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Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist. I have a top 5% income but I will never own a ho

by 3qz 4y ago

Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist. I have a top 5% income but I will never own a house in my life and can’t access a family doctor. We have way too many people! The population is expected to be 50% foreign born or children of immigrants by 2040 and it’s already majority foreign born in our biggest cities. I honestly don’t expect this country to stay together for more than a few more decades. What is a Canadian? The “melting pot” theory of integration is also considered racist here because Canada is a “mosaic” where everyone has the right to keep their old culture and live in an ethnic enclave with no expectation of assimilation.

humanlion87 4y ago
Not having access to doctors or being unable to afford housing are due to policy failures in other areas, not purely due to higher immigration. Canada will find it tough to replenish it's workforce without high rates of immigration.
- sbaiddn 4y ago
  Canada has a housing crisis because no one is stupid enough to arrive to Canada and move to Thunder Bay (sorry TB, but you know its true). As a result all these people go live in one of three or four cities. The situation is more akin to the rapid urbanization in the third world. Infrastructure cant keep up. Just try GTA traffic. People move to Barrie just to afford a house in the GTA (Barries not GTA!). Sure Canada is "empty", but its also an inhospitable frozen waste land with 90% of the population living within 100 km of the US border. When we say Canada is "full" what we mean is that Canada cannot build fast enough. That the 3000 km^2 worth living in in Canada are really really dense.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    The west lost it's ability to build new cities. Canada could be more like china and use multiple billions to build/encourage growth outside their core city centers. It has the land. Arguably GDP would benefit from having more populous cities between Vancouver and Toronto. Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina.
    - sbaiddn 4y ago
      "Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina." No one would take it because you'd be in Regina. And the West "cant build cities" anymore because there's no need to build a city in the Prairies anymore. 100 years ago physical labor had to man farms, and therefore you had human settlements. There's no need to put a new city in between Winnipeg and Calgary except to store people in it.
    - m00x 4y ago
      As someone who lived in the East and now is in Vancouver. The weather is a huge reason why no one wants to move to rural areas, or live in the East.
cycrutchfield 4y ago
So build more houses and train more doctors then? Seems weird to hate on immigrants and say your country is overpopulated (it isn’t)
- version_five 4y ago
  This sort of reactive anti-intellectual "hate on immigrants" response is exactly what seems to happen whenever somebody suggests that unchecked immigration is not the only way.
  - ecpottinger 4y ago
    What unchecked immigration? Canada takes people who pass the immigration tests. The rejection rate is over 70%, one thing Canada does not have is unchecked immigration.
  - orwin 4y ago
    Canada don't have unchecked immigration. I'd even say that the poor choice their quota are set on is a detriment to their building capabilities.
- g_delgado14 4y ago
- crakenzak 4y ago
  No need for the aggressive tone, but maybe what the comment you’re replying to isn’t saying that the country is overpopulated, but they’re saying that the infrastructure available isn’t capable of sustaining this type of population influx (regardless of where they’re from) and leads to a lower quality of life for the people already in the country. You and OP can probably agree that infrastructure needs to improve to support more people, but until that happens, there shouldn’t be such availability of immigrant visas.
  - chrischen 4y ago
    But demand has to happen first followed by infrastructure. Nobody is going to spend the money on infrastructure first then hope demand and tax receipts catch up. The correct solution is yo say hey we need to build better infrastructure now because our tax receipts are up.
bergenty 4y ago
You have too many people in a country with the average population density less than a person a square mile? This is such strange thinking- your solutions should be build more houses and train/immigrate in more doctors! This country is doing better than it ever has in history. The immigrants Canada lets in are a gift to the economy. If neighboring US is anything to go by, 90 of the top 500 US unicorns ($ 1 billion+) have an Indian born founder.
- version_five 4y ago
  Sounds like you're not very familiar with canada. We have a very narrow populated strip within about 50-100 km of the us border, and then a vast uninhabitable area in the north. Overall population density is a meaningless metric
  - bergenty 4y ago
