Canada to cut immigration levels in a major reversal

October 25, 2024 8:09 AM

The poll found that more than two-thirds of Canadians agree that immigration has a positive economic impact. The biggest reason they gave for saying there is too much immigration is its impact on housing prices. (slWP - but archive.ph)
posted by Kitteh (44 comments total)

Ah, Trudeau. Pivoting far enough to the right that it offends Liberal values and is a middle finger to everyone to his left, while - so obviously - not doing anything that would convince a Poilievre voter to switch.

To say nothing of this not remotely addressing the financialization, low quality, barriers to construction, etc. that are massive parts of the housing crisis.
posted by sagc at 8:17 AM on October 25 [17 favorites]

Great, another "blame immigrants" bit of bullshit. Immigrants aren't the problem, investors in general are the problem, and especially short term rentals are the problem. It's capitalism that needs to be checked, not immigration.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:20 AM on October 25 [47 favorites]

I think that as the impacts of climate change become increasingly apparent we're going to see more and more of this from countries in the global north; I think people in those countries are going to panic at the idea (and reality) of mass migration from places that have grown inhospitable or uninhabitable and close down borders. A lot of countries, including many that view themselves as progressive, already have tight restrictions on immigration (including denying people who are disabled) and I think that this is going to accelerate as people panic in the face of overwhelming need. I am scared for everyone and hope we can fight back against what I think is likely to be a trend.
posted by an octopus IRL at 8:30 AM on October 25 [23 favorites]

Takes from the CBC; Radio-Canada (google translated from the original French).
posted by senor biggles at 8:38 AM on October 25

Oh absolutely, immigrants are being scapegoated. Too little housing? Immigrants. Not enough jobs?* Immigrants.

I myself am an immigrant to this country and it gets REEEEEEAL telling when I mention to the angry idiots when I say, "Well, I have clearly taken one of your jobs, but I guess it's okay because I look white, right?"


*Is the Temporary Worker Permit program being abused? Absolutely but it's businesses at fault there, not the folks who get the jobs. It stands to mention that a lot of the jobs in question are very low paying, easily exploitable, and apparently too good for white Canadians to do
posted by Kitteh at 8:39 AM on October 25 [20 favorites]

I'd like to add that I wish it were just PP supporters angry about immigration but I am hearing some wild shit from folks who generally vote Liberal or NDP about there being too many immigrants (but of course, they are also very specific about what kind of immigrants they are talking about).
posted by Kitteh at 8:45 AM on October 25 [6 favorites]

Adjusting the numbers on immigrants by 20% one way or the other doesn't scare me as much as Canada curtailing student visas does. Cutting student visas is how you undermine secondary education in your country by taking away one of its largest sources of funding. Enrollment will drop, tuition will go up, programs will be cut and it will be the young who pay or go untrained/uneducated. This will make housing even less affordable because the people who could buy homes are instead either paying even larger education mortgages or are not in the college graduate job market because they didn't go.

The other issue with Canadian immigration is that it can't really be ethically managed. There are plenty of places that really desperately need population increases in order to be sustainable but nobody wants to live in those places so the communities are just dying off but you really can't reasonably force people live in rural or remote Canada.
posted by srboisvert at 8:55 AM on October 25 [6 favorites]

I don't think we can blame our current housing crisis on any one issue other than underbuilding? Isn't that the bottom line? Insufficient supply for our population?

I mean sure this is a multi-factor multi-faceted problem, housing as investment, unplanned population growth, NIMBYism, etc etc. But would any of the above be issues if we had enough homes for the people who live here?

And digging deeper than that, why do we have undersupply?

1. Govt stopped building social housing in the 90s
2. Our construction sector sucks

Re: point number 2, most of our sectors suck. Ontario, Canada's most populous province and the supposed economic engine of the nation, has the same GDP per capita as Alabama, a state near the bottom of most indices. To me that is the net-net of all of this. Canada needs to improve its productivity.

https://thehub.ca/2023/06/15/trevor-tombe-most-provincial-economies-struggle-to-match-the-u-s/
posted by sid at 8:56 AM on October 25 [4 favorites]

I don't think we can blame our current housing crisis on any one issue other than underbuilding?

