My father immigrated to Canada in October 1967. It was the year of the World’s Fair in Montreal. Canada was on display and shined abroad. As Sir Wilfrid Laurier predicted in 1904, the XXe century was announced as “the century of Canada and its development”.
The Expo had an impact on my father’s decision to settle in Montreal. The political and economic situation in his home country, Syria, was deteriorating; repeated coups d’état, rapprochement with the Soviet Union and a command economy with expropriations and nationalization of industries as a result. Not to mention the Six Day War of 1967, which foreshadowed tensions in the region. All this offered him very few prospects.
Yesterday as today, the same reasons recur for emigrating: armed or religious conflicts, insecurity, authoritarianism or lack of rights and economic prospects. Climate change has been added to this list of challenges, several of which have been considerably exacerbated, first and foremost the delays in processing an immigration application. My father received a favorable decision after three months. In her October report, the Auditor General of Canada once again sounded the alarm: we are now talking about delays of several years.
The same goes for the difficult recognition of diplomas. My father’s first job did not match his education or qualifications. For a while, he worked more than one job to make ends meet and save. This led to a job offer at a financial institution. With this permanent job and a small savings consisting of gold coins, he bought an apartment. Becoming an owner was a crucial step in his roots and integration. Later, with the birth of a child, he was able to buy a house.
Having a roof over your head or being able to hope to acquire one is essential. This is the basis of the Canadian dream model for an immigrant. We work hard, we save and we will be able to buy a home, create a family, with the hope that our children will have a better future than ours. We know that this home will not be destroyed by bombs, pillaged or confiscated during conflicts or endangered by climate change.
By the coincidences of life, my father saw his daughter doing an internship abroad in a Canadian embassy visited by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on mission, or his son called to travel in Prime Minister Stephen’s delegation Harper with a diplomatic passport from the country that had welcomed him 44 years earlier.
He bought his first apartment on Côte-des-Neiges in the 1970s, at a cost of $7,000 for a 3 and a half. His salary was around $9,000. The value of the housing represented 78% of his annual income. Today, that same apartment costs $350,000. The average salary, let’s say $50,000 for comparison purposes, represents barely 15% of the 3 and a half. It takes a decade just to save a down payment.
Canada and Quebec have fulfilled their promises to my father. Canada opened its doors to him within a reasonable time frame. He found work and, with a little time, a career under his belt. He became an owner. How can we aspire to the same thing today?
Certainly, we are in a housing crisis, and there are several factors that explain this. Mathematically, we are not building enough, and the housing deficit is increasing with population growth. When supply does not increase as much as demand, there is a shortage, and this shortage puts upward pressure on prices. Especially since the population of Canada increased by more than a million in 2022, largely due to immigration.
In 2015, the number of permanent residents was 250,000. The Trudeau government is targeting 500,000 in 2025. The construction industry is not following suit. If we double the number of permanent residents and other immigration categories without doubling our efforts in construction and without reducing our past deficits, we should not be surprised by the glaring lack of affordable housing.
Is Canada living up to its promise to its immigrants when they find that they will not be able to find housing or that the goal of becoming a homeowner will remain out of their reach?
The recognition of their diplomas is always a problem, even a hindrance, but finding a job in a situation of labor shortage is not at all. There are jobs. But if we only meet half of the promise of a better life, is that satisfactory? They are told: “You will have a job, but you will be poorly housed. You will, in short, be a working poor in Canada. »
Targets and reception capacity
These are fundamental elements for establishing our immigration targets and our reception capacity. Even with the lame hypothesis of the Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, who said he believed that “immigrants will build their own houses” — my father always limited himself to changing light bulbs at home —, the fact remains that everything else must follow too.
We need infrastructure and services to welcome immigrants: places in daycare services, renovation and construction of schools, teachers in these new classes, classroom helpers, family doctors, nurses, beds in hospitals.
Immigration is a good thing, and not just for strictly economic reasons, because we have a labor shortage. Our great country was built on immigration. Our Canadian and Quebec identity is based on the creation of wealth collectively, which we share with those who did not have the privilege of being born here, but who choose to push the wheel.
We must be ideologues about the fact that immigration in itself is positive and that the debate must not get out of hand, but we must not be so when determining immigration thresholds.
Where will we house the 500,000 permanent residents of 2025? What about the others who don’t fall into this category? The Trudeau government has provided no justification, no plan, other than a simple correction of our housing deficits. It is legitimate in these conditions to question our thresholds, because this remains the only way for Canada and Quebec to fulfill their promises made to those who come to settle here in good faith.