    That’s because all 38 million comfortably fit in those places. There is plenty of inhabitable land between Toronto and the frozen northern lands.
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      What about the agricultural land needed to support that many people with Western diet and lifestyle? No matter who moves there, they will adopt those customs in the short to medium term.
    - sbaiddn 4y ago
      There's nothing there. Canada has one road linking every city together (well, except TO). Imagine Iowa, but emptier.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    The Atlantic coastal regions are pretty moderate and they're also sparsely populated. There's plenty of space in southern Ontario/Quebec, in Edmonton and Calgary...
- 4y ago
whalesalad 4y ago
A lot of people will often put the US and Canada up against one another in a head to head battle but forget to realize the population is less than the state of California. For all intents and purposes Canada is a small country and their way of life is very much a small scale experiment, as-is our democratic experiment here in the US. Scalability is tough.
lettergram 4y ago
In reality, it’s becoming a colony. You know how the US captured Texas? Americans moved there (on invitation of the Mexican government), then when the government of Mexico didn’t act as expected the US supported a war of independence of Texas. Who are most of the immigrants to Canada I wonder…
- lebuffon 4y ago
  No need to wonder The Top 10 Biggest Sources Of New Permanent Residents To Canada in 2021 are: India: 96,660 China: 24,995 Philippines: 13,310 Nigeria: 12,500 France: 10,510 United States: 9,525 Brazil: 9,270 Iran: 8,930 Pakistan: 6,625 South Korea: 6,590
  - oatmeal_croc 4y ago
    As an Indian, the thought of India colonizing a country is chuckleworthy.
    - LAC-Tech 4y ago
      Your ethnic group has never invaded and colonised an area?
      - oatmeal_croc 4y ago
        I'd say no. For thousands of years, we've been the colonisees, not the colonisers.
        LAC-Tech 4y ago
        If you'd been colonised for thousands of years your group would not exist anymore. The fact your group - which you are being very coy about - still does exist, suggest that not only have you not been continuously colonised for thousands of years, but that you've probably colonised and absorbed some of your neighbours.
aeturnum 4y ago
I do think "we" (whatever that means) are paying too little attention to the real work of truly integrating cultures. It's hard work - to be open and aware of your actions and to see how one might adjust oneself after noticing another person's actions in the same space / town / city / country. Changes on changes. Mutating culture is hard, luxuriating in a culture we know is easy.
sbaiddn 4y ago
As an immigrant to Canada... pretty much spot on.
chrisfosterelli 4y ago
> We have way too many people! We're one of the least densely populated countries in the world with one of the lowest birth rates in the world. If you don't think immigration makes sense for cultural reasons that's fine, but with respect to healthcare and housing don't be under any illusion -- reducing immigration would exacerbate these issues by giving us an even more heavily aging population.
- sh4un 4y ago
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  healthcare availability, housing availability, and immigration rate are not related by population density, but by population growth and infrastructure growth. If your infrastructure growth doesn't outpace your population growth, it doesn't matter how dense or not dense your country is.
  - addicted 4y ago
    Existing infrastructure is not designed for an aging population. But it’s good that you point out the real problem which is a lack of infrastructure.
  - chrisfosterelli 4y ago
    Our infrastructure is constrained because of systemic policy decisions, not because we can't practically grow it fast enough. These policy constraints would become significantly more painful under a declining, aging population. For healthcare, we don't pay our GPs enough and we overwork them. Physicians have been either leaving the profession or moving into non-GP roles (specialists, etc). Since healthcare is taxpayer funded, reducing the number of working age tax payers and increasing the number of aging people in need of health care is going to make this worse. For housing, we allow too much control of housing at the municipal layer and it's become a complex, bureaucratic mess to build anything anywhere. The dirty secret is that no federal government wants to step in and be the one to fix this because then it would cause housing prices to decrease and a terrifying large percentage of aging, voting population has the majority of their net worth in their house with "downsizing" forming the majority of their retirement plan. Reducing the population isn't going to fix this, we'll end up with less people who can build houses and more people who are either dependent on high house prices for their retirement or poor and in need of taxpayer programs (of which there will be less tax payers to fund) to support themselves. These are obviously complex issues and I'm simplifying to some degree, but those are at least two key relationships worth really calling out here with respect to population. There's others, but my core point is that simplify cutting off population growth is not going to fix either of these -- it'd probably make them worse.