I'd be hard pressed to look around Toronto and say it's underbuilding at all. There are countless buildings being erected but foreign ownership, greedy landlords, and shit rent control are the problem in my eyes.

If anything is being underbuilt, it's multi-family dwellings, but I don't think underbuilding as a blanket issue is the problem.
posted by dobbs at 9:00 AM on October 25 [12 favorites]

On a somewhat related note, does anyone know who's responsible for these handbills? (self-link) They're fantastic, and I'd like to donate to the cause if possible.
posted by dobbs at 9:01 AM on October 25 [5 favorites]

Isn't that the bottom line? Insufficient supply for our population?

some years ago, I recall there being an official govt report that basically concluded Canada was underpopulated ... and the way forward was increased immigration, which if handled right, would only benefit the country.

One of the obvious tactics should have been a serious focus on housing (and related). But, of course, come election time (any election really) all the average person wants is to pay way less tax and get way more services. Which of course doesn't add up but who ever said the average person is rational? I believe this also explains the current, barely short of disastrous, shortage of doctors and overall access to proper medical care.

It's always a brutally hard sell to pay now to avoid future fuckups, particularly when you've got populist demagogues hogging up so much of the media oxygen ... and those aforementioned not particularly rational average people eating it up.
posted by philip-random at 9:10 AM on October 25 [4 favorites]

If anything is being underbuilt, it's multi-family dwellings,

Nailed it. Out of all the condo buildings being built, none are designed for families. They are studio/1 br/2 br shoeboxes only really serve the purpose of being investments. The ones that are 3 br still aren't big enough because builders have a hard time selling those. Also, they aren't really designed for families in this TO Star link.

I love me some urban density but if we aren't building homes for everyone, what's the point? (Money, Kitteh. Money is the point.) All the family homes being built are suburban or damn near rural (oh how the landscape has changed in small towns around the GTA!).
posted by Kitteh at 9:21 AM on October 25 [11 favorites]

@dobbs, I think the posters were originated by Spring Magazine.
posted by hepta at 9:22 AM on October 25 [3 favorites]

With respect to housing, isn't there only so much that can be done at a federal level? Hasn't this been, for the most part, a provincial issue?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:27 AM on October 25 [2 favorites]

They sucked his brains out!, I have become alarmingly aware that the average Canadian apparently doesn't know what level of government is responsible for what so it's all Trudeau's doing, apparently.
posted by Kitteh at 9:29 AM on October 25 [9 favorites]

lot of the jobs in question are very low paying, easily exploitable, and apparently too good for white Canadians to do

Too good for the pay offered. There isn't a job in Canada that wouldn't have Canadians falling all over themselves to do if it paid $100 per hour and in practically all cases a lot less.

If you can't pay your people enough to attract talent and instead have to import abusable labour from outside of Canada long term you aren't running a business you are running a hobby; and we shouldn't support that with TFW programs.

but I don't think underbuilding as a blanket issue is the problem.

Toronto not the only place in Canada. I can't think of a single city in BC that wouldn't benefit from plonking down hundreds or thousands of missing middle housing units. If the private sector won't build it the government should.

With respect to housing, isn't there only so much that can be done at a federal level? Hasn't this been, for the most part, a provincial issue?

The federal government can dangle funds in front of provincial legislators. Come to Kamloops, invite who ever is going to be running the province next month, and offer 25 million dollars to put up six story mixed use non market housing on any of the large commercial lots on the North Shore main drags that are currently empty or occupied by tax buildings and see the lower levels of government break out in a sweat accepting the funds.

Might not fly in Alberta but anywhere not actively engaged in baiting the leopards to eat their faces is going to sign on.
posted by Mitheral at 9:44 AM on October 25 [12 favorites]

it's all Trudeau's doing, apparently

It feels almost like Trudeau believes his critics, or his party does, to the extent that he and they are going along with Conservative talking points on the matter. Whereas immigration is a federal matter they have control over, and which does seem to have (positive) consequences for the economic wellbeing of Canadians:

Immigration prevented a recession last year, but looming changes could stall growth: economists

Economic measures such as the gross domestic product (GDP) have been moving in a positive direction, economists say, in part because Canada's population has continued to increase due to rising immigration levels.

