Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist. I have a top 5% income but I will never own a house in my life and can’t access a family doctor. We have way too many people! The population is expected to be 50% foreign born or children of immigrants by 2040 and it’s already majority foreign born in our biggest cities.
I honestly don’t expect this country to stay together for more than a few more decades. What is a Canadian? The “melting pot” theory of integration is also considered racist here because Canada is a “mosaic” where everyone has the right to keep their old culture and live in an ethnic enclave with no expectation of assimilation.
We're one of the least densely populated countries in the world with one of the lowest birth rates in the world. If you don't think immigration makes sense for cultural reasons that's fine, but with respect to healthcare and housing don't be under any illusion -- reducing immigration would exacerbate these issues by giving us an even more heavily aging population.
healthcare availability, housing availability, and immigration rate are not related by population density, but by population growth and infrastructure growth. If your infrastructure growth doesn't outpace your population growth, it doesn't matter how dense or not dense your country is.
Our infrastructure is constrained because of systemic policy decisions, not because we can't practically grow it fast enough. These policy constraints would become significantly more painful under a declining, aging population.
For healthcare, we don't pay our GPs enough and we overwork them. Physicians have been either leaving the profession or moving into non-GP roles (specialists, etc). Since healthcare is taxpayer funded, reducing the number of working age tax payers and increasing the number of aging people in need of health care is going to make this worse.
For housing, we allow too much control of housing at the municipal layer and it's become a complex, bureaucratic mess to build anything anywhere. The dirty secret is that no federal government wants to step in and be the one to fix this because then it would cause housing prices to decrease and a terrifying large percentage of aging, voting population has the majority of their net worth in their house with "downsizing" forming the majority of their retirement plan. Reducing the population isn't going to fix this, we'll end up with less people who can build houses and more people who are either dependent on high house prices for their retirement or poor and in need of taxpayer programs (of which there will be less tax payers to fund) to support themselves.
These are obviously complex issues and I'm simplifying to some degree, but those are at least two key relationships worth really calling out here with respect to population. There's others, but my core point is that simplify cutting off population growth is not going to fix either of these -- it'd probably make them worse.
Things could always be more efficient; but the housing shortage is now Canada wide, throughout jurisdictions. It's systemic, pretty much everywhere. You're right that letting low birthrate rule has problems (see Japan) but not such extreme ones, impoverishing so many.
> but the housing shortage is now Canada wide, throughout jurisdictions
Yes. That's what I mean by "systemic" too. The housing policy problems are a result of incentives and the same incentives exist across municipalities in Canada. Municipalities also don't exist in isolation; for example as Vancouver prices out people they move to nearby areas like Kelowna and exacerbate the problem there.
It's not a simple matter of efficiency. The bureaucracy is a symptom of the incentive structure. Councils have the vast majority of control over new buildings and they're not incentivized to approve them. Councils are mostly homeowners and are voted in by mostly homeowners, who mostly don't want to see their neighbourhoods change or the price of their single detached homes decrease.
> We're one of the least densely populated countries in the world
There’s a reason most Canadians live close to the southern border. Most of Canada’s territory isn’t particularly friendly to large-scale human habitation.
Yes. It can both be true that large portions of Canada are not ideal to live in and also that we have a really low density. If you've ever been to London, Tokyo, New York, or anywhere really you'd see that Canada is not dense.
I agree, it's definitely not density. Vancouver and Montreal density is ~900p/km. NY is 2000+, London is 1500+. The Canadian boomers are cucking the younger generations with NIMBYism. Nothing gets built so they keep their house value.
Total population means less than growth rate. The country may be sparsely populated but construction is the main bottleneck. It’s hard to spit out hundreds of high rises quickly enough.
Construction is the bottleneck because nothing ever gets approved, and when it does it takes years, and nobody who makes decisions is incentivized to fix this. It's not primarily because we can't physically build fast enough (although COVID has made this more notable lately, that's fair). The incentives for this situation get worse with an aging population because we lose working age people who can work construction.
Why must we compare ourselves to 3rd world countries that have terrible quality of life issues?
Maybe the canadian economy isn't able to support a decent quality of life and these population levels. Seriously go visit these countries these people are from and ask yourself, would you like canada to turn into this?! Let's be honest with ourselves.
Don't worry you can just label me a racist and devolve the argument around that instead of the fundamental issues with immigration today. Canada is going to turn into the countries where these people are from if there aren't cut backs.
