At one time, economists were raising awareness among the population and governments of the need to welcome immigration in an aging country with a low birth rate. Over the past two years, things have changed. Serious economists are now sounding the alarm about the dangers posed by Canada’s dizzying and out-of-control immigration levels.
We are talking about more than a million new arrivals per year for two years in the country. But be careful, the official figures represent a minimum. The situation has become so chaotic that no one can really keep an accurate count anymore, through illegal migrants, fake tourists who never leave and temporary workers.
Economist Stéfane Marion of the National Bank has just published a study detailing the consequences of negligence in Canada’s immigration policy. It establishes a direct link between immigration and the housing crisis. Indirectly, there is also a link to be made between immigration and inflation, the economic problem of the day.
The economist goes further. The inability of our economy to absorb these record levels of immigration creates a “demographic trap” the consequence of which is a deterioration in the standard of living in Canada. Wealth per capita has also stagnated abnormally in Canada for several years.
Warned of danger
We learned a few days ago that the federal government had been warned of the dangers through studies and opinions from its own senior officials. Reports made public by The Canadian Press noted that population growth would outstrip growth in the number of available housing units. Pretty clear.
This is called creating a housing crisis from scratch. A crisis that will last for several years, according to CMHC data.
When it comes to immigration, we must blame the crass incompetence of the Trudeau government. Ideological blindness, concern for image, lack of long-term vision, refusal to listen to economic logic, we never stop describing this disastrous management.
Paralyzed
At a time when we should have both hands on the rudder to turn the ship around without losing another month, the same Trudeau government is taking it with a grain of salt. Through consultations and small adjustments, he is trying to show voters that he is aware of the problem.
I want to be clear: it is not immigrants who are to blame. This is the government’s immigration policy. Immigrants who have settled here for a month or a year must be welcomed positively. They came to improve their lot, to work with us, nothing can be blamed on them. Above all, they must not pay for the incompetence of a government that WE elected.
How can we rethink our immigration policy? If Canada welcomed the same rate of immigrants as the OECD average, it would be around 250,000 per year. Four or five times less than last year? It’s infeasible, people will say. However, this was the order of magnitude under the Harper government, barely ten years ago.
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