Statistics Canada reported in March that the country's population grew in 2023 by about 1.3 million, and 97.6 per cent of that growth was the result of immigration.

People hit by inflation in food prices and housing costs are probably not going to believe what economists say, but these seem to be measureable outcomes. This does seem like an own goal.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:47 AM on October 25 [4 favorites]

Great, another "blame immigrants" bit of bullshit. Immigrants aren't the problem, investors in general are the problem, and especially short term rentals are the problem. It's capitalism that needs to be checked, not immigration.

I want to point out that capitalism does get checked once immigration labor flows get reduced. Investment/growth based economies have been reliant on the theory that persistent growth is possible, but that seems to be fueled by population growth only. If population declines, labour shortages appear and the consumer base declines, which attacks capitalism directly. Reducing immigration wouldn't have attacked capitalism if domestic fertility rates were above replacement. However, hey are below-replacement now, so I think restrictive immigration does challenge current capitalist economic models.
posted by DetriusXii at 9:53 AM on October 25 [4 favorites]

Too good for the pay offered. There isn't a job in Canada that wouldn't have Canadians falling all over themselves to do if it paid $100 per hour and in practically all cases a lot less.


There was a job listing for a UPS driver here in Kingston, starting pay $17/hr, with pay going after a certain time period. All the anti-immigrant folks were like scoffing at the starting pay--with a few folks who did work for UPS going, it's pretty great once you get that pay bump and getting downvoted--so you're right. They want super high paying jobs without having to struggle to get there.
posted by Kitteh at 10:01 AM on October 25 [2 favorites]

Investment/growth based economies have been reliant on the theory that persistent growth is possible, but that seems to be fueled by population growth only.

This isn't really true. 'GDP' - which are measurements of the size of economies, if this was true, would simply be a function of population, but that's not true in any real sense. Growth can be increased by improving productive output -- moving up the chain in terms of value vs raw inputs, and by exporting knowledge to other countries.

Economic growth, in productive countries, is hurt by lack of immigrants because there are extremely productive workers who need to be supported, by new workers or automation, whose output is curtailed.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:10 AM on October 25

This isn't really true. 'GDP' - which are measurements of the size of economies, if this was true, would simply be a function of population, but that's not true in any real sense. Growth can be increased by improving productive output -- moving up the chain in terms of value vs raw inputs, and by exporting knowledge to other countries.

Economic growth, in productive countries, is hurt by lack of immigrants because there are extremely productive workers who need to be supported, by new workers or automation, whose output is curtailed.

That assumes that there will always be an immigrant underclass to sustain the first world, but that disappears by 2080, because the world goes into below-replacement fertility rates everywhere.

So if the North American economy is reliant on immigrants to sustain itself to make the extremely productive workers supported, what happens when there's no more immigrants to be found? Import immigrants from Mars and Venus to sustain an economic model that's reliant on an underclass to prop up 'extremely productive' workers?
posted by DetriusXii at 10:23 AM on October 25 [2 favorites]

if domestic fertility rates were above replacement.

Oh, they've got a plan for that too.

You won't like it, but they do have a plan, and they do intend to act on it.
posted by aramaic at 10:39 AM on October 25 [3 favorites]

Canada has a plan for that?
posted by Selena777 at 10:42 AM on October 25

I wonder if this is a sop to the "Replace Justin" caucus inside the federal Liberals to get them to back off long enough so that he has a chance to really lose to PP on his own terms?

(and I just realized that I haven't read the term "Grits" for Liberal members for decades. It was a thing when we arrived 20+ years ago. "Grits vs Gits" might sum up the election campaign aptly.)
posted by scruss at 10:59 AM on October 25 [3 favorites]

As an immigrant myself, I'm very much pro-immigration. That said,

- the temporary foreign workers program is a breeding ground for slavery, and
- i don't see the benefit of admitting hundreds of thousands of foreign students so they can be ripped off by attending diploma mills

i think the way these cuts are being done is too rashly & its screwing people over, but the idea that we're importing large populations of vulnerable people so they can be exploited by our corporations, our landlords, and our college administrators makes intuitive sense, at least for these two categories of immigrants.
posted by pmv at 11:19 AM on October 25 [13 favorites]

i don't see the benefit of admitting hundreds of thousands of foreign students so they can be ripped off by attending diploma mills

Agree 1000%.

