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And the skilled jobs those immigrants are supposed to fill will materialize from thin air? There won't be a skilled labour shortage in Canada after the pandemic

And the skilled jobs those immigrants are supposed to fill will materialize from thin air? There won't be a skilled labour shortage in Canada after the pandemic, quite the opposite - high unemployment as businesses fail to recover - is much more likely. You can't just throw immigrants at every problem.

giantDinosaur 6y ago
Longer term. Immediately immigration is literally impossible with borders closed. And no, you can't solve every problem with immigration, I just wouldn't be worried about Canada 5 years from now and one of the reasons is it'll probably be able to afford some of the best talent on the planet, if it invests well.
- jariel 6y ago
  Canada does not attract talent, it attracts workers. The USA attracts talent, and workers. Those that can't get into the US but get into Canada and are reasonably talented, who don't have family ties - eventually go to the US. Two of my staffers, one from India, one from Jordan, just did this. For them, Canada was a temporary layover for a few years until they could go stateside. Canadian wages are considerably lower than the US for 'talent' so generally, people prefer to go to the US. Canada doesn't have very many true product, engineering, design jobs wherein the outputs are developed on an international scale, not a lot of things are really 'made here'. On the high end - Canada imports doctors, software folks to do CRUD, ane engineers that never get to do engineering. One specialization is teaching and research for University, some number of profs are brought in. But mostly - it's people with education who will never get to use it, and a lot of people to work in retail, coffee shops and Long Term Care homes. Edit: after reading, this sounds very cynical! Although it is to some extent. Migrants to Canada in the economic class generally have education, like a Uni degree, though this is an only necessary one in the family, not necessarily the spouse, parents, obviously not the kids. Skills are often not very transferrable, and there are surprisingly few jobs wherein one can jump right in with 'technical knowledge' of some kind and Canada does not have the high-tech industrial base to support the need - Canada is almost last among OECD nations in terms of R&D investment, not because of the lack of R&D among individual companies, rather, the lack of the kinds of companies that actually do R&D. The Uni system is very good, tons of good research, but the commercial bits don't happen in Canada.
  - wenc 6y ago
    This tracks with my observations. Perhaps the rise of remote work will move this needle a bit, but what you said has been true for at least a few decades. Canada has excellent execution ability (open secret in the industry) but too few companies to leverage that ability, or at least they're narrowly focused in certain industries like banking and natural resource extraction. That said, if you roll the dice enough, you get lucky sometimes. Tobi Luetke (Shopify founder/CEO) is an immigrant from Germany. Mike Laziridis (Blackberry founder/CEO) was born in Istanbul of Greek parents. Michael Cowpland (Corel founder/CEO) was an immigrant from the UK. Many of these outsized successes were low probability, high impact.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    I wonder how much of this is due to actual structural issues in Canada, or the proximity, and ease of access to the tech-power-house regions in the US. Most US states probably have smaller tech-communities than Canada too. If we look a the US+CA as a group of metro regions does the distribution make more sense (in that for historical reasons with knock-on network effects, you see a power distribution of area with vibrant ecosystems of talent and venture capital) or do you see systematic biases that are acting as rate-limiters? I'd be very curious for any answers to this.
    - jariel 6y ago
      I think it's two things, one of which you mentioned: 1) Structural. Canada is a 'large open economy' next to a 'massive open economy' where the economic pyramid is 10x - plus more inequality and they are a global player meaning that everything important in Canada gets consumed by the American system. Bought, put out of business, or talent goes south. Bombardier is a good example: Trump arbitrarily and totally against NAFTA laid down tariffs which led to the failure of the business and put into the hands of another major power - the EU. 2) Cultural. A lack of focus on exceptionalism, and without very strong cultural foundations, a historical focus on 'equity' and 'stability' (which can be good things of course) Canada cannot play 'asymmetrical jujitsu' like Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong (pre takeover), Israel. It's a hugely contentious thing to say, but large scale migration - for all its benefits' - also exacerbates the problem, by creating more of an 'economic civility' rather than 'cultural civility'. When PM Trudeau sad Canada is a 'post-nation nation' - what he was saying without realizing is that Canada is simply going to be a 'safe, fair, trading post'. Think of Canada now really as 'The Hudson's Bay Trading Company' like a giant corporate living space, managed by well-meaning functionaries. Absent cultural foundations, then core civic and economic elements come to the fore. Canada can be thought of as 'an international economic zone North of the United States', basically without any real elite or national vision. The strategy is 'build more homes, get people into mortgages from one of 6 nearly identical banks, get them buying every day from Tim Hortons, Starbucks, McDonald's, get them in high-consumption environments near shopping malls full of foreign brands, and making consistent car payments, again, mostly surpluses going to foreign car companies. Working either for the government, a small business, or more likely the local office of a large international firm like KPMG, Ford, Price Waterhouse, etc.. Basically, a massive suburb of 'civic consumers', where it's very safe and placid, but nothing really happens either - no intellectual, creative, operational leadership, nothing to distinguish the situation from an arbitrary, nameless suburb anywhere else in the modern world. This is happening a lot in the world, but the capital of this is Canada. When you travel, it's getting harder and harder to 'know where in the world you are' by looking out the window, which is tragic.

