emigration is normalized. Quarterly outflows are roughly 50% higher from that point forward. It’s a recent trend, but important to note this isn’t exclusive to post-pandemic Canada... Canada’s outflows have largely been ignored since record population growth obfuscates it. Most policymakers would point to the net increase as reason to ignore the issue. However, this dismisses an important point that is beginning to surface—if the people most familiar with a country don’t see opportunity, how long can it attract immigrants? In short, Canada is being run like a dodgy, fly-by-night credit card company. Its operators don’t really care about losing clients, as long as the inflow of new ones outpaces the old ones. At a certain point though, a reputation develops and turns into a warning for new clients. Canada may have reached that point, with study permit applications declining sharply, indicating future population growth won’t be so robust. When a dodgy financial company hits this point, it’s time to shut down and start again. Unfortunately, that’s not really an option for a country. The OECD’s dreary outlook for the country’s per capita output trailing virtually all other advanced economies, is starting to look like the optimistic scenario."
Canada Tries To Save Face With Study Permit “Limit” AFTER Demand Collapse - "Government of Canada (GoC) data shows a sharp decline in the number of study permit applications in September. When policymakers first pitched the idea of limiting students to help affordability, it appears they were attempting to save face. The public hadn’t seen the data yet, but they were already aware of a sharp decline in people desiring to study in Canada. Canada has seen a sharp drop in the number of international study permit applications. Just 60.3k study permits were processed in September, a 20% (-15.5k) drop from last year. It was the sharpest annual contraction since 2020, when processing was literally closed in many countries... Study permit applications from India had an unusual sharp turning point. Many may assume this decline is due to the rising diplomatic tensions. However, the G20 meeting that gave birth to those tensions didn’t occur until mid-September. The latest month only gives us a partial view of the fallout from the latest blow. India’s study permits began contracting back in August. More likely the discussion on Canada’s exploitation of international students became a bigger issue ahead of this riff. More and more international students have been posting on social media about the hardships they faced in Canada, specifically calling out the high cost of living and lack of opportunity promised."
FIRST READING: Rents would be tapering off if not for high immigration, hints BoC governor - "Canadian rents would probably be going down right now if it wasn’t for sky-high immigration rates, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem hinted in a recent speech to the Canadian Club... “Why is shelter price inflation rising even as the economy slows?” he said. Rising mortgage costs are obviously a factor — something for which Bank of Canada interest rate hikes are directly responsible. But Macklem noted that rent and even maintenance costs are surging to historic highs with no immediate end in sight. “Rent was up 8.2 per cent in October,” said Macklem. It’s the highest spike in rents in more than 40 years... shelter costs were highlighted as the one glaring piece of bad news when it came to inflation. Macklem noted that Canada’s overall inflation rate has already calmed down significantly from its immediate post-pandemic highs... Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada already had the most acute housing shortage in the G7. According to a CMHC report from that time, it would take an extra 3.5 million homes just to get the Canadian real estate market back to a semblance of affordability. But that housing gap has only gotten wider amid an unprecedented increase in Canadian immigration numbers... Statistics Canada confirmed that the Canadian population has swelled by 430,635 in just three months. Population growth hasn’t been this high since a brief period in 1956 when Canada took in several thousand refugees fleeing the Hungarian Revolution. Even then, the population rise was due in part to elevated post-war birthrates. The 430,635, by contrast, is driven almost entirely by immigration. This level of newcomers is utterly swamping Canada’s ability to create new homes. In all of 2022, Canada saw just 219,942 housing completions — and amid a slowdown in the construction industry that number is set to be even lower for 2023."
Damn racist!