rjzzleep 4y ago
The thing that gets me about the US and Canada is that those countries don't even have an ethnic population to begin with. The ethnic population was put into camps and then replaced by a bunch of Europeans for a bunch of different countries to begin with. Germany losing its national identity I can follow. France losing its national identity I can follow as well, although my sympathies are somewhat limited given the context of it. But the US and Canada ? You ask an average American and they tell you their a quarter Italian, A quarter German, 1/10 native American and 2/5th danish. What is the national identity here?
- davidro80 4y ago
- nine_k 4y ago
  An American may lack a cleat ethnic identity, but I suppose that the American national identity is very much a thing. The American values, the American dream, the liberty, the flag, etc. A large number of Americans is pretty patriotic, despite being ethnically varied. While at it: both Germany and France used to be much more varied in cultures and languages, but were unified by their centralized states. A dilution of this unity is, in a sense, return to a more natural state of cultural variety.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    If America didn’t have an ethnic identity you’d not be able to recognize Americans the world over l.
    - nine_k 4y ago
      A ton of Americans around me identify ethnically in various ways, and keep some of their ethnical habits (Mexican, various Caribbean, Jewish, Irish, various African, several Chinese, etc). Still, they see themselves as fellow Anericans.
- notadev 4y ago
  We’re not allowed to have an American identity. Trying to cling to traditions is considered a conservative thing and thus inherently racist. American can only be defined by her failures, and any attempt to point out the successes is considered whitewashing history or something. There were a number of places that sought to, or outright skipped, the Independence Day celebration this year. It’s now totally normal for some people to find the US flag “problematic” and itself a sign of oppression.
rapind 4y ago
It's all part of the plan... https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/ https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/
myth_drannon 4y ago
And who is going to work in Tim Hortons(or take care of your elderly parents)? At least in Montreal, due to stuff shortages many Tim's are half closed with huge lines or drive throughs only. I have never seen anything like this. Also on Monday are elections in Quebec and all they can talk is about immigrants and how to limit immigration(Quebec has a separate immigration program).
- sbaiddn 4y ago
  Because there were no Timmy's or nursing homes before we all showed up?
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    I think he's implying that the immigration system as it presently exists primarily brings in a class of person that is unlikely to work at Tim Hortons, but likely to be a customer of Tim Hortons. This exacerbates the waiting times. That said, I do not live in North America. I am inferring from context.
- cpsns 4y ago
  The huge lines are more due to the insane menu Tim’s has right now. It’s far too complex and requires endless context shifting from workers. The workers at my local Tims have been complaining about it for a long time. The half closed ones though? Yah, that’s a worker shortage. My local one started by closing the dining area and then started closing at 8PM simply because they can’t staff it. Of course they can’t, they only offer minimum wage.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Interesting that it is cheaper to close the entire operation than it is to increase labor expense. Must be thin margins in that business.
    - ultrasaurus 4y ago
      The margins on coffee are amazing, but I suspect coffee makes up a smaller % of sales after 8pm so the late night mix might have much thinner margins.
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
>Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist. Those who consider immigration a race issue are often those who view everything as a race issue, and view reality through a warped lens of race. Even worse are others who have ulterior motives (political, economic) for favoring increased immigration and use the race card as a weapon to smear opponents and prevent substantive debate.
slater 4y ago
> Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist ...or maybe don't compare Canada's rate to a country with one of the strictest immigration policies available, just because doing so fits your inclinations...?
refurb 4y ago
