I just listened to someone described as a top labour economist in Canada arguing that we should not increase immigration levels in Canada. It was a podcast at thehub.ca and I think the economist was at the University of Waterloo.
He made several fairly disjointed arguments but his main thesis was a standard labour economist argument - that moving from a ‘highly skilled’ immigration focus to one that is more broad-based will depress wages, stifle productivity, etc. We should limit low skilled immigration and force industries to focus on productivity and drive up wages.
There were some fairly strange moments - he argued for highly skilled immigration and then decried the fact that so many high skilled immigrants were working in low skilled industry.
At one point he said that all his labour economist friends felt the same way as him. Moving from an immigrant rate of 0.4%/population to 1.x% of the population will hurt Canada and the economy.
No mention in an hour long podcast about the demographic shift (boomers retiring). No mention of provincial and regional labour markets. Just a high level argument that could have been lifted right out of a1970s textbook.
So here is my fear. A national political party decides to listen to these labour economists and restricts immigration to 0.4% and to ‘highly skilled’ immigrants. What happens next? The politicians hope it leads to a stronger and more productivity economy. In reality we go back to a world with the MTV regions (Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver) receive almost all the immigrants - throttling the economy in much of the rest of Canada.
You and I know that in a world where inward migration is restricted - MTV will benefit - and MHC (Moncton Halifax Charlottetown) will get left behind.
I don’t think this is a tiny risk - I think the risk rises by the day. Once the politicians make it policy - then you start seeing wider arguments being made - political advertisements on your Twitter stream saying that immigrants are taking our jobs, committing crimes, increasing health care wait times and eroding our culture.
We need to enlist as many labour economists as we can around a vision for a reasonable immigration strategy. A strategy based on a realistic assessment of labour market demand across Canada - that will support modest levels of real GDP growth (2-3%).
Yes it should go without saying that we need to boost productivity - yadda yadda yadda - but this has to be part of a broader strategy to grow provincial economies - not a blunt instrument that throttles regional economies with the hope that the last companies standing will be highly productive and pay high wages. That sounds like a de facto ‘Northern Canada’ strategy for Atlantic Canada.
As for this ‘myth’ of the highly skilled immigration model, the truth is that MTV used immigrants to meet labour market demand across the spectrum. As shown in the following chart - immigrants accounted for 50% of the Toronto CMA workforce in 2016 and for many, many lower wage industries the share was much higher than that. So, sure there were lots of high skilled immigrants settling in Toronto - but there were just as many in lower skilled categories. This is an advantage that the MTV region continues to have over smaller urban centres in Canada to this day - that is why we are seeing more flexible programs such as the AIP.
Just as an aside, look at clothing manufacturing. There were close to 7,000 people in Toronto working in that sector in 2016 - seven times as many as in all of Atlantic Canada combined. Guess what the immigration rate in that sector was in Atlantic Canada? 9%. Compared to 82% in Toronto.
Am I suggesting we want to revive the textile sector in Atlantic Canada? Nope. I am saying that Canada’s largest urban centres have thrived by having an immigration and international student pipeline that addressed workforce demand across the spectrum. That PET bottle manufacturing plant that shut down in Moncton ($24/hour) and moved to Brampton ($17/hour) is another example. Now plastic bottles filled with pop are sent all the way from Toronto on trucks (how’s that for a carbon footprint?). Let that sink in. That is what could happen to every trade exposed sector in our region without a strong workforce development strategy.
How do we get a little more nuance out of our labour economists? They run macroeconomic models that spit out conclusions based on the past and then apply them to the future?
Last point about this specific labour economist. He made a point of emphasizing several times that he was an immigrant. Born and raised in Mississauga. He told multiple stories of the challenges of immigrants in his frame of reference. This just proves that academics are humans and shaped by the world around them. He is basing his position on his understanding of immigration in Toronto. Moncton and Halifax and Charlottetown are not Toronto. Maybe we need to unleash an army of labour economists studying at Dal or UPEI or UNB? The problem is their profs likely studied under the same group of labour economists referenced above.
Keep an eye on this one folks. Any big social or economic change starts in academia before spilling out onto the streets - just the way we want it - but in this case for me the gamble is not worth the risk.
Given that federal targets for immigration are seemingly ever rising, and that there is no meaningful opposition to these figures from the Conservatives either, this piece comes off rather paranoid and silly. The fact that our local labour force is now not only in direct competition with overseas markets but now also far flung provinces in our own country due to the purportedly unfair distribution of an *increasing* influx of immigrants, is certainly a concern. I'm just not sold on this idea that simply ensuring that we get our fair share of these newcomers is what's needed to avoid economic suicide.
Looking around, after perhaps realizing a kind of delayed economic suicide might have already been commited long ago under the watch of men with similar ideas then as this author holds today, the obvious first question one might have is where are all of these people going to live? The absurdly inflated, unaffordable housing market is the bane of every Canadian's existence that hasn't already bought their way onto ladder (something I suspect the author of this piece has long already done, prior to this most recent explosion in prices). Not that don't suspect he might have some fantastic ideas about fixing the local housing market too, that of which work in tandem with his ideas about more immigrants solving every problem we have, forever...
My point is to ask WHY is it that we seemingly require an endless, bottomless pool of cheap labour scouted from other, less prosperous countries to perpetually kick this can down the road? If this bottling plant in question finds it more viable for their business to in fact move their operation to another province with more eager drones available their to do their heavy lifting, thus enabling them to lower their wages, then why are we to believe that increasing immigration targets is actually a good idea? Is it the threat that we may lose the bottling plant to all together? Something has indeed gone deeply wrong here...
A race to the bottom, for everyone, forever, seemingly. Relative prosperity for the average person may be a bygone vision at this point. It may be that under this current model, more immigration may be what's needed to stave off further decline, but it's really difficult to not see them as simply fodder for the true beneficiaries of mass immigration, the owners of the businesses and apartment/condo blocks that require them for undisturbed capital gains. This system of winners and losers on a global scale isn't set up for Canadian citizens or immigrants alike to ever make much headway in.
Love the term: MHC (Moncton Halifax Charlottetown)
When I started University in 1960, we called them "Upper Canadians."