You want to curtail immigration? Who you going to cut first?

I like Jason Kenney.

But Jason Kenney told David Herle that Canada will “welcome 1.2 million immigrants this year” and passionately went on a long rant about how we need deep cuts to immigration. He complained about international students and temporary foreign workers. The Liberals are being unduly influenced by corporate interests, etc.

As of the end of October, Canada admitted 405,000 permanent residents. By the end of the year we will likely have attracted about 440,000 or so.

Lumping in international students and temporary workers as ‘immigrants’ is wrong and even deceitful as I have said before because they are not being added incrementally to the population every year. So the number of international students has been rising after the pandemic but will certainly go down because of the recent reforms.

But the question I have been asking and will push you on is where do you cut? Jason Kenney wants deep cuts. Let’s start with the 400,000+ PRs each year. You want to cut them? Look at the tables below. For the most part the largest urban centres - Toronto for example - have not seen a dramatic increase in immigration. Montreal has seen a cut. Toronto has only seen a modest increase. The big increases are in places like Moncton, Summerside, Gander, Edmundston. Edmundston now has an immigration rate similar to Edmonton and London. Bathurst has the same rate as Montreal. Kentville in Nova Scotia has a similar immigration rate to Montreal.

Where are you going to cut?

I would say the same about international students and temporary workers.

The history of Canada is simple. The big dogs always eat first. If Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, etc. are prepared to cut hard and let the small and mid sized urbans continue to grow through immigration, OK. That is not the experience of history.

Kenney almost flippantly discounted the concerns about demographics and the Boomer retirements. Look at the chart. Immigrants have accounted for essentially all net growth in the workforce since 2017. Have a particular look at Atlantic Canada. Again, remember the big dogs eat first in Canada.

Obviously we need common sense to prevail in the attraction of international students. We should be looking strategically at PSE as a talent pipeline for industries with workforce demand and not just a source of revenue for colleges as universities.

We should consider broader implications such as the need for more housing.

And I agree we should have a national target for population growth but this target should be based on provincial aspirations and not a top down politically motivated target (again, the big dogs eat first). If New Brunswick wants to grow its population by 1.5 percent per year it will need to sustain a fairly high immigration rate. That is just a fact.

These knee jerk calls for deep cuts could be problematic for Winkler and Brandon as much as Fredericton and Summerside. The student curtailment will also be interesting. Will it be in Ontario which already has half the international students in Canada or will it be New Brunswick and Manitoba?

Please do not put the brakes on the nascent growth trend in Atlantic Canada.

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The tables show the permanent resident admission rate per 10,000 population.