How did you get 10x? Because the numbers this article talks about includes temporary visa like student visas. Looking at US stats (2018 numbers): - 500k immigrant visas (green cards) - 9M non-immigrant visas minus 6M B1/B2 visitor visas So each year, it totals about 3.5M, which is ~10x Canada, so not that far off per capita. You could argue that staying in Canada after arriving with a temporary visa is much easier than the US, which is true. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics/graphs.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
goatsi 4y ago
Healthcare would be much worse without immigrants. In Canada, immigrants make up 23% of registered nurses 35% of nurse aides and related occupations 37% of pharmacists 36% of physicians 39% of dentists https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/campaigns/immigration-matters/growing-canada-future/health.html https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ca...
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  I feel like you need to include "% of patients" as well to answer the question meaningfully.
  - goatsi 4y ago
    Immigrants are 21.5% of the population. They are also on average younger than the rest of the population, so they will use less medical services. The average age of a Canadian actually went down this year for the first time in over 50 years because of younger immigrants arriving.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Is this far off from the percentage of immigrants in the total population ages 24-65?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Apparently 21% of Canadians are foreign born so those numbers aren’t entirely out of line. Yet.
- adolph 4y ago
  Is Canada directly importing healthcare workers or does it preferentially train immigrants for healthcare roles?
  - goatsi 4y ago
    They are directly importing healthcare workers.
tarakat 4y ago
> Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US I assume you mean per-capita? Because legal immigration alone into the US is about 1.8 million/year and has been for almost a decade, excluding one or two pandemic years.
gxt 4y ago
Put me in the same bucket. And in Quebec the extreme-left party (QS) is promoting religious sectarianism in schools, in favor of political indoctrination of children. There are also unashamed communists promoting war in Montreal, just today there was a dude flying the soviet flag on a bike while I was getting coffee, and nothing can be done it about otherwise --> Jail. Contemporary Canada has only existed for 50 years, and for some reason everybody left of center thinks it's always been this way and it feels like they are all ready to cut their veins open in shame of being born in a successful country...
- kingofpandora 4y ago
  > There are also unashamed communists promoting war in Montreal, just today there was a dude flying the soviet flag on a bike while I was getting coffee, and nothing can be done it about otherwise --> Jail. Out of curiosity, what would you like to do to the bike-rider that would land you in jail?
  - gxt 4y ago
    So your question is What would I like to do to someone who asks to boycott elections, and start a violent revolution to impose an autocratic government that has in history killed millions by war and famine?
    - kingofpandora 4y ago
      Sure. We're exploring your fantasies here.
TMWNN 4y ago
>can’t access a family doctor. To provide context to others, an amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-canadians-don-t-have-a-family-physician-report-1.4611149 https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. In Atlantic Canada (the four easternmost provinces) it is impossible, repeat *impossible*, to get a family doctor if you don't have one <https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we-learned-and-what-you-said-about-doctor-shortage-in-atlantic-canada-286436/ https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  The second URL above has died; use <https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we-learned-and-what-you-said-about-doctor-shortage-in-atlantic-canada-286436/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thete...>.
- wenc 4y ago
  Thanks for the info. I lived in Ontario for over a decade, and Quebec for half a decade. There were grumblings about a shortage of family doctors even when I was there a decade ago, but I never had any trouble finding a family doctor in the GTA. But it sounds like the situation is quite different in BC and elsewhere. I'm guessing it's partly a function of where family doctors like to settle? Most of my friends who are family doctors end up in Ontario. Also, in Ontario, Nurse Practitioners (who often work in partnership with a physician) are able to provide equally good primary care, so the system is actually quite scalable if you're not strictly looking for MDs. In the US, physician assistants and medical assistants often provide primary care. In Canada NPs often fill that role.
moralestapia 4y ago
>I have a top 5% income but I will never own a house in my life That's weird, really. I'm about 10% of income there and could easily buy a house in 3-5 years. Not on Vancouver, though, if that's what you mean.

