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Do Canada's Immigration Targets Make Sense? · The Missing Middle Podcast

• 0:18
  Cara Stern: Hi and welcome to the Missing Middle.
• 0:20
  Cara Stern: I'm Cara Stern.
• 0:22
  Mike Moffatt: And I'm Mike Moffitt.
• 0:23
  Cara Stern: And last week the federal government introduced a cap on international student visas and, going forward, they'll be distributed to the provinces on a per capita basis.
• 0:32
  Cara Stern: But that got me thinking about Canada's immigration system in general.
• 0:36
  Cara Stern: Our openness to immigrants, we know, has always been one of Canada's great strengths, and our temporary immigration programs have some unique problems that are really tough to solve.
• 0:44
  Cara Stern: But we thought today let's talk about the permanent immigration system.
• 0:48
  Cara Stern: So, first of all, what's the difference, mike, between a permanent immigrant, permanent resident, and temporary immigration?
• 0:56
  Mike Moffatt: Yeah.
• 0:56
  Mike Moffatt: So on the non permanent side, it's people who are on a visa that will expire, so that could be international student, temporary foreign worker and so on.
• 1:08
  Mike Moffatt: And, as we've seen in our discourse, there's no cap on that.
• 1:11
  Mike Moffatt: There's no limit to that, at least until recently.
• 1:15
  Mike Moffatt: Now, what we consider, normally consider immigration is permanent residency.
• 1:20
  Mike Moffatt: So those are people who apply and, you know, are allowed to live in Canada permanently.
• 1:26
  Mike Moffatt: We do have a cap for that and we should recognize that permanent residency.
• 1:32
  Mike Moffatt: Not all of the people who obtain that are newcomers to Canada.
• 1:36
  Mike Moffatt: Some are, but some are actually non permanent residents who have been here for years and are just switching over from being non permanent to permanent.
• 1:45
  Mike Moffatt: So when we talk about, you know, an immigration target being 500,000 people, we should recognize that that doesn't mean we're going to have 500,000 newcomers, because we have newcomers who are non permanent residents.
• 1:59
  Mike Moffatt: But as well, even in that immigration target, a lot of that is people who have been here for some time obtaining permanent residency.
• 2:08
  Cara Stern: Okay, so we know the targets have moved over the years.
• 2:10
  Cara Stern: There was roughly a quarter million each year between 2001 and 2017.
• 2:14
  Cara Stern: And then the liberal government started increasing it around then to more than about 300,000 per year, and targets have increased each year since to around half a million a year right now, and that's what it looks like it's going to be in the next few years.
• 2:27
  Cara Stern: Is that a lot for our country?
• 2:30
  Mike Moffatt: So you get into these questions about like sort of relative to what.
• 2:34
  Mike Moffatt: So we can look at this in absolute terms.
• 2:36
  Mike Moffatt: Okay, you know 500,000 people.
• 2:38
  Mike Moffatt: In absolute terms the answer is yes.
• 2:41
  Mike Moffatt: I mean that is higher than I think anytime in Canadian history we kind of peeked around World War One or so but we could also look at this relative to the population.
• 2:52
  Mike Moffatt: You know how many?
• 2:53
  Mike Moffatt: You know how high is our immigration target relative to the overall size of the population?
• 2:59
  Mike Moffatt: So if we have a target of 500,000 people and a population of 40 million, there's basically 12 new immigrants for every 1000 people.
• 3:12
  Mike Moffatt: That's a little bit higher than in recent years.
• 3:14
  Mike Moffatt: We've been, you know, closer to that eight to nine level for the last 30 years or so.
• 3:20
  Mike Moffatt: So you know it is somewhat of an increase but it's, you know, much, much lower than other periods in history.
• 3:26
  Mike Moffatt: You know we had years in the 50s, 60s and 70s we were closer to that 15 to 20 level and again around World War One we were closer to 60 out of 1000.
• 3:36
  Mike Moffatt: So you know, relative to the size of the population, it's, you know it's nowhere near the highest levels.