Have you met any first or second generation Canadians? Yes, people bring their culture and their traditions. And by the time you get 1 or 2 generations down, aside from a few different holidays Canada's school system has done a fairly good job of normalizing the population.
Immigration is a major source of Canadian talent and innovation... A lot of the systemic issues around larger populations aren't related to immigration, as others noted, but to short sighted, "get me elected" policies for our political "leaders".
I didn't say anything about culturism in that comment.
My point still stands that the problems of overpopulation in the countries these people are from is just going to bring that problem to canada. The economy cannot support them.
Canadians today aren't having children so why are we bringing these people in? How is this in anyway moral?
I don't understand how using phrases like "these people" doesn't bring culturism into the conversation. You clearly stated that "these people bring that problem to Canada", implying that their culture is the primary problem and that culture will be travelling with them to Canada.
As for the economy not being able to support them, I think this statement ignores the fact that every immigrant that meets Canada's criteria brings some useful skill. We immigrate farmers, doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers. All of whom add to the economy in a way that, generally, expands the economy to support their presence.
Now, we have major policy mismatches, where trained individuals cannot work in their field due to obscure policies and regulations, but that's tied to misguided national policies that exist independently of individual immigrants.
Do you consider the United Kingdom, France, Japan, the United States, and Germany third world countries? These are all examples of countries with more density than us. We have similar density to Kazakhstan, Bolivia, Turkmenistan, Chad, and Libya. Density is not the direct determinant for a decent quality of life.
>Do you consider the United Kingdom, France, Japan, the United States, and Germany third world countries?
Ahh here comes the part where you call me a racist and immediately think your morally superior to everyone else in the thread lol.
Your trying making equivalence between western 1st nations that share most of the cultural values that exist in Canada vs 3rd world poor nations with population numbers higher than the whole north american continent that we should immediately treat the same otherwise it would be racist.
This is a pretty misleading stat. It appears to be counting people who immigrate at a young age and are then trained in the Canadian system. That isn't expanding the pool of healthcare workers, unless there were somehow a shortage of applicants. That absolutely is not the case for physicians, where every year the med school applicants vastly exceed the number of spots.
So what should really be counted is foreign-trained immigrants who were able to have their credentials considered equivalent, and entered directly into employment.
Yeas, exactly. Otherwise this shows the real problem with the health sector; it is undervalued, underpaid and thus requires cheap labor with less accrued wealth to maintain its labour force.
Canadian doctors and nurses do fine financially, but there aren't enough of them because Canadian healthcare is a command economy. The government sets a total cost it is willing to pay for healthcare and then sets the number of positions for doctors and nurses based on that budget, not market demand. That's how Canada is in the insane position of being a first world country where 15% of the population doesn't have a family doctor.
Retirement or nursing homes are a different story, and aren't particularly flattering for GP's point. Those do heavily rely on temporary foreign workers (TFWs) or recent immigrants paid around minimum wage, and the quality of care reflects that. There have been numerous scandals in the last couple years during COVID regarding substandard care, with seniors not receiving food/water or being left in their own feces for days. It shouldn't be surprising when bare minimum pay results in substandard outcomes, and the ability of employers to bring in TFWs prevents wages from rising according to market forces.
Immigrants are 21.5% of the population. They are also on average younger than the rest of the population, so they will use less medical services. The average age of a Canadian actually went down this year for the first time in over 50 years because of younger immigrants arriving.
Not having access to doctors or being unable to afford housing are due to policy failures in other areas, not purely due to higher immigration. Canada will find it tough to replenish it's workforce without high rates of immigration.
Canada has a housing crisis because no one is stupid enough to arrive to Canada and move to Thunder Bay (sorry TB, but you know its true). As a result all these people go live in one of three or four cities.
The situation is more akin to the rapid urbanization in the third world. Infrastructure cant keep up. Just try GTA traffic. People move to Barrie just to afford a house in the GTA (Barries not GTA!).
Sure Canada is "empty", but its also an inhospitable frozen waste land with 90% of the population living within 100 km of the US border. When we say Canada is "full" what we mean is that Canada cannot build fast enough. That the 3000 km^2 worth living in in Canada are really really dense.
The west lost it's ability to build new cities. Canada could be more like china and use multiple billions to build/encourage growth outside their core city centers. It has the land. Arguably GDP would benefit from having more populous cities between Vancouver and Toronto.
Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina.
"Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina."
No one would take it because you'd be in Regina.