by 3qz 4y ago

humanlion87 4y ago

Not having access to doctors or being unable to afford housing are due to policy failures in other areas, not purely due to higher immigration. Canada will find it tough to replenish it's workforce without high rates of immigration.

sbaiddn 4y ago
Canada has a housing crisis because no one is stupid enough to arrive to Canada and move to Thunder Bay (sorry TB, but you know its true). As a result all these people go live in one of three or four cities. The situation is more akin to the rapid urbanization in the third world. Infrastructure cant keep up. Just try GTA traffic. People move to Barrie just to afford a house in the GTA (Barries not GTA!). Sure Canada is "empty", but its also an inhospitable frozen waste land with 90% of the population living within 100 km of the US border. When we say Canada is "full" what we mean is that Canada cannot build fast enough. That the 3000 km^2 worth living in in Canada are really really dense.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  The west lost it's ability to build new cities. Canada could be more like china and use multiple billions to build/encourage growth outside their core city centers. It has the land. Arguably GDP would benefit from having more populous cities between Vancouver and Toronto. Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina.
  - sbaiddn 4y ago
    "Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina." No one would take it because you'd be in Regina. And the West "cant build cities" anymore because there's no need to build a city in the Prairies anymore. 100 years ago physical labor had to man farms, and therefore you had human settlements. There's no need to put a new city in between Winnipeg and Calgary except to store people in it.
  - m00x 4y ago
    As someone who lived in the East and now is in Vancouver. The weather is a huge reason why no one wants to move to rural areas, or live in the East.

cycrutchfield 4y ago

So build more houses and train more doctors then? Seems weird to hate on immigrants and say your country is overpopulated (it isn’t)

version_five 4y ago
This sort of reactive anti-intellectual "hate on immigrants" response is exactly what seems to happen whenever somebody suggests that unchecked immigration is not the only way.
- ecpottinger 4y ago
  What unchecked immigration? Canada takes people who pass the immigration tests. The rejection rate is over 70%, one thing Canada does not have is unchecked immigration.
- orwin 4y ago
  Canada don't have unchecked immigration. I'd even say that the poor choice their quota are set on is a detriment to their building capabilities.
g_delgado14 4y ago
crakenzak 4y ago
No need for the aggressive tone, but maybe what the comment you’re replying to isn’t saying that the country is overpopulated, but they’re saying that the infrastructure available isn’t capable of sustaining this type of population influx (regardless of where they’re from) and leads to a lower quality of life for the people already in the country. You and OP can probably agree that infrastructure needs to improve to support more people, but until that happens, there shouldn’t be such availability of immigrant visas.
- chrischen 4y ago
  But demand has to happen first followed by infrastructure. Nobody is going to spend the money on infrastructure first then hope demand and tax receipts catch up. The correct solution is yo say hey we need to build better infrastructure now because our tax receipts are up.

bergenty 4y ago

You have too many people in a country with the average population density less than a person a square mile? This is such strange thinking- your solutions should be build more houses and train/immigrate in more doctors! This country is doing better than it ever has in history. The immigrants Canada lets in are a gift to the economy. If neighboring US is anything to go by, 90 of the top 500 US unicorns ($ 1 billion+) have an Indian born founder.