• 3:44
  Mike Moffatt: And you know we have to realize that we're a much larger country than we used to be.
• 3:48
  Mike Moffatt: So again you get into this debate versus relative, versus absolute size, but certainly in absolute size it is the largest that we've ever had.
• 3:58
  Cara Stern: Do we know where people are coming from?
• 4:01
  Cara Stern: For permanent residency versus for temporary immigration?
• 4:04
  Cara Stern: Is there a difference of where they're coming from?
• 4:06
  Mike Moffatt: Yeah, there's a lot of.
• 4:08
  Mike Moffatt: You know there's differences between the groups, that for permanent residency they tend to be older, it tends to be a wider distribution of countries, whereas because a lot of our non-permanent residency is on the international student side, they tend to skew younger and they tend to skew from a couple different countries India and China.
• 4:29
  Mike Moffatt: So there are, you know, big differences between the two.
• 4:33
  Mike Moffatt: Again, on immigration, you know that sort of median age tends to be 28 and 29.
• 4:39
  Mike Moffatt: But you know you get some 30-year-olds and some 83-year-olds and some 3-year-olds, whereas on the non-permanent side it tends to be more clustered around people, you know, late teenage or early 20s and so on.
• 4:54
  Cara Stern: Why do we need constant growth into the country?
• 4:58
  Mike Moffatt: Well, we don't necessarily need constant growth, and I would say, in fact, our issue is that we've had non constant growth, that our population growth has been all over the place in recent years and it's made it really difficult to plan.
• 5:14
  Mike Moffatt: So I actually think having some more certainty helps with planning.
• 5:20
  Mike Moffatt: I think over the last few years we've seen the challenges we have when our population growth rates are all over the place and we really can't make sure that we have not just enough housing but enough schools and healthcare and so on to keep track of that.
• 5:34
  Cara Stern: Yeah, I hear that a lot these days, things like people talking about how we have so many new people in this country, we don't have enough housing for people already here and we don't have enough family doctors, and so I hear people saying why don't we just kind of pause it or at least lower immigration levels temporarily until we kind of get that under control and then go back up to opening our doors as wide as they've been?
• 5:58
  Cara Stern: I know that there are valid concerns about housing and medicine.
• 6:02
  Cara Stern: Of course these are real things.
• 6:03
  Cara Stern: But what would happen if you were to sort of freeze immigration temporarily while we try to get that under control?
• 6:10
  Mike Moffatt: Yeah, so a couple of things.
• 6:11
  Mike Moffatt: So again, I hear this a lot.
• 6:13
  Mike Moffatt: I think there's some challenges to this question.
• 6:15
  Mike Moffatt: But first of all, I think it conflates population growth with immigration.
• 6:18
  Mike Moffatt: Right, and those are two different things.
• 6:20
  Mike Moffatt: But I do think there is a reasonable argument to have about how high immigration targets should be and so on.
• 6:27
  Mike Moffatt: But we also have to really like the healthcare one, I think is a prime example, because immigration affects both the demand and supply side of healthcare.
• 6:36
  Mike Moffatt: And if we look at immigration to Canada, it's an awful lot of personal support, workers and nurses and so on.
• 6:44
  Mike Moffatt: So you get that kind of challenge where you say, okay, yeah, if we're ratcheting down population growth, maybe we don't need to expand our healthcare system as much.
• 6:52
  Mike Moffatt: But who's going to work in our long term care facilities and questions like that?
• 6:56
  Mike Moffatt: So I do again, I think it's a reasonable debate to have about how high the cap should be.
• 7:02
  Mike Moffatt: There's nothing magic about 500,000.
• 7:05
  Mike Moffatt: But overall we have to sort of recognize that the newcomers to Canada are, you know, both affected demand side and the supply side of whether it be housing or education or healthcare or so on.
• 7:20
  Cara Stern: But of course we know that people coming here as personal support workers, for example, that might be one person in the family that may come with a few other people who all need healthcare and they all need a place to live.