And the West "cant build cities" anymore because there's no need to build a city in the Prairies anymore. 100 years ago physical labor had to man farms, and therefore you had human settlements. There's no need to put a new city in between Winnipeg and Calgary except to store people in it.
And who is going to work in Tim Hortons(or take care of your elderly parents)? At least in Montreal, due to stuff shortages many Tim's are half closed with huge lines or drive throughs only. I have never seen anything like this.
Also on Monday are elections in Quebec and all they can talk is about immigrants and how to limit immigration(Quebec has a separate immigration program).
The huge lines are more due to the insane menu Tim’s has right now. It’s far too complex and requires endless context shifting from workers. The workers at my local Tims have been complaining about it for a long time.
The half closed ones though? Yah, that’s a worker shortage. My local one started by closing the dining area and then started closing at 8PM simply because they can’t staff it. Of course they can’t, they only offer minimum wage.
Its a volume business. Timmys is really inexpensive. Some stuff are good. I liked their lunches. Their coffee is terrible, albeit better than Starbucks (low bar)
Of course not, I'm an immigrant myself. But I never saw a Canada born person working in Tim Hortons(major cities, not middle of nowhere)
Starbucks of the other hand doesn't hire immigrants, just hipster Humanities PhDs :)
I'm generalizing of course!
I think he's implying that the immigration system as it presently exists primarily brings in a class of person that is unlikely to work at Tim Hortons, but likely to be a customer of Tim Hortons. This exacerbates the waiting times.
That said, I do not live in North America. I am inferring from context.
Thanks for the info. I lived in Ontario for over a decade, and Quebec for half a decade. There were grumblings about a shortage of family doctors even when I was there a decade ago, but I never had any trouble finding a family doctor in the GTA. But it sounds like the situation is quite different in BC and elsewhere.
I'm guessing it's partly a function of where family doctors like to settle? Most of my friends who are family doctors end up in Ontario.
Also, in Ontario, Nurse Practitioners (who often work in partnership with a physician) are able to provide equally good primary care, so the system is actually quite scalable if you're not strictly looking for MDs. In the US, physician assistants and medical assistants often provide primary care. In Canada NPs often fill that role.
A lot of people will often put the US and Canada up against one another in a head to head battle but forget to realize the population is less than the state of California. For all intents and purposes Canada is a small country and their way of life is very much a small scale experiment, as-is our democratic experiment here in the US. Scalability is tough.
> Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US
I assume you mean per-capita? Because legal immigration alone into the US is about 1.8 million/year and has been for almost a decade, excluding one or two pandemic years.
>Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist.
Those who consider immigration a race issue are often those who view everything as a race issue, and view reality through a warped lens of race. Even worse are others who have ulterior motives (political, economic) for favoring increased immigration and use the race card as a weapon to smear opponents and prevent substantive debate.
> Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist
...or maybe don't compare Canada's rate to a country with one of the strictest immigration policies available, just because doing so fits your inclinations...?
I do think "we" (whatever that means) are paying too little attention to the real work of truly integrating cultures. It's hard work - to be open and aware of your actions and to see how one might adjust oneself after noticing another person's actions in the same space / town / city / country. Changes on changes. Mutating culture is hard, luxuriating in a culture we know is easy.
In reality, it’s becoming a colony. You know how the US captured Texas? Americans moved there (on invitation of the Mexican government), then when the government of Mexico didn’t act as expected the US supported a war of independence of Texas.
Who are most of the immigrants to Canada I wonder…
If you'd been colonised for thousands of years your group would not exist anymore.
The fact your group - which you are being very coy about - still does exist, suggest that not only have you not been continuously colonised for thousands of years, but that you've probably colonised and absorbed some of your neighbours.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. India is really complex. More than any country on earth. Sinhalese in Sri Lanka never colonized anyone as far as I'm aware, and since you have at least a dozen ethnicities across India, i wouldn't be surprised if some never colonized anyone.
>Americans moved there (on invitation of the Mexican government), then when the government of Mexico didn’t act as expected the US supported a war of independence of Texas.
Americans were invited to live in what is what is now Texas by Spain long before there was a Mexican government, to act as a buffer against the Comanche who had decimated Spanish ranches, towns and outposts in raids from the north.
And in Quebec the extreme-left party (QS) is promoting religious sectarianism in schools, in favor of political indoctrination of children.
There are also unashamed communists promoting war in Montreal, just today there was a dude flying the soviet flag on a bike while I was getting coffee, and nothing can be done it about otherwise --> Jail.