version_five 4y ago
Sounds like you're not very familiar with canada. We have a very narrow populated strip within about 50-100 km of the us border, and then a vast uninhabitable area in the north. Overall population density is a meaningless metric
- bergenty 4y ago
  That’s because all 38 million comfortably fit in those places. There is plenty of inhabitable land between Toronto and the frozen northern lands.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    What about the agricultural land needed to support that many people with Western diet and lifestyle? No matter who moves there, they will adopt those customs in the short to medium term.
  - sbaiddn 4y ago
    There's nothing there. Canada has one road linking every city together (well, except TO). Imagine Iowa, but emptier.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  The Atlantic coastal regions are pretty moderate and they're also sparsely populated. There's plenty of space in southern Ontario/Quebec, in Edmonton and Calgary...
4y ago

whalesalad 4y ago

A lot of people will often put the US and Canada up against one another in a head to head battle but forget to realize the population is less than the state of California. For all intents and purposes Canada is a small country and their way of life is very much a small scale experiment, as-is our democratic experiment here in the US. Scalability is tough.

lettergram 4y ago

In reality, it’s becoming a colony. You know how the US captured Texas? Americans moved there (on invitation of the Mexican government), then when the government of Mexico didn’t act as expected the US supported a war of independence of Texas. Who are most of the immigrants to Canada I wonder…

lebuffon 4y ago
No need to wonder The Top 10 Biggest Sources Of New Permanent Residents To Canada in 2021 are: India: 96,660 China: 24,995 Philippines: 13,310 Nigeria: 12,500 France: 10,510 United States: 9,525 Brazil: 9,270 Iran: 8,930 Pakistan: 6,625 South Korea: 6,590
- oatmeal_croc 4y ago
  As an Indian, the thought of India colonizing a country is chuckleworthy.
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Your ethnic group has never invaded and colonised an area?
    - oatmeal_croc 4y ago
      I'd say no. For thousands of years, we've been the colonisees, not the colonisers.
      - LAC-Tech 4y ago
        If you'd been colonised for thousands of years your group would not exist anymore. The fact your group - which you are being very coy about - still does exist, suggest that not only have you not been continuously colonised for thousands of years, but that you've probably colonised and absorbed some of your neighbours.

aeturnum 4y ago

I do think "we" (whatever that means) are paying too little attention to the real work of truly integrating cultures. It's hard work - to be open and aware of your actions and to see how one might adjust oneself after noticing another person's actions in the same space / town / city / country. Changes on changes. Mutating culture is hard, luxuriating in a culture we know is easy.

sbaiddn 4y ago

As an immigrant to Canada... pretty much spot on.

chrisfosterelli 4y ago

> We have way too many people! We're one of the least densely populated countries in the world with one of the lowest birth rates in the world. If you don't think immigration makes sense for cultural reasons that's fine, but with respect to healthcare and housing don't be under any illusion -- reducing immigration would exacerbate these issues by giving us an even more heavily aging population.

sh4un 4y ago
xboxnolifes 4y ago
healthcare availability, housing availability, and immigration rate are not related by population density, but by population growth and infrastructure growth. If your infrastructure growth doesn't outpace your population growth, it doesn't matter how dense or not dense your country is.
- addicted 4y ago
  Existing infrastructure is not designed for an aging population. But it’s good that you point out the real problem which is a lack of infrastructure.
- chrisfosterelli 4y ago
  Our infrastructure is constrained because of systemic policy decisions, not because we can't practically grow it fast enough. These policy constraints would become significantly more painful under a declining, aging population. For healthcare, we don't pay our GPs enough and we overwork them. Physicians have been either leaving the profession or moving into non-GP roles (specialists, etc). Since healthcare is taxpayer funded, reducing the number of working age tax payers and increasing the number of aging people in need of health care is going to make this worse. For housing, we allow too much control of housing at the municipal layer and it's become a complex, bureaucratic mess to build anything anywhere. The dirty secret is that no federal government wants to step in and be the one to fix this because then it would cause housing prices to decrease and a terrifying large percentage of aging, voting population has the majority of their net worth in their house with "downsizing" forming the majority of their retirement plan. Reducing the population isn't going to fix this, we'll end up with less people who can build houses and more people who are either dependent on high house prices for their retirement or poor and in need of taxpayer programs (of which there will be less tax payers to fund) to support themselves. These are obviously complex issues and I'm simplifying to some degree, but those are at least two key relationships worth really calling out here with respect to population. There's others, but my core point is that simplify cutting off population growth is not going to fix either of these -- it'd probably make them worse.