• 7:30
  Cara Stern: Does it balance out in your mind?
• 7:34
  Mike Moffatt: Well, I think, if the system is well designed, that it should.
• 7:39
  Mike Moffatt: And I do think there are questions about, you know, canada's point system for immigration and, you know, are we bringing in enough of this group and enough of that group?
• 7:50
  Mike Moffatt: Are we bringing in enough workers versus, you know, younger kids versus older, like?
• 7:58
  Mike Moffatt: I think those are all useful discussions to have, but again, we should recognize that, you know, the bulk of our immigration tends to be people between, like, the ages of 25 and 40.
• 8:10
  Mike Moffatt: Right, it's a lot of your kind of young, talented labor force and it is a challenge to fill these roles without those newcomers.
• 8:18
  Cara Stern: Is there a way like looking at this as an economist?
• 8:20
  Cara Stern: Can you determine like an optimal number of immigrants that should be in the country that is, like a sustainable number that makes sense?
• 8:27
  Cara Stern: Is there an optimal number?
• 8:29
  Mike Moffatt: Unfortunately no, and I think that's one of the that's what makes this such a such a debate, right, that's, you know there are any number of things that you look at.
• 8:38
  Mike Moffatt: You go OK, well, optimal for what?
• 8:40
  Mike Moffatt: Optimal for the health care system, the housing system, you know, optimal for Canadian culture?
• 8:45
  Mike Moffatt: So, so it really it really depends on, you know, not just the number, but you know, the talent and the skills of the people being brought in.
• 8:54
  Mike Moffatt: You know what it, what they contribute to Canadian culture.
• 8:58
  Mike Moffatt: So it gets very, very messy very, very fast.
• 9:01
  Mike Moffatt: But I do think there are, you know, real concerns out there that we're not, you know, linking properly, linking immigration to the other things we need.
• 9:10
  Mike Moffatt: And there's also issues around planning.
• 9:11
  Mike Moffatt: I actually don't think this gets enough attention.
• 9:15
  Mike Moffatt: That you know how we've traditionally, over the last few years, set our immigration targets is basically, they get announced in November for whatever the next year is.
• 9:25
  Mike Moffatt: So that's a challenge in planning.
• 9:28
  Mike Moffatt: If we're go OK, you know we're going to find out, you know, within two months notice, what those immigration targets are going to be.
• 9:36
  Mike Moffatt: You know, I do think we need to look at having longer term planning.
• 9:40
  Mike Moffatt: You know maybe five and 10 year plans and so on, you know, which would help us better align these things?
• 9:46
  Mike Moffatt: So I find oftentimes the number itself.
• 9:50
  Mike Moffatt: It gets way too much attention because it's easy to understand, but all of those nuances about OK, well, how much notice do we give about the number?
• 10:01
  Mike Moffatt: You know what is our system for determining, you know which 500,000 or 300,000 people will be, and so on.
• 10:08
  Mike Moffatt: I mean, those are the, you know, the really important questions that determine whether or not our immigration system is working.
• 10:16
  Mike Moffatt: But they tend to.
• 10:17
  Mike Moffatt: They're complex, so you know they don't make for as good a discussion.
• 10:22
  Cara Stern: One of the most shocking things since I started covering this area as a journalist is that I didn't realize the Ministry of Immigration and the Ministry of Housing don't seem to talk to each other.
• 10:32
  Cara Stern: At least they haven't historically.
• 10:33
  Cara Stern: I hope they are now.
• 10:34
  Cara Stern: It seems like they might be a little bit more now, but those numbers were never linked.
• 10:38
  Cara Stern: Like how does that make sense?
• 10:40
  Cara Stern: Why did that happen?
• 10:41
  Mike Moffatt: Yeah, I think overall that we make policy in silos and this is not just an immigration problem, it's just a general problem.
• 10:50
  Mike Moffatt: And here's where I think that longer term planning can come into place right, that if we had sort of 10-year immigration targets with yearly targets, then we can make sure not just that there's enough housing but enough healthcare and education and so on.