Left wing logic: landlords are getting even greedier
At Canada’s Northern College, Most of the Students are From India - The New York Times - "On a college campus in northern Canada, eight hours by car from Toronto, most of the students who fill the classrooms are from a country half a world away: India... “We feel like we are in India,” said Mehardeep Singh, 20, a general arts and science major, who led a prayer. “In every class, there are only three or four local people. The rest are from India.” Northern College traditionally drew its students from the province of Ontario’s vast, sparsely populated hinterland, a region dominated by miners and loggers. Today, a whopping 82 percent of the public college’s students come from abroad — nearly all from India. How a Canadian college — in a remote town most Canadians have never visited, where winters can feel subarctic — became a magnet for young Indians is the story of the many forces buffeting the country... More than 60 percent of foreign students in Ontario’s public colleges are from India — a dependence that the province’s auditor general identified as a risk to the schools’ long-term survival... Maninderjit Kaur said she would probably not have gone to Timmins if the education consultant in India — who arranged her enrollment at Northern — had told her the school’s exact location. Editors’ Picks What Does It Mean to ‘Dress Your Age’? This Silly Museum About Crabs Has Serious Things to Say A Statue’s Hips Don’t Lie: Shakira Is Honored in Her Hometown She recalled landing at the airport in Toronto in 2018, and then hopping into an Uber, believing that Northern College was nearby. The eight-hour ride cost 800 Canadian dollars... Across Canada, the influx of foreign students has been so great that it is blamed for worsening housing shortages. The Canadian government has recently taken measures to stem the increase, including by doubling the level of savings international students must prove they have. At Northern, the college revoked the admissions of several hundred international students this year after realizing that the city of Timmins lacked housing, Dr. Penner said. Jobs to help pay for college have also been a challenge. International students are allowed to work up to 20 hours a week off campus while studying. But in Timmins, a city of 42,000 people, too many foreign students compete for a limited number of positions at the Canadian and American chains where they typically find jobs, many Indian students said. Many have had to dip into their savings or ask their parents for money, they said.
Olivia Chow asks Toronto residents to offer rental units for refugees as shelter spaces fill up - The Globe and Mail - "Toronto is asking residents to open up their homes and offer available rental units to asylum seekers as more than 200 people remain temporarily sheltered at two North York churches."
Clearly, more government money is needed, because that is unlimited!
‘All I’m doing ... is working and paying bills.’ Why some are leaving Canada for more affordable countries - The Globe and Mail
Doing remote work currency arbitrage and/or renting out an Airbnb just pisses the locals in your new country off
New Abacus Poll Shows Canadian Immigration Attitudes Hardening - "two new polls on Canadian immigration attitudes have been released from respected polling firms Leger and Abacus. The data shows that skepticism of large-scale immigration continues to increase among Canadians."
Addendum: "Majority of both immigrants and native-born think immigration is too high: Born in Canada (68%). Born outside Canada (62%)"
What's behind the dramatic shift in Canadian public opinion about immigration levels? - "Over the past few decades, Canadians have been more positive than negative in their attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. In 2019, Canada was ranked the most accepting country for immigrants (in a survey of 145 countries) on Gallup’s Migrant Acceptance Index. Over the last few years, Environics public opinion data also indicated Canadians felt very positively about immigrants and immigration levels. Something changed in 2023."
I like how they believe that it's entirely a supply side issue
Toronto budget chief warns of 16 per cent tax hike without Ottawa's help on refugees : toronto - "Gotta pay for all the refugees Ottawa keeps allowing. It’s no secret they end up in Toronto. It’s also proven more than 1/4 are on social assistance at the 13 year mark."
Plus the cost of virtue signalling as a sanctuary city
It’s time for a grown-up conversation on immigration - "in the 21st century, the challenges associated with immigration are vastly different from those of 50 or 100 years ago, and until recently policymakers have been unwilling to discuss immigration policy accordingly. These challenges can be broadly categorized into three areas: economic impact; infrastructure capacity; and cultural friction... the sheer number of new arrivals—over one million in 2022 alone—especially in the form of temporary and lower-skilled migrants, is increasingly being used as a substitute for Canadian labour, driving down wages. This downward pressure, while good news for employers trying to contain costs, has the dual effect of dragging down per-capita GDP, while disincentivizing business investment in labour-productivity-enhancing innovations... the issue of cultural friction remains largely taboo. It should be said that historically, Canada has been fairly successful at integrating people from diverse religious, linguistic, and racial backgrounds, and even today there is a strong case that Canada manages these challenges better than most other countries. What was once a fairly organic process that allowed for integration over years, if not generations, has been supplanted by activist government policy that preaches an official doctrine of big-M Multiculturalism, which fetishizes and subsidizes cultural differences while simultaneously erasing and downplaying Canadian history... In addition to counterproductive government policies, few have noted that the integration process has been dramatically changed by technological advance which now allows for immigrants to retain permanent, real-time cultural ties to their native countries. This phenomenon—where people can be physically present in one place but maintain daily cultural and social ties to their homeland—presents a special challenge to a country with a relatively weak national identity. This is particularly true of Canada’s large diaspora communities, including those from China, India, and Iran, which have increasingly impacted Canada’s international relationships and given rise to interference (alleged or proven) by these countries on Canadian soil. Canada has historically enjoyed strong support for immigration across the political spectrum, a consensus that is not common in other countries. Recent opinion polling suggests that this consensus is rapidly eroding, if not already gone."