Contemporary Canada has only existed for 50 years, and for some reason everybody left of center thinks it's always been this way and it feels like they are all ready to cut their veins open in shame of being born in a successful country...
> There are also unashamed communists promoting war in Montreal, just today there was a dude flying the soviet flag on a bike while I was getting coffee, and nothing can be done it about otherwise --> Jail.
Out of curiosity, what would you like to do to the bike-rider that would land you in jail?
So your question is What would I like to do to someone who asks to boycott elections, and start a violent revolution to impose an autocratic government that has in history killed millions by war and famine?
They don’t even need to train mor doctors. Canada imports a lot of medical professionals as part of their immigration programs. However due the CMA regulations, they cannot practice in Canada even if their degree is from an accredited university.
Even doctors trained in developed countries like UK have no guarantee that they will be approved to work in Canada as noted on the BMA’s own website [1].
On top of that most medical professionals moving to Canada are not from highly developed but rather developing countries and they spend years just trying to get their license and give up in the end .
This sort of reactive anti-intellectual "hate on immigrants" response is exactly what seems to happen whenever somebody suggests that unchecked immigration is not the only way.
What unchecked immigration? Canada takes people who pass the immigration tests. The rejection rate is over 70%, one thing Canada does not have is unchecked immigration.
No need for the aggressive tone, but maybe what the comment you’re replying to isn’t saying that the country is overpopulated, but they’re saying that the infrastructure available isn’t capable of sustaining this type of population influx (regardless of where they’re from) and leads to a lower quality of life for the people already in the country.
You and OP can probably agree that infrastructure needs to improve to support more people, but until that happens, there shouldn’t be such availability of immigrant visas.
But demand has to happen first followed by infrastructure. Nobody is going to spend the money on infrastructure first then hope demand and tax receipts catch up.
The correct solution is yo say hey we need to build better infrastructure now because our tax receipts are up.
> the infrastructure available isn’t capable of sustaining this type of population influx (regardless of where they’re from) and leads to a lower quality of life for the people already in the country.
Yeah, not shit. Everyone here wants that. It's not happening because baby boomers only vote for politicians who limit supply and increase demand. I own a successful tech company and I own real estate here, so I'm not saying this out of bitterness. I'm good but my friends are NOT (and some of them are immigrants). Throw whatever slur you want at me but that's the damn truth. This has NOTHING to do with racism and everything to do with artificial supply and demand.
You have too many people in a country with the average population density less than a person a square mile? This is such strange thinking- your solutions should be build more houses and train/immigrate in more doctors!
This country is doing better than it ever has in history. The immigrants Canada lets in are a gift to the economy. If neighboring US is anything to go by, 90 of the top 500 US unicorns ($ 1 billion+) have an Indian born founder.
Sounds like you're not very familiar with canada. We have a very narrow populated strip within about 50-100 km of the us border, and then a vast uninhabitable area in the north. Overall population density is a meaningless metric
The Atlantic coastal regions are pretty moderate and they're also sparsely populated. There's plenty of space in southern Ontario/Quebec, in Edmonton and Calgary...
What about the agricultural land needed to support that many people with Western diet and lifestyle? No matter who moves there, they will adopt those customs in the short to medium term.
Average population density is a useless metric on a country of that size; it’s like saying the US has no density problems at all anywhere because the density averages out to 94 per sq mile (that is one person per 6 acres or so).
The thing that gets me about the US and Canada is that those countries don't even have an ethnic population to begin with. The ethnic population was put into camps and then replaced by a bunch of Europeans for a bunch of different countries to begin with.
Germany losing its national identity I can follow. France losing its national identity I can follow as well, although my sympathies are somewhat limited given the context of it. But the US and Canada ? You ask an average American and they tell you their a quarter Italian, A quarter German, 1/10 native American and 2/5th danish. What is the national identity here?
We’re not allowed to have an American identity. Trying to cling to traditions is considered a conservative thing and thus inherently racist. American can only be defined by her failures, and any attempt to point out the successes is considered whitewashing history or something.
There were a number of places that sought to, or outright skipped, the Independence Day celebration this year. It’s now totally normal for some people to find the US flag “problematic” and itself a sign of oppression.
Little misunderstanding here. I'm not saying that the USA doesn't have a national identity, because it clearly does. What I'm saying is that because it is an entirely manufactured one, it is therefore predestined for conflict.