• 11:06
  Mike Moffatt: I think that would go a long way to it, even if they do talk to each other and the immigration department said in November okay, by the way, we're going to be increasing it by this much, that's not enough time to build houses and schools and roads and so on.
• 11:26
  Mike Moffatt: So it is a real problem and I would like to see the federal government come up with longer term plans.
• 11:33
  Mike Moffatt: You recognize that we are in a democracy.
• 11:35
  Mike Moffatt: Governments will change, new governments will come in to have different priorities.
• 11:40
  Mike Moffatt: That's all fine, but we need to as much as possible, we need to plan these things out better.
• 11:46
  Cara Stern: It feels a little bit like that they must have known, they should have been able to forecast that housing prices would get out of control, given population growth.
• 11:54
  Cara Stern: It feels a little bit like they must be able to forecast that and they did it anyways, for economic reasons.
• 12:01
  Cara Stern: Do you feel that way?
• 12:05
  Mike Moffatt: I do a little bit Again where I think their failure to forecast is on the non-permanent side.
• 12:10
  Mike Moffatt: Right, because that's where the growth has been and has completely caught the federal government off guard.
• 12:16
  Mike Moffatt: Statistics Canada does population forecasting every so often.
• 12:20
  Mike Moffatt: They haven't updated their forecast since August 2022 and they're just like laughably out of date.
• 12:27
  Mike Moffatt: Right, they ended up massively under forecasting.
• 12:31
  Cara Stern: Yeah, I remember that's something I learned from you about how they didn't even seem to know how many people were coming into the country on student visas, right, yeah, absolutely, and they weren't able to forecast things and some of it is hard to forecast.
• 12:45
  Mike Moffatt: We do have an increased number of refugees from Ukraine, right?
• 12:49
  Mike Moffatt: So I don't think you can fault the federal government for not being able to properly predict the Russian invasion and things like that.
• 12:58
  Mike Moffatt: Events are going to happen, that's fine.
• 13:00
  Mike Moffatt: But, yeah, overall, the federal government's done an absolutely lousy job at doing population forecasts.
• 13:08
  Mike Moffatt: So I don't think they saw this coming.
• 13:11
  Mike Moffatt: I do think they understand the linkages between immigration targets and housing.
• 13:19
  Mike Moffatt: I mean, that became clear in an access to information request that a reporter did recently.
• 13:26
  Mike Moffatt: But I don't really I don't think they saw this population growth happening and I think they were caught off guard by it.
• 13:34
  Cara Stern: Is it possible to tie it to housing starts, tie immigration levels, or really population growth, to housing starts, or is it always going to be the case that people are coming in here faster than we can possibly get things built?
• 13:47
  Mike Moffatt: I think you can and I think this is where this long term planning comes in that if we're, if we're tying, you know, announcing these immigration targets, you know, two months before the next year, no, I don't think they can really be linked, or at least in any kind of meaningful way.
• 14:04
  Mike Moffatt: You know, they would just be saying, ok, well, this is what we think, housing starts is going to be next year and then this is going to tie our immigration to that.
• 14:11
  Mike Moffatt: But if we did longer term planning, then we could start to link these things together much, much better.
• 14:18
  Mike Moffatt: So so that's again, it's all this kind of long termism versus short termism, and I guess, like, if this discussion has a theme, it's that all of these decisions that were made are not only just made in silos but they're, you know, really ultra short term focus.
• 14:35
  Mike Moffatt: There's been a complete lack of any kind of long term, long term planning, and I think it's causing us all kinds of difficulties.
• 14:44
  Cara Stern: That's all for us today on the Missing Middle.
• 14:45
  Cara Stern: Thanks so much for watching and listening and thanks, as always, to our amazing producer, meredith Martin.
• 14:50
  Mike Moffatt: Please like, subscribe or leave a comment.
• 14:52
  Mike Moffatt: We'd absolutely love to hear from you.
• 14:55
  Cara Stern: And we'll see you next time.