Action needed on immigration

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/02/2024 (966 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since my retirement from the trade union movement in late 2015, I continue to write and speak on a range of labour issues. Canadian labour trends are a common topic and, in such presentations, I always include a slide on Canadian demographic trends.

It outlines three very important facts about Canada today. Firstly, the fact that 1971 was the last year that our country’s birth rate matched the required population replacement rate.

Secondly, we are an aging country. In 2015, for the first time ever, we had more Canadians over the age of 65 than under age 15. Thirdly, for the past quarter century, two-thirds of Canada’s population growth has been sustained by immigration.

The slide concludes with the bottom-line statement that our country has a sound history when it comes to immigration, and this will remain important for our collective futures going forward.

The above facts remain true, but immigration has been in the news of late, for all the wrong reasons. The number of foreign students in Canada has tripled to over one million, since 2015.

There is mounting evidence that thousands of these students are enrolled in bogus post-secondary institutions, which Canada’s Immigration minister has referred to as “puppy mills.”

Under pressure from Canada’s service sector, the federal government increased the number of hours students can work. Most are employed in minimum wage jobs.

Our country loses on all fronts when such practices are allowed. The workers (students in this case) are stuck in low-paying jobs and sub-standard housing situations. Our country does not benefit from the good that can flow from highly educated new citizens. Lastly, the downward pressure exerted on overall wage rates by this readily available low-wage pool of labour hurts all workers.

Foreign students are only part of the problem. Since 2000, there has been a tenfold increase in our country’s non-permanent population, which now numbers over 2.5 million, about six per cent of our population.

These exploding numbers are now part of the discussion about Canada’s housing shortage. More accurately, with many of these citizens earning well below the Canadian average salary, the impact is felt most in the affordable housing market.

To be clear, immigration policy, or lack thereof, did not cause the housing crisis we face. Government withdrawal from subsidized social housing options is a decades-old problem, one that predates our current immigration challenges. But today’s largely unplanned boom in the number of non-permanent residents has only served to expand our current housing crisis.

Adding to the immigration problems has been the rapid expansion of the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada. The decades-old Temporary Foreign Workers program (TFW) was originally designed to fill temporary gaps for highly skilled labour.

Today, it is the opposite, as one policy analyst recently said, “it’s offering low-pay, low-skill, and low-productivity employers a way to recruit overseas, at low cost, rather than having to search harder at home, or offer higher wages, or invest in technology and training to increase efficiency.”

Layered on top of all the above policy woes is the fact that productivity growth in Canada has trailed that of the developed world and borders on being negative in real terms. This isn’t about our workforce or its diligence. It is about business failing to invest in new plants and equipment, in deference to unskilled, low wage solutions.

The way forward for Canada must include the just-announced pause on foreign student admissions. The federal government must restrict foreign temporary workers to high end jobs, not millions of low-paying service sector jobs.

Finally, Canada’s immigration system must return to its formerly successful points-based system, which sees us recruiting highly skilled workers, and their families, to make our country their home.

Paul Moist is a retired labour leader. He lives in Winnipeg.