One of the bigger conflicts that societies have is that as they move from whatever traditional identity have they have find a set of common values that still makes for a common goal.
> One of the bigger conflicts that societies have is that as they move from whatever traditional identity have they have find a set of common values that still makes for a common goal.
An American may lack a cleat ethnic identity, but I suppose that the American national identity is very much a thing. The American values, the American dream, the liberty, the flag, etc. A large number of Americans is pretty patriotic, despite being ethnically varied.
While at it: both Germany and France used to be much more varied in cultures and languages, but were unified by their centralized states. A dilution of this unity is, in a sense, return to a more natural state of cultural variety.
A ton of Americans around me identify ethnically in various ways, and keep some of their ethnical habits (Mexican, various Caribbean, Jewish, Irish, various African, several Chinese, etc).
I am sure a number of people will make comments here pointing to Canada’s struggling healthcare system as a direct effect of these immigration numbers.
I just want to point out that the current and recently re-elected Ontario government (representing 14.5 million people) is currently running a $2b budget surplus [1] while simultaneously capping healthcare workers’ pay raises to just 1% a year [2] in a time of record inflation. That is to say: you get what you pay (and vote) for.
That's an odd take. Most of the discussion that I see online about detrimental aspects of Canadian immigration levels are focused on housing prices/availability than health care.
I think most people acknowledge that immigrants are young and relatively more fit and therefore don't consume health services nearly as much as aging, western boomers.
The major issue we're facing due to the high immigration levels is the strain that it's putting on our housing availability levels. Those 270k people/year need to live somewhere, right now and that has direct effects on cost of living of everyone in Canada.
And the ones who aren't educated often choose to become nurses, auxiliaries or beneficiary attendants. The training is 2-3 years, you get a yearly stipend and nearly guaranteed a job offer.
Most of them are being thrown into the entry job that people are claiming "couldn't be filled anyways". I remember hunting for my first job as a teenager and it was pretty difficult, not a lot of openings, even less willing to take someone with zero experience. I'm not even that old, that was maybe 7-8 years ago.
Many of these locations have a bias in their hiring as well, they gift their family and friends positions in these companies, refusing to work with anyone else. I seriously cannot remember the last time I have seen someone who isn't Indian working at Tim Hortons.
I cannot imagine having to find a first job as a 16/17/18 year old.
I am having a similar problem with my son. We live in a very progressive county and he is finally eligible to work, but there are effectively zero places he can get a job. The traditional teen jobs like paper route, fast food, etc., are all filled by middle-aged immigrants.
Can you even hire teenagers anymore? Is it still common for teenagers to work (outside of internships)? I can’t say I ever knew anyone who worked before university and in my school some teachers actively discouraged it.
(I went to high school in Canada in the early 2010s).
Although the hiring bias makes sense. Of course you choose relatives over strangers so that the money stays in the family.
I believe before 18, you need your parents and school principle to sign off. I don't know many kids who didn't work directly out of high school, even with university but in that case, they're just being carried by their parents and will skip directly from "first job" to "their life long career" after graduation.
Not sure this is true... I started working at 15 and put in an application and worked. No parental consent and definitely no school involvement. This would have been in 2005-6...
Canada is pretty much screwed without immigration, because nobody's having babies and the top talent keeps leaving to the US. Without immigration, they'd have a largely older population and not enough people to pay taxes for their free healthcare (which I don't think is sustainable or great even with immigration).
Canada is also pretty selective about the skilled immigrants they let in, they don't do a random lottery or FIFO but have a points based system. You may argue about the parameters of how points are scored, but there's little doubt that it's better than a lottery.
Similar situation in New Zealand. The reasons are pretty similar
1. It benefits big business. It's an absolute god send for labour intensive industries to have a constantly growing pool of employees. Especially if they're from places with a worse standard of living, so they're likely to accept much lower working conditions and pay.
2. It benefits real estate speculation. Housing construction simply cannot keep up in demand, and the richest people in our respective countries have a real estate heavy portfolio. Migrants trickle into city centres, which means big construction projects as high density housing is built, as well as the knock on effective of the native born population migrating to new suburbs that get to be built from the ground up.
3. You get to feel warm and fuzzy inside. Diversity, inclusion, different foods etc etc. If native born people pay higher rents, are served by increasingly overcapacity infrastructure, and have their wages suppressed by increased competition - well they're just immoral and can be brow-beaten into accepting policies that are ultimately in place to benefit the rich.
