Immigration Cuts Cost Canada Morally & Economically + Quick Hits
On Canada's recent immigration changes and some interesting reads
Happy Monday! Today, I want to start on the changes to Canada’s immigration system before turning to a few quick-hit reading recommendations.
Immigration Cuts Cost Canada Morally & Economically
Last week, the federal government announced dramatic cuts to their targets for new permanent residents and introduced targets for non-permanent residents. These changes follow other immigration cuts, most notably impacting international students.
I believe these changes are both morally wrong and economically illiterate. They are a cynical attempt to pander to xenophobia in an attempt to stem the loss of votes from the governing Liberals.
The core challenges the government claims to address with these cuts - pressures on housing, infrastructure, and social services - are not the fault of immigration. They result from decades of governments failing to build what Canada needs and enact policies that change the economic model that drives the affordability crisis.
In the view of Yushu Zhu and Hanan Ali, Canada's housing crisis is “rooted in a deeply financialized housing system” - one that flows from decisions in the 1980s and 1990s to “restructure the housing system, cultivating a culture of homeownership and market supremacy”.
On infrastructure, Daniel Araya and Shirley Anne Scharf have written how “Canada has not updated its strategic planning on infrastructure since its historical focus on seaways and roadways and, before that, railways. Certainly, there has been no bold new vision from any quarter for infrastructure in the digital economy.”
On affordability, Robin Shaban has written previously that “there is no evidence that the Competition Bureau has ever investigated let alone considered anticompetitive business behaviours that hurt competition in labour markets, which can lead to lower compensation for workers and fewer employment opportunities.”
Meanwhile, healthcare has been consistently underfunded and undermined. And while a growing population appears on the surface to reduce hospital beds or family doctors per capita, that masks the fact that increased stress on the health system comes from Canada’s rapidly aging population, not from immigrants who are younger and grow the tax base to pay for that increased demand.
These are some of the long-term policy failures that need addressing not scapegoating immigration. Pushing migrants into temporary status, dividing families, and increasing their vulnerability to exploitation, the inevitable results of cuts as the Migrant Rights Network points out, will not solve anything.
Nor will slashing our refugee quotas at a time when more conflicts are happening globally than at any time since the Second World War and when minority rights are being rolled back in far too many countries.
Instead, these changes will just serve to shoot ourselves in the foot, short-term and long-term.
As analysis from RBC shows, the sheer depth of these cuts is going to shrink Canada’s population over the next two years, put us back on an aging trend, limit the number of hours worked available in the economy without necessarily lowering the unemployment rate, weigh on government balance sheets as “an accelerated aging population puts upward pressure on healthcare costs and pension obligations”, while also subtracting nearly a percentage-point from Canada’s growth forecast over the next three years.
All while doing nothing to address the underlying causes of the pressures on housing, infrastructure, and social services.
We need better from our government than that.
If you agree, please consider how you can make your voice heard. If you can make it happen, perhaps sign up your organization for this open letter from the Migrants Rights Network. Or as an individual, you can sign their petition or just get in touch with your MP directly.
Quick Hits
Scenarios of Evolving Global Order - This new report from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) explores five scenarios for the future at a time when “the geopolitical order is in transition and a new order is emerging”. Given the vast array of challenges the world faces, this kind of exercise can be useful for policymakers and shapers to engage in, to think through how states and institutions need to adapt. While nothing is certain, and things can branch off in many directions as the authors point out, this is still something worth reading and thinking through.
OECD Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy Online Toolkit - The OECD has just released an updated version of their mission toolkit. Including over 30 detailed case studies and almost 250 individual missions - it is an invaluable resource for anyone looking into missions and how they are being used globally. This must have been a huge amount of work so kudos to
& all the team there.Governing Artificial Intelligence - Former Nesta CEO
has just launched a substack newsletter, and one of his first posts is a great one on AI governance. In it, he argues that we are still looking for “generic solutions”, which “fundamentally misreads the nature of the challenge of AI governance”. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, AI governance “is more like filling in a 1000 cell matrix, full of complex details to handle specific harms, in specific sectors with specific responses.” In particular he calls for much more “in-house capacity” in governments to understand the impacts of AI in different fields and that new global and national institutions are needed to grapple with the challenges posed, along with much better training for politicians and officials. Another area where we need more focus on state capacity.