giantDinosaur 6y ago

Longer term. Immediately immigration is literally impossible with borders closed. And no, you can't solve every problem with immigration, I just wouldn't be worried about Canada 5 years from now and one of the reasons is it'll probably be able to afford some of the best talent on the planet, if it invests well.

jariel 6y ago
Canada does not attract talent, it attracts workers. The USA attracts talent, and workers. Those that can't get into the US but get into Canada and are reasonably talented, who don't have family ties - eventually go to the US. Two of my staffers, one from India, one from Jordan, just did this. For them, Canada was a temporary layover for a few years until they could go stateside. Canadian wages are considerably lower than the US for 'talent' so generally, people prefer to go to the US. Canada doesn't have very many true product, engineering, design jobs wherein the outputs are developed on an international scale, not a lot of things are really 'made here'. On the high end - Canada imports doctors, software folks to do CRUD, ane engineers that never get to do engineering. One specialization is teaching and research for University, some number of profs are brought in. But mostly - it's people with education who will never get to use it, and a lot of people to work in retail, coffee shops and Long Term Care homes. Edit: after reading, this sounds very cynical! Although it is to some extent. Migrants to Canada in the economic class generally have education, like a Uni degree, though this is an only necessary one in the family, not necessarily the spouse, parents, obviously not the kids. Skills are often not very transferrable, and there are surprisingly few jobs wherein one can jump right in with 'technical knowledge' of some kind and Canada does not have the high-tech industrial base to support the need - Canada is almost last among OECD nations in terms of R&D investment, not because of the lack of R&D among individual companies, rather, the lack of the kinds of companies that actually do R&D. The Uni system is very good, tons of good research, but the commercial bits don't happen in Canada.
- wenc 6y ago
  This tracks with my observations. Perhaps the rise of remote work will move this needle a bit, but what you said has been true for at least a few decades. Canada has excellent execution ability (open secret in the industry) but too few companies to leverage that ability, or at least they're narrowly focused in certain industries like banking and natural resource extraction. That said, if you roll the dice enough, you get lucky sometimes. Tobi Luetke (Shopify founder/CEO) is an immigrant from Germany. Mike Laziridis (Blackberry founder/CEO) was born in Istanbul of Greek parents. Michael Cowpland (Corel founder/CEO) was an immigrant from the UK. Many of these outsized successes were low probability, high impact.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  I wonder how much of this is due to actual structural issues in Canada, or the proximity, and ease of access to the tech-power-house regions in the US. Most US states probably have smaller tech-communities than Canada too. If we look a the US+CA as a group of metro regions does the distribution make more sense (in that for historical reasons with knock-on network effects, you see a power distribution of area with vibrant ecosystems of talent and venture capital) or do you see systematic biases that are acting as rate-limiters? I'd be very curious for any answers to this.
  - jariel 6y ago
    I think it's two things, one of which you mentioned: 1) Structural. Canada is a 'large open economy' next to a 'massive open economy' where the economic pyramid is 10x - plus more inequality and they are a global player meaning that everything important in Canada gets consumed by the American system. Bought, put out of business, or talent goes south. Bombardier is a good example: Trump arbitrarily and totally against NAFTA laid down tariffs which led to the failure of the business and put into the hands of another major power - the EU. 2) Cultural. A lack of focus on exceptionalism, and without very strong cultural foundations, a historical focus on 'equity' and 'stability' (which can be good things of course) Canada cannot play 'asymmetrical jujitsu' like Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong (pre takeover), Israel. It's a hugely contentious thing to say, but large scale migration - for all its benefits' - also exacerbates the problem, by creating more of an 'economic civility' rather than 'cultural civility'. When PM Trudeau sad Canada is a 'post-nation nation' - what he was saying without realizing is that Canada is simply going to be a 'safe, fair, trading post'. Think of Canada now really as 'The Hudson's Bay Trading Company' like a giant corporate living space, managed by well-meaning functionaries. Absent cultural foundations, then core civic and economic elements come to the fore. Canada can be thought of as 'an international economic zone North of the United States', basically without any real elite or national vision. The strategy is 'build more homes, get people into mortgages from one of 6 nearly identical banks, get them buying every day from Tim Hortons, Starbucks, McDonald's, get them in high-consumption environments near shopping malls full of foreign brands, and making consistent car payments, again, mostly surpluses going to foreign car companies. Working either for the government, a small business, or more likely the local office of a large international firm like KPMG, Ford, Price Waterhouse, etc.. Basically, a massive suburb of 'civic consumers', where it's very safe and placid, but nothing really happens either - no intellectual, creative, operational leadership, nothing to distinguish the situation from an arbitrary, nameless suburb anywhere else in the modern world. This is happening a lot in the world, but the capital of this is Canada. When you travel, it's getting harder and harder to 'know where in the world you are' by looking out the window, which is tragic.