#3 is a big one. The warm and fuzzy feeling is also why many people are unwilling to even consider the negatives, or have a discussion. Some call it an ideological paralysis but it’s more of an addiction to moral grandstanding.
Immigration is not necessarily a concern. But Canada afaik does not have multicultural immigration, we have a very narrow set of countries utterly dominating our immigrants. Personally I don't think that is a good thing, diversity is important, and we need to be better at balancing the mix of people that come here to avoid monoculture
Hasn’t that always been the way it has worked? For the longest time Canadian immigration was restricted to the British isles and Western Europe (look up the Chinese immigration restriction acts). Compared to then Canada has pretty much opened the floodgates of immigration from all over the world. I don’t see the monoculture you’re suggesting, and regularly meet people from all over the globe here
Can you clarify what you mean by a narrow set of countries dominating immigrants? Is it disproportionate relative to the world population in general, disproportionate relative to all people migrating from one country to another?
> But Canada afaik does not have multicultural immigration
This is not correct. Toronto is 52% visible minorities. Even mid-sized cities like Calgary have big immigrant populations from Asia. When I visiting the wilderness of BC I actually ran into a guy who owned a fruit orchard who immigrated from India a few years back.
true story I honestly considered emigrating from the us to Canada as a diesel engine mechanic when I was a greenhorn. Kirkland lake, a mining company, flew me up for two weeks to see things in their repair pool and even offered relocation.
from my observation blue collar work in Alberta at least is seen as equal or better than white collar. you're treated sincerely and honestly at the job site and there is real respect and concern for your safety and productivity on the job. there is a very tangible and defined career path you can take, with lucrative benefits and meaningful lasting retirement.
I chickened out at 19 because I didn't understand the implications of the citizenship, which requires a pledge of allegiance to the queen. old timers at my shop managed to scare me out of it but to this day I still dream of Canada.
Good news! You don’t have to pledge allegiance to the Queen anymore.
Jokes aside there can be real implications of citizenship that people should be aware of, such as military service, taxes, and more. It’s not to be done lightly.
Ask Japan how it's going for them with a plummeting population level, exploding elderly population, almost a million unfilled job positions, and hardline anti-immigration policies.
A peaceful, by and large harmonious society where everyone is basically on the same page? Sure, certain industrial sectors are begging for more manpower and social security is on a ticking time bomb, but those are all arguably minor on the grander scale.
They are minor because they are ultimately issues concerning money, and issues concerning money can ALWAYS be solved given enough political and social will.
Compare, say, multiple separate groups of people and cultures sitting next to each other who may or may not like each others' company as a consequence of aggressive immigration policies. You can't just throw more money at such a problem to make all the ills go away, such problems that we can't just zap away are major problems meriting more serious concern and attention.
This is unsustainable long term and will lead to a downgrade in the quality of life for the average Canadian. GDP per capita peaked in early 2010s and continues to go down
It has little tech, manufacturing or other productive industry. It was actually among the first in mobile business, with Nortel & RIM. US and China took its lunch. The jobs seem to be mostly in government, finance and service.
On the other hand, housing in Canada is ridiculously unaffordable.
Frankly, it might be better off as a US state, considering it has low population and isn’t able to build a competitive economy.
As with many western countries, there's a rising sentiment against immigration due to the lack of infrastructure provided to the existing citizenry. Housing in Canada is some of the least affordable in the world, our health care system is deeply underfunded, competition for spots at post secondary is rising as the institutions accept more international students as they're cash cows, and we're slowly seeing a rise in populism with the the Conservative Party electing Pierre Poilievre who is a Trump-lite figure who rails on about being for the working class while simultaneously voting against dental coverage for poor children [1].
It genuinely feels like the political class has abandoned its people and has sold out to special interest groups entirely. We import tons of TFW's (temporary foreign workers) to appease the corps to have cheap labour, and these TFW's are often treated terribly by the corps. As a first generation Canadian who is the child of refugees, I really do worry about the future of this country. I know tons of couples who are putting off having kids entirely because of the bleak economic picture in our major cities. We need immigration due to the low birthrate, but there's significant resentment from those who want kids and simply cannot afford them which is pushing down our numbers further.
So as someone who has "interviewed" the lower class immigrants and TFW, it's truely a depressing situation, a particular one showed me they lived in a converted garage with units similar to a storage locker (6x6ft) while paying a large sum of their wage (the business had a cork board with these "livable" storage units for rent) and broke down crying half way through. There have been thousands of other instances of businesess abusing this as well. Hopefully more Canadians will ask questions and stop the abuse.