Trudeau botched immigration surge, Canada's top bank economists say - "Canada’s current immigration policy — among the most open in the world — is now causing economic damage and needs to be reconsidered, according the country’s top economists. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to dramatically increase immigration — and allow a flood of temporary workers and international students — without providing proper support has created a laundry list of economic problems, including higher inflation and weak productivity, chief economists at Canada’s biggest banks said Thursday during a wide-ranging panel discussion in Toronto. “Frankly I’m surprised we screwed it up because we sit in such a privileged position in Canada,” Beata Caranci, chief economist at Toronto Dominion Bank, told a packed audience at an Economic Club of Canada event... “I’ll put it bluntly: We’ve fallen into the population trap,” said Stéfane Marion, chief economist at National Bank of Canada. An increase in the standard of living is no longer possible because “you don’t have enough savings to stabilize your capital to labor ratio.”... While the federal government is trying to encourage more rental housing construction along the way, “the numbers just don’t add up,” said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets. “I’m a bit surprised that the government is moving fairly slowly on this. I think there’s some urgency to bring these numbers of students and temporary workers into better balance with the arithmetic of our homebuilding strategy, because the two are working at cross-purposes.”... None of the economists suggested Canada should shift to a restrictive immigration policy, rather that it be more deliberate about matching the inflow of people to what the country can handle. Canada has tended to rely on immigration to stanch complaints from businesses about their difficulty hiring, several economists said. While that’s understandable, “in a way we made it too easy for businesses to hire,” said Jean-Francois Perrault, chief economist at Bank of Nova Scotia. He pointed to the U.S., which has much tougher immigration policies and higher productivity. “Immigration policy made it cheaper to bring people in rather than investing.” Disastrously weak productivity and housing affordability are the biggest challenges facing the Canadian economy, said Douglas Porter, Bank of Montreal’s chief economist, and strong population growth is clearly a factor for both."
Damn racist conservatives!
Canada stuck in ‘population trap,’ needs to reduce immigration, bank economists say - The Globe and Mail - "Canada is caught in a “population trap” and needs to significantly rein in immigration to escape it, National Bank of Canada economists said on Monday, one of several such critiques to emerge from Bay Street in recent days. In a report, National Bank economists Stéfane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme said that “staggering” population growth is stretching the country’s absorptive capacity, notably seen in residential construction that is nowhere near sufficient to house all those newcomers. The National Bank economists argued that annual population growth should not exceed 300,000 to 500,000... “Canada is caught in a population trap that has historically been the preserve of emerging economies”... While Ottawa sets targets for the intake of permanent residents – the figure for this year is 485,000 – there are effectively no limits on the arrival of temporary residents... “I’m a bit surprised that the government is moving fairly slowly on this,” Avery Shenfeld, the chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets, told the audience... As it relates to immigration, Bank of Nova Scotia chief economist Jean-François Perrault said last week that policy makers had perhaps made it “too easy” to hire foreign workers. “We’re making it cheaper to bring people in, rather than investing”"
Maybe they know they're going to lose power, so they're sabotaging the next government so they can pretend that they will fix the problem they created (but will blame on conservatives)
Immigration is making Canada's housing more expensive. The government was warned 2 years ago - "Federal public servants warned the government two years ago that large increases to immigration could affect housing affordability and services... 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."... 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."... Canada's pace of population growth continues to set records... The Bank of Canada has offered similar analysis... 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... That trend is raising alarms about the increase in businesses' reliance on low-wage migrant workers and the luring of international student by shady 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... 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." 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."
The civil service has no liberal bias because it's racist
True North on X - "“Conservatives will get back to an approach of immigration that invites a number of people that we can house, employ, and care for in our healthcare system.” Poilievre slams the Trudeau government for disregarding warnings about the effect of high immigration levels on housing."
This won't stop the left wingers and other haters from claiming that he will do nothing different
Rupa Subramanya: Why many immigrants are thanking Doug Ford - "As much as immigrants have thrived in Canada in recent years, it’s useful to remind ourselves that among those at the top of the skill set, such as highly educated professionals working in the STEM fields, Canada lags considerably behind the United States. A September 2020 study by Statistics Canada found significant earnings gaps between STEM educated immigrants and similar workers born in Canada. This result held up even after all the usual adjustments for socioeconomic differences between people. Crucially, no such earnings gap showed up in the U.S. The earnings gap vis-à-vis the U.S. was especially sharp for STEM educated immigrants in Canada doing non-STEM related jobs. The report notes reasons for this difference could be that higher ability STEM migrants continue to prefer the U.S. over Canada, the relative oversupply of STEM educated migrants in Canada who aren’t achieving their potential, and the criteria by which people choose to settle."