The problem is, even the real universities are going to go bankrupt without international student fees because of the lack of government funding (in Ontario anyway) (archive.org link of a Globe and Mail op ed.) For Americans, the provincial government caps domestic tuition - Ford actually cut what universities were allowed to charge by 10% in 2019 - and also hasn't increased funding in line with inflation [edit: meaning universities cannot legally raise tuition costs for domestic students - not that I want students to pay more, but they literally cannot change their income that way.] The universities have survived largely on the backs of international students (seriously, read that article.)

Eyewatering quote: "Ontario is our richest and most populated province, and yet students from India alone channelled more money – $2-billion, in fact – into its higher-education system in 2023 than the province did."

Canada is still operating under colonial economics. I don't have a solution off the top of my head. I think it's morally indefensible to be capping immigration during a time of rapid fire climate change. Fund housing, health care and education. If we can't do that, figure out why.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:31 AM on October 25 [13 favorites]

Well, this will be a nice real world Econ test case in the coming years.
What happens when housing prices continue to rise? Will they blame space aliens?
When will they finally blame corporations for conspiring to rig rent increases?
What happens when new home building slows enough to effect lumber and timber prices?
Thanks, Canada!
posted by pthomas745 at 11:32 AM on October 25 [4 favorites]

Careful what you wish for.
posted by Czjewel at 11:36 AM on October 25 [1 favorite]

When I was a graduate student in the early 2000s, I was the student rep to our board of governors.

I remember hearing really frank talk in meetings and conferences at the time about increasing foreign students as a cheat code to bypass declining provincial funding. It never seemed sustainable to me and was a band-aid solution that kicked the can of post-secondary education funding down the road.

The reality is that right-wing and centre-right provincial and federal governments have spent the last 40+ years decreasing the tax burden of the richest Canadian citizens & corporations while slowly bleeding key social programs (including education) dry.

I can only hope that seeing post-secondary schools in crisis once they can't rely on exploitative foreign tuition rates will make people angry enough to demand some actual change.

Then again, I live in a province where the Liberals have chosen the most conservative of all their leadership candidates to run against Doug Ford and the NDP are not looked at as a viable option, unfortunately.
posted by Dalekdad at 11:46 AM on October 25 [7 favorites]

I find the situation funny in that up to now all the news articles and people on the street were saying there was too much immigration and it's all Trudeau's fault but now that he's proposing a 20% cut, which is over 350,000 new immigrants per year, all of a sudden we're hearing stories about how this will cause huge problems. So really, there were too many immigrants coming before but a 20% reduction is too much, would they have been happy with a 10% cut? What's the level of immigration that would make these people happy? Answer, there isn't one they were just using immigration as a way to pin the blame for various issues on the Federal government when really these are primarily Provincial responsibilities.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:05 PM on October 25 [6 favorites]

i think the way these cuts are being done is too rashly & its screwing people over, but the idea that we're importing large populations of vulnerable people so they can be exploited by our corporations, our landlords, and our college administrators makes intuitive sense, at least for these two categories of immigrants.

Agreed. We are creating a slavery system; there have been immigrants on the TWP talking about how they are tied to a business like a Timmy's or Canadian Tire, and their boss can adjust their wage willy-nilly or have them work long hours without pay and no one in power seems to give a shit.

But Canadians aren't seeing that. Instead of seeing exploitation--as I feel they should--they are seeing favouritism bestowed on immigrants. And it simply isn't true but the psychotic rhetoric of our southern neighbour has let the openly and proudly racist genies out of the bottle.
posted by Kitteh at 12:07 PM on October 25 [6 favorites]

So if the North American economy is reliant on immigrants to sustain itself to make the extremely productive workers supported, what happens when there's no more immigrants to be found?

