trudeau should learn from other centre-left democracies about slowing sky-high migration
douglas todd: it’s become the new thing among the west's centre-left politicians — to regret the super-charged migration rates of the past three years. and acknowledging they've been hurting the finances of many, including the young.
5 minute read
"there should be an honest conversation about what the rise in international migration means for canada as we plan ahead," immigration minister marc miller said earlier this year.
sean kilpatrick
/
the canadian press
it has become the new thing among centre-left politicians — to bemoan the super-charged migration rates of the past three years.
australia’s labour prime minister anthony albanese now says his country’s migration system “isn’t working properly.”
britain’s new labour prime minister keir starmer says his nation needs to be “less reliant on migration.”
the european union has sped up deportations of undocumented migrants by 50 per cent — urged on by french president emmanual macron and german chancellor olaf scholz. britain is doing the same.
u.s. president joe biden and vice-president kamala harris, the presumptive democratic presidential nominee, have trimmed illegal migration at the mexican border. crossing numbers, although still prodigious at 80,000 a month, are now the lowest in three years.
the foreign-born population in western democracies has been increasing at the rate of almost five per cent a year since early 2022. before that, the pace was about 1.5 per cent a year.
centre-left politicians are responding to polling that increasingly shows the public doubting the benefits of the record migration wave since the pandemic.
politicians are also being warned by mainstream economists that there comes a point when bringing in migrants to support the labour market actually unravels it, particularly in regard to individuals’ standard of living.
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in canada, politicians are reluctantly expressing discomfort with the past nine years of record migration.
prime minister justin trudeau said in april the number of temporary guest workers and foreign students in canada was “out of control” and “growing at a rate far beyond what canada has been able to absorb.” as is his habit, however, trudeau made it seem like he was talking about someone else’s policy mistake.
the relatively new immigration minister, marc miller, talks a bit tougher, lamenting things like the “perverse effects” and “lack of integrity” in canada’s migration system. “there should be an honest conversation,“ he said, “about what the rise in international migration means for canada as we plan ahead.”
as politicians who stress optics over follow through, we can be sure trudeau and miller read opinion surveys. and they show canadians’ decades-long support for reasonable levels of migration is falling in light of the liberals’ push to levels that even staid bank economists find unreasonable.
last month, market research firm leger discovered 60 per cent of canadians now think there are “too many” newcomers. that’s a huge shift from just 35 per cent in 2019. it’s even true for young adult canadians, whose ratio of disapproval is 57 per cent.
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in australia, which like canada has been built on immigration, now only 10 per cent want “more immigration.” the comparative figure among canadians, according to leger, is three per cent.
source: leger, metropolis, association for canadian studies
despite the public musings from trudeau and miller, however, actual signs of reduced numbers of migrants in canada are hard to discern. no clear downward trend in temporary residents is visible.
meanwhile, many champions of business, such as canada’s century initiative, adamantly support the principles of free trade, including ever-higher levels of global mobility of both capital and humans.
the influential economist magazine has been among them. but, perhaps surprisingly, it has recently begun pointing out there can be downsides to what it calls “sky-high immigration.”
the biggest concerns, especially for canada, regard how record rapid population growth from international migration can seriously harm individuals’ standard of living and access to housing.
our standard of living is best measured as gross domestic product per person, which is the amount of wealth each individual has compared to the entire economic pie. people who live in countries with higher real gdp per capita tend to be more educated and live longer.
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and the economist, which is almost a bible for the business class, warns gdp per person went down in britain, germany and especially canada as migration levels jumped. gdp per person, the economist acknowledges, would improve with a temporary clampdown on bringing in foreign workers, especially low-skill workers, which is a category that governments have increasingly been choosing.
it’s hard to exaggerate how bad things have become in regard to canada’s gdp per person. the oecd, made up of 38 mostly wealthy nations, has warned that canada’s gdp per capita is not only dramatically falling, it is projected to perform the worst of any oecd country up to 2060.
the royal bank of canada worries gdp per person has already dropped three per cent below 2019 levels, which were not promising to begin with. in the u.s., gdp per person is now $84,000 us. in canada, it’s a paltry $53,000 us.
the royal bank’s economists connect the decline to the fact the country has welcomed almost 2.7 million guest workers, most of them international students who are allowed to work, in two years.
labour economist mikal skuterud of the university of waterloo has become one of the strongest voices in the country for warning the federal liberals have been caving in to big corporations who want to increase their profit margins not through innovation but by bringing in cheap labour and more consumers.
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the scheme is hurting many, including the newcomers themselves. economist mike moffatt, of the place centre, says high volumes of guest workers are contributing to hardship for young people. “excluding the pandemic,” he said, canada’s “employment rates for 20- to 24-year-olds are the worst they’ve been in over 25 years.”
then there is the cost of buying and renting housing — reducing soaring migration would likely reduce inflation in real estate.
goldman sachs found that in australia each 100,000 decline in annual net migration reduces rents by about one per cent. in britain, as migration has gone down, so too has the pace of rent increases.
the lesson is obvious for canada, where international migration rates hover far above other countries, and where urban housing prices are among the worst in the world and rents are stratospheric. nowhere is that more true than in gateway cities. in greater toronto, according to liv.rent, the average monthly price of a one-bedroom is $2,228, and in metro vancouver it’s $2,361.
alas, since wages are lower in metro vancouver than in much of the rest of canada, royal lepage says 27 per cent of households in metro vancouver pay more than half their net income in rent, a frightful proportion that is almost double the national average.
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migration can lift economies, but it can also hurt economies. since most of the world’s populous countries accept virtually no immigrants, the trick for the western countries that do is to find the most beneficial balance of migration levels and entry criteria.
and right now, canada should be looking to other democracies for advice on how to do that.
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