How anti-immigrant rhetoric crept into Chinese Canadian politics - "At the front of the group stood two men, carrying a large banner that read “ILLEGAL FREERIDER NOT INVITED.” Another even larger banner read: “MARKHAM SAY NO TO ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSERS,” followed by a Chinese translation below... The latest rally in Markham was a show of force by this relatively new group, which presented its anti-refugee slogans within broader messages like “Defend our borders!” and keeping the streets safe from foreign terrorists. “There’s a danger with underestimating the emergence of far-right ideas and politics within our communities,” says Edward Wong, one of the progressive organizers who showed up as counter-protester at the July rally... According to Liu, the Chinese community is among a number of Asian communities who would rather work hard to get ahead than portray itself as a marginalized group that “take[s] advantage of social assistance or the loopholes in society.” As a staunch proponent of “law and order,” Liu has emphasized that “safety and security” is the “number one item” on her platform... “I don’t have a problem with admission of legal refugees, meaning they go through passport control and all that to seek asylum,” says Joe Li, a Markham regional councillor who hails from India’s Hakka Chinese minority. “But I do have a difficulty when it comes to Chinese people who’ve spent years going through the system and fail to bring their families over, while they’re letting in all these bogus refugees — I have strong feelings about that.”... Connections to racist and white supremacist ideas and rhetoric have been more visible among Toronto’s Chinese conservative circles
From 2018. This is the usual racist liberal and left wing conflation of immigrants and illegal immigrants, and anyone claiming to be a refugee and bona fide refugees
If you are against open borders, you want to screen people coming to your country to live and you are pro-law and order, you are a "far right" racist white supremacist
These immigrant women are experts in their fields of science. Why aren't they working in them? - "They are engineers, doctors and scientists. They speak multiple languages. They have global work experience. On paper, these women of science should be at the forefront of cutting-edge research and community health. Instead, they serve you at restaurants, take care of your children at daycares and answer your questions as customer service agents. There is nothing wrong with those jobs, except that they are not their professional goals, nor the jobs they trained for. Four immigrant women in St. John's, all with a background in the sciences, shared their lived experiences with me about finding gainful employment."
The lack of outrage at another 'desecration' of the Terry Fox statue - "It’s a frequent theme of this newsletter that Canada is one of the most pro-immigration countries on earth. It’s also a frequent theme of this newsletter that – amid Ottawa orchestrating the most dramatic spike in immigration in the history of Confederation – Canadians are suddenly finding themselves pondering whether it’s all a bit much. A September Nanos poll, for one, found that 53 per cent of Canadians believed that the government was bringing in too many newcomers – while only eight per cent backed the status quo plan of bringing in even more. And thus has the Trudeau government suddenly announced that they’re bringing down immigration targets – a bit. Ottawa is still going to hike new arrivals to 500,000 per year by 2025, but after that they’re planning to plateau the number. It isn’t the one million newcomers that Canada brought in last year, but it’s still one of the highest-ever immigration intakes for a country that has historically been pretty bullish on immigration. In 2014, the last full year of the Harper government, it was frequently reported that Conservatives had dialled up immigration to its highest rate in more than 100 years. The total number of immigrants brought to Canada that year was 260,000."
This doesn't stop the liberals who keep claiming the Conservatives brought in as many immigrants
Jennifer Keesmaat on X - "Canada is growing at a rate 5.2x faster than the OECD average! Our population growth target last year was 500,000 and instead we grew by 1.2 million people. “Our country’s current population growth appears to be extreme in relation to the absorptive capacity of the economy and the fact that our work force is not aging faster than the OECD average.”
What about:
- schools
- transit
- access to healthcare
- housing!
Please tell me there is someone in charge thinking all of this through."
Obviously the Former Toronto Chief City Planner & Distinguished Visitor in Planning Emeritus at University of Toronto is a xenophobic, racist bigot
John Pasalis on X - "It’s incredible how one Prime Minister’s failed policies can turn 🇨🇦 from a very pro-immigration country To one where 61% of Canadians now think Canada should accept fewer immigrants"