rjzzleep 4y ago

The thing that gets me about the US and Canada is that those countries don't even have an ethnic population to begin with. The ethnic population was put into camps and then replaced by a bunch of Europeans for a bunch of different countries to begin with. Germany losing its national identity I can follow. France losing its national identity I can follow as well, although my sympathies are somewhat limited given the context of it. But the US and Canada ? You ask an average American and they tell you their a quarter Italian, A quarter German, 1/10 native American and 2/5th danish. What is the national identity here?

davidro80 4y ago
nine_k 4y ago
An American may lack a cleat ethnic identity, but I suppose that the American national identity is very much a thing. The American values, the American dream, the liberty, the flag, etc. A large number of Americans is pretty patriotic, despite being ethnically varied. While at it: both Germany and France used to be much more varied in cultures and languages, but were unified by their centralized states. A dilution of this unity is, in a sense, return to a more natural state of cultural variety.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If America didn’t have an ethnic identity you’d not be able to recognize Americans the world over l.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    A ton of Americans around me identify ethnically in various ways, and keep some of their ethnical habits (Mexican, various Caribbean, Jewish, Irish, various African, several Chinese, etc). Still, they see themselves as fellow Anericans.
notadev 4y ago
We’re not allowed to have an American identity. Trying to cling to traditions is considered a conservative thing and thus inherently racist. American can only be defined by her failures, and any attempt to point out the successes is considered whitewashing history or something. There were a number of places that sought to, or outright skipped, the Independence Day celebration this year. It’s now totally normal for some people to find the US flag “problematic” and itself a sign of oppression.

rapind 4y ago

It's all part of the plan... https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/ https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/

myth_drannon 4y ago

And who is going to work in Tim Hortons(or take care of your elderly parents)? At least in Montreal, due to stuff shortages many Tim's are half closed with huge lines or drive throughs only. I have never seen anything like this. Also on Monday are elections in Quebec and all they can talk is about immigrants and how to limit immigration(Quebec has a separate immigration program).

sbaiddn 4y ago
Because there were no Timmy's or nursing homes before we all showed up?
- missedthecue 4y ago
  I think he's implying that the immigration system as it presently exists primarily brings in a class of person that is unlikely to work at Tim Hortons, but likely to be a customer of Tim Hortons. This exacerbates the waiting times. That said, I do not live in North America. I am inferring from context.
cpsns 4y ago
The huge lines are more due to the insane menu Tim’s has right now. It’s far too complex and requires endless context shifting from workers. The workers at my local Tims have been complaining about it for a long time. The half closed ones though? Yah, that’s a worker shortage. My local one started by closing the dining area and then started closing at 8PM simply because they can’t staff it. Of course they can’t, they only offer minimum wage.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  Interesting that it is cheaper to close the entire operation than it is to increase labor expense. Must be thin margins in that business.
  - ultrasaurus 4y ago
    The margins on coffee are amazing, but I suspect coffee makes up a smaller % of sales after 8pm so the late night mix might have much thinner margins.

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

>Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist. Those who consider immigration a race issue are often those who view everything as a race issue, and view reality through a warped lens of race. Even worse are others who have ulterior motives (political, economic) for favoring increased immigration and use the race card as a weapon to smear opponents and prevent substantive debate.

slater 4y ago

> Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US but any discussion of lowering this is considered racist ...or maybe don't compare Canada's rate to a country with one of the strictest immigration policies available, just because doing so fits your inclinations...?

refurb 4y ago

How did you get 10x? Because the numbers this article talks about includes temporary visa like student visas. Looking at US stats (2018 numbers): - 500k immigrant visas (green cards) - 9M non-immigrant visas minus 6M B1/B2 visitor visas So each year, it totals about 3.5M, which is ~10x Canada, so not that far off per capita. You could argue that staying in Canada after arriving with a temporary visa is much easier than the US, which is true. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics/graphs.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

goatsi 4y ago

Healthcare would be much worse without immigrants. In Canada, immigrants make up 23% of registered nurses 35% of nurse aides and related occupations 37% of pharmacists 36% of physicians 39% of dentists https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/campaigns/immigration-matters/growing-canada-future/health.html https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ca...