Yeah Canada is racist as fuck because of these tensions. The best part is how the media and politicians have the citizens blaming the immigrants, while the politicians and developers welcome both cheap labor and rich trust fund kids. A quick tour of the govt stats and reports on immigration show they desperately need young people to pay taxes and prop up the aging population.
1 out of 100 persons randomly chosen in Canada has immigrated less than one year ago if the statistic is true: 430k new immigrants per year for a country with a population of 38 million. Wow.
And considering that migrants tend to cluster together these immigration hotspots like Toronto will see multiple % growth annually in new arrivals! That is seriously fast population growth! Replacement?
I wonder how much if america's worker shortage issues can be fixed by fixing immigration. Free higher education at public colleges can also go a long way.
We need more people who get this stuff but hate politics to become politicians.
When corporations and the wealthy complain about worker shortages it seems to me they really just don’t want to have to raise wages or improve working conditions to attract workers. Or in the case of jobs that require certain training or education they don’t want to have to provide that training or education.
That is bullshit propaganda. I work in infosec, one of the most interesting fields out there. No degree and I get paid very very well.
We are so short on talent we are forced to hire outside the US. 90% of applicants are terrible by any meaningful metric. Even when I interviewed at a startup once they told me 85% of applicants couldn't get past technical questionaire where the hardest question was having to fix bad syntax in a 6-7 line python code.
We got a guy who just got his BSC in infosec and even then they teach them so little it is ridiculous.
I am talking about 90K+ for 0 experience at most places! I am not very smart, I am terrible at making friends and networking, 0 social skills, absolutley unattractive or charming. Why am I doing well? Why is everyone else complaining?
I am baffled about "quiet quit" bullshit. Why don't people have self respect and pride in their work? I get retail workers getting paid an unlivable wage but come on! You don't have to code or work in infosec, before all this I worked various blue collar jobs that have similar high demand (and this was 5+ yrs ago), still no degree and all my training was on the job and it was paying ok (60-75k).
Why don't people want money? That is the question that baffles me so much.
I mean, even if writing code was the only way to get paid 6 figures, why aren't people lining up to code even if they hate it with passion? You get money!
Of course, it is because the immigrants and minorities are taking all the jobs (I wish they would at least the things can get done).
Even in US colleges and companies, look at who is writing all the papers and new findings in STEM and compsci: a lot of asian immigrants/students!
No, the amount of people isn't the issue, but why did you pick those places? Sounds like you don't like people from there? And it also sounds like you don't have a grasp on just how broken and messed up USCIS is.
I picked the less well-off regions of the world; immigration is almost universally from poorer places to richer places.
No, I don't mind more immigrants, the US was built by immigrants, and I do remember what's written on the statue of Liberty. Ellis Island stopped accepting immigrants so easily though.
Ok, so allowing people isn't the problem. It is very cruel in how it separates families, skilled workers come to the US but have an unstable future, it is too hard to get H1B for example even when you are in demand. Once they get h1b if they work a few years and are valuable to the company and US economy they should get permanent residency. Same with top scoring students that manage to land US based jobs as well people who immigrate on a business Visa (they should get H1B after working in the US for a while).
There should be strict enforcement of immigration laws at the southern border. It is not fair for other immigranrs if you bypass the whole process and just walk in. No need foe cruelty, just a lifetime ban on working or engaging in commerce as well as a ban from the immigration process entirely (you will never become an american). If they have children or give birth on US soil the restricrion still applies to the children but instead of deportation you move them to restricted border settlements where they are given a few years to migrate back. Aiding illegal migration should be a felony as well but migrating itseld should not be a crime.
If you become an american then your family should easily get a green card and come over as well.
You should also know basic english and able to contribute to the US economy before you are allowed to migrate regardless of sponsorship.
It really needs an overhaul to meet the needs and realities of today.
In many countries immigration accounts for over 100% of the growth even though their rates are lower than Canada's. Many countries would be shrinking without immigration.
There are a lot of illegal housing arrangements like 2-3 families in a basement that cities tend overlook (utility usage not matching with official data) because that's the only way they can sustain the population/economic growth without triggering NIMBYs
Can you please provide a source? According to https://data.oecd.org/price/housing-prices.htm Canada is only behind Portugal and The Netherlands in terms of housing price to income ratio.