Same thing in any closed economy: automation, and smart people who could theoretically be far more productive are stuck digging ditches when it's required, but mostly stuff just decays. Low production value jobs are done away with. Bye libraries and pools and lifeguards and such. Children go to work.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:01 PM on October 25

Fun fact: at over $37B Canadian, education is Canada's third largest export. Beyond tuition, this includes rent, living expenses and other discretionary spending by foreign students in Canada. It's well behind oil ($120B+) and vehicles/vehicle parts ($67B) but ahead of natural gas ($33B) and gold ($27B).
posted by senor biggles at 2:08 PM on October 25 [8 favorites]

Not to be outdone, Ontario Premier Doug Ford plans to bar international students from studying medicine. Because we clearly have too many doctors!
posted by rodlymight at 5:12 PM on October 25 [2 favorites]

rodlymight, I am fucking furious at this

It's not the lack of domestic students that is hindering the family doctor goal; it's that a massive amount of students don't want to be a primary care physician once they get a taste of the commitment. It's intense, thankless, and the overhead costs eat you alive with very little help from the provincial government.
posted by Kitteh at 5:50 PM on October 25 [4 favorites]

The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage by Blair Fix

At the same time, there are too many people living in the available space too, but that's because they consume excessively, including turning too much land into parking lots, malls, etc. Another topic..
posted by jeffburdges at 6:27 PM on October 25 [1 favorite]

Wealth disparity is a big factor in the lack of housing in Canada. In my current town, some people are living Soviet conditions with several families crammed into one house. Most people live in crowded conditions. Yet there are a lot of fully furnished 2 bedroom units in town that are empty most of the year. These are built and owned by wealthy non-residents who want a pied-a-terre in town. Only the wealthy can afford to build in Canada now. Which is crazy because just 10 years ago anyone with an average job could afford to build a home. I don't understand how this enormous change is not the focus of the national conversation on housing affordability.
posted by SnowRottie at 6:43 PM on October 25 [5 favorites]

This is a pretty good article on the housing crisis and its relation to immigration which dispels the myth.
The investor class is why housing, more than any other single reason, is so problematic in this country. As long as there is profit and investors all the building on earth won't make housing affordable in this country. I live in Vancouver and it is a goddamned shitshow as far as housing goes.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 7:29 PM on October 25 [6 favorites]

^ that article is really good. I can think of at least 4 people I know who never sold their starter homes, but instead sized up and held on to the starter to rent out.
I argued in a previous post to encourage these people the liquidate by allowing a tax holiday - sell your old starter home in the next three years and we won’t tax the capital gains. Instead they went the opposite and taxed MORE.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:45 PM on October 25 [1 favorite]

Australian economist Leith Van Onselen commenting on how high immigration can lead to lower real gdp growth.
posted by Narrative_Historian at 1:11 AM on October 27 [2 favorites]

It'd be nice if GDP were replaced by GDP per capita basically everywhere.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:55 AM on October 27

Immigration ranked 5th in this gallup poll, but no idea how housing impacts that concern much, probably not really.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:10 PM on October 27

A poll about U.S. voter concerns is not really relevant here, since their immigration and housing situations are both wildly different from Canada's. Immigration has become a huge topic in Canadian politics in the last few years (immigration numbers have recently spiked while the housing crisis and the healthcare crisis have intensified) so Canadian voter opinions may be quite different.

It's unfortunate that it's become such a charged issue politically because it's so much more complicated than immigration being good or bad. The current situation is overly restrictive for certain categories of immigrants (like the family doctor who was recently deported for not being an appealing enough candidate based on the points system) but also has recently added huge loopholes for large numbers of unskilled foreign workers in minimum wage jobs. Sure, it means more Tim Hortons can be profitable, and a certain level is essential, but the recent spike put even more stress on the collapsing healthcare system and skyrocketing housing costs. I don't know what the magic number is, or whether this decrease is too much, but I do think that maybe it's not the best time for the record-setting population growth increases (growing faster than any other G7 country) that we've had leading up to these changes. Speaking as a far-left voter who is one of the millions of Canadians with no family doctor (for years, with no hope of that changing) and therefore little to no access to any non-emergency medical care.
posted by randomnity at 5:40 PM on October 27 [2 favorites]

Careful what you wish for...

I... wish for government funding for the construction of medium-rise housing, transit, and proper health care: kinda like in Scandinavia?
posted by ovvl at 7:55 PM on October 27 [3 favorites]