LAC-Tech 4y ago
I feel like you need to include "% of patients" as well to answer the question meaningfully.
- goatsi 4y ago
  Immigrants are 21.5% of the population. They are also on average younger than the rest of the population, so they will use less medical services. The average age of a Canadian actually went down this year for the first time in over 50 years because of younger immigrants arriving.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
Is this far off from the percentage of immigrants in the total population ages 24-65?
bombcar 4y ago
Apparently 21% of Canadians are foreign born so those numbers aren’t entirely out of line. Yet.
adolph 4y ago
Is Canada directly importing healthcare workers or does it preferentially train immigrants for healthcare roles?
- goatsi 4y ago
  They are directly importing healthcare workers.

tarakat 4y ago

> Canada has an immigration rate 10x the rate of the US I assume you mean per-capita? Because legal immigration alone into the US is about 1.8 million/year and has been for almost a decade, excluding one or two pandemic years.

gxt 4y ago

Put me in the same bucket. And in Quebec the extreme-left party (QS) is promoting religious sectarianism in schools, in favor of political indoctrination of children. There are also unashamed communists promoting war in Montreal, just today there was a dude flying the soviet flag on a bike while I was getting coffee, and nothing can be done it about otherwise --> Jail. Contemporary Canada has only existed for 50 years, and for some reason everybody left of center thinks it's always been this way and it feels like they are all ready to cut their veins open in shame of being born in a successful country...

kingofpandora 4y ago
> There are also unashamed communists promoting war in Montreal, just today there was a dude flying the soviet flag on a bike while I was getting coffee, and nothing can be done it about otherwise --> Jail. Out of curiosity, what would you like to do to the bike-rider that would land you in jail?
- gxt 4y ago
  So your question is What would I like to do to someone who asks to boycott elections, and start a violent revolution to impose an autocratic government that has in history killed millions by war and famine?
  - kingofpandora 4y ago
    Sure. We're exploring your fantasies here.

TMWNN 4y ago

>can’t access a family doctor. To provide context to others, an amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-canadians-don-t-have-a-family-physician-report-1.4611149 https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. In Atlantic Canada (the four easternmost provinces) it is impossible, repeat *impossible*, to get a family doctor if you don't have one <https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we-learned-and-what-you-said-about-doctor-shortage-in-atlantic-canada-286436/ https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too.

TMWNN 4y ago
The second URL above has died; use <https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we-learned-and-what-you-said-about-doctor-shortage-in-atlantic-canada-286436/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thete...>.
wenc 4y ago
Thanks for the info. I lived in Ontario for over a decade, and Quebec for half a decade. There were grumblings about a shortage of family doctors even when I was there a decade ago, but I never had any trouble finding a family doctor in the GTA. But it sounds like the situation is quite different in BC and elsewhere. I'm guessing it's partly a function of where family doctors like to settle? Most of my friends who are family doctors end up in Ontario. Also, in Ontario, Nurse Practitioners (who often work in partnership with a physician) are able to provide equally good primary care, so the system is actually quite scalable if you're not strictly looking for MDs. In the US, physician assistants and medical assistants often provide primary care. In Canada NPs often fill that role.

moralestapia 4y ago

>I have a top 5% income but I will never own a house in my life That's weird, really. I'm about 10% of income there and could easily buy a house in 3-5 years. Not on Vancouver, though, if that's what you mean.