That’s not true at all.. Almost nobody with a house in Canada has the income to buy it at current prices. The only way most people can do it is because they bought a long time ago or got an inheritance from somebody who bought a long time ago
Current liberal government is running a very wild experiment here with regards to immigration. For context, when I graduated from a Canadian university back in 2014, there was a very straightforward immigration system. The students graduating from a Canadian university would get the permanent residence within about 2yrs, inna Fast track manner. Provinces used to have their own cap and “eligibility criteria” for labor pools correlated with job categories with highest demands.
Then Canada decided to run some kind of a wild federally run “point based” immigration system starting 2015. Under that scheme, criterias such as education, job experience get you some assigned points. For example someone with a masters degree would get 20 points and someone with 10yr job experience would get 25points etc. You would qualify if your points are above some threshold and Federal government runs some kind of lotteries every few weeks to pick candidates in the qualified pool inviting them to apply.
Except the problem is now, there are too many frauds in the system. In many countries, accreditation and job experiences can be easily bought. And now that international students graduating from Canada fall under the same pool, they have to compete with these same people sometimes holding masters degrees with job experiences that are “bought”. Result is many international students are putting up with extreme delays and most wealthier populace from third world countries buying their way out the PR with fake “points”. Add to that super visa, which gives parents and grandparents of anyone in Canada with permanent residence 10yrs visa. And finally add to that the “visitors” to Canada who end up claiming asylum, many of them crossing the border from US. In this year alone that number has surpassed 35k. Just talk to any immigration attorney and the reality on the ground is abysmal, many are taking wild advantage of lenient refugee program.
Result is an extremely backlogged immigration system, rising costs of housing, slow wage growth at entry levels.
Now back to The current liberal government and media Who have basically made it equivalent to racism to even talk about this issue. Very recently, a provincial immigration minister was vilified for bringing this issue to light saying “more immigrants beyond a certain cap would be a suicide”. Which is indeed true as the strained healthcare system already shows.
Immigrants tend to come to Canada for its tolerant populace and free healthcare (at least when compared to US). But lately this is coming to a questionable reality as healthcare quality and wait times have gotten so bad many people are seeking private healthcare if they can afford. Coupled with a cost of living nightmare in most big cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, it is not a positive outlook and it can seriously turn the populace anti immigration and make this a seriously political issue as in US.
Diving deeper into StatsCan’s estimate, it becomes clear that non-permanent residents — including asylum claimants, work and study permit holders and victims of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — made up most of the new additions to Canada’s population in the second quarter of 2022
Good for StatsCan for delineating their results and publishing their methodology. I see too many studies posted on HN with little to no methodology available.
But, I fear that this estimate will be misleadingly used as a right-wing talking point. I don’t think many individuals would consider non-permanent residents to be “immigrants”. I certainly wouldn’t think the right-wingers would lump them in with the immigrants they consider to be problematic.
I've been watching some geopolitical strategists on YouTube. They seem to be expecting a collapse of the global world order. This means they need to flood North America with fresh labor to compensate for the loss of global labor or inefficiency of doing business in a war-torn international climate. Also, the demographics are bad in the first world. Low birth rates and an aging population.
I would not be surprised if the present culture was engineered to quell any dissent over the new immigration policies.
It's be hard to track the number who stay and for how long. Just because they're coming to Canada doesn't mean they stay long term.
Many immigrate, explore, then move on. Others hope that Canada is a softer immigration path into the US. This seems to have some Merritt in the past, though I'm not sure how effective that strategy is now.
I have heard this elsewhere, that Canada loses a lot of its immigrants either to return or another destination (most likely the US).
The rate of immigration is not as high as the headline number for this reason, but 20% of Canada's population is still foreign born which exceeds the historical peak in the US during the 1900s and 1910s.
Sad. Following supply and demand economics, if there is a low supply of workers and a high demand for them, then workers must be paid more. In reality, wages stagnate, culture erodes, and systems strain because those in power artificially raise the supply of workers via immigration. Unions struggle due to the social frictions of working in a multi-cultural melting pot. Countries losing folks due to immigration are being brain drained. If you try to fight against this, you're called "racist" i.e. social engineering is weaponized to manipulate you and those around you into submission. Your kindness is used against you. Capitalism at its finest /s.
I honestly don’t expect this country to stay together for more than a few more decades. What is a Canadian? The “melting pot” theory of integration is also considered racist here because Canada is a “mosaic” where everyone has the right to keep their old culture and live in an ethnic enclave with no expectation of assimilation.