7 ms·

Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says

65 points by djkivi 3y ago

badcppdev 3y ago
The world must end reliance on cheap labour or we're always going to have slums next to the factories that make our clothes. Can you have a population of 8 billion humans with something close to a modern lifestyle... we can try I guess
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- electric_mayhem 3y ago
  Obligatory Neal Stephenson: “When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery” ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Since AI can do three of those better now, I see a lot of pizza in our future.
    - voisin 3y ago
      I would vote for this future.
- gosub100 3y ago
  I'm more concerned about the people in Canada being shafted out of entry-level jobs. Who do their government represent, Indians or Candians?
  - goodSteveramos 3y ago
    The paradox of globalization is that it benefits the ultra wealthy of every nation but only hurts the working classes of wealthy nations.
canadiantim 3y ago
Easy fix. Simply increase immigration to a million+ people per year thereby driving down domestic wages and now voila we have cheap domestic labour.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  A less easy fix, but one that's better for everyone is that we all just stop buying mountains and mountains of absolutely useless plastic and digital crap. Sure we need lots of human labour to keep the world going round, but dealing with the obscenity of consumerism is where a better world begins. These are the results [0], a kind of misery and 'poverty' (an 'affluenza') caused by unchecked material indulgence. Surely we can address this culturally on the demand side? [0] https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/techno-clutter-farnell.html https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/techno-clutter-farnell...
  - BigFnTelly 3y ago
    Great read. I'm glad that the author stressed how systemic tech addiction is, and not a moral failure of the individual. It's only slightly ironic that he asked for readers to plug his article on social media, but the word needs getting out.
- maxglute 3y ago
  We already have cheap domestic labour, we fly in Mexicans and South Americans and squeeze them in share houses to do cheap and dangerous migrant labour work on a seasonal basis. But you're suppose to keep that unsightliness away from cities / urban dwellers. People start to question when one bedrooms become unaffordable and basements are housing 8 students / food couriers whose bike just exploded in the subway and now no one can bring ebikes on transit. Cheap labour is suppose to make us feel richer and be invisible.
- dade_ 3y ago
  Except we are also complaining about a housing crisis. Homeless shelters that were already full of the homeless, are now joined with refugees, and apparently international students that also can't find a home to share with 24 other people. https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/01/25-international-students-basement-brampton/ https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/01/25-international-student... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mayor-refugees-shelters-1.6961606 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mayor-refugees-shelte...
kzz102 3y ago
This looks like the result of an abuse of the foreign students visa as work visas, partly due to leftover pandemic era policy. In a typical government response, instead of actually fixing the loophole, they use the blunt weapon of cutting visa quotas, and then make generalized comments against foreign labor.
- lainga 3y ago
  Possibly someone has just got ahold of internal poll figs and are making moves (inter alia the said generalized comments against foreign labor) to appease swing voters
Scoundreller 3y ago
> He will announce further changes soon to restrict students’ off-campus work hours He just extended the “temporary” increase to the weekly hours limit 2 months ago… And expanded it to a larger group of study visa students. https://www.cicnews.com/2023/12/canada-extending-international-student-off-campus-work-hours-policy-until-april-2024-1241764.html https://www.cicnews.com/2023/12/canada-extending-internation... He doesn’t even need to start by changing anything, he could have started by doing nothing and let his own department’s exemptions expire.
- canadiantim 3y ago
  The current government is filled with a very special kind of person
maxglute 3y ago
500k -> 1.1M foreign students since end of covid. Truely absurd. I hope this is 5th dimension chess to con Indians on false hope of PR to inject a few years of expensive international tuition to pay for covid response. Doesn't make sense to let them work and possibly send remittances back home (as if cost of living is not high enough) because that's what you get when you start brain draining more than those who can afford to buy citizenship.
- biotopia 3y ago
  I see you're trying to drive a wedge between India and Canada, dirtyid, or Chinese citizen who lives in Canada who loves China and hates western world. It really doesn't matter what you're doing you know, China is a Great Depression and will stay there for 20 years. Also proving the point that Canada and US should not be importing more Chinese pinkies into the country
  - maxglute 3y ago
    Oh no, you got me. I'm a Chinese Canadian citizen living in Canada who advocates for Canadian geopolitical interests before Chinese ones, which I advocate before US ones. That means useful immigration, including Indians who can pay and contribute to economy, not when it gets remitted back to India like MENA model, or eat away at locals QoL. I'm fine with going back to 600k immigration levels, which is still high and having Canadian schools 40% Indian, because frankly PRC talent staying in PRC is good for PRC. For reference, I also advocate Canada cooperating with India on sikh seperatist (and India cooperating with Canada on assassinating Canadian on Canadian soil) to get relations back on track.
apwell23 3y ago
ok this explains why 90% of college age kids in my neighborhood are in canada now.
KorematsuFredt 3y ago
[flagged]
codeisawesome 3y ago
I’m an immigrant. I’ll be the first in line to agree that all the demands (and the specifics of those demands: personal space, hygiene, clothing, noise etc) for assimilation by western societies that I’ve ever heard re: immigrants, are reasonable - assuming such luxuries can be afforded (nobody crams themselves 8 to a room by choice). But, people aren’t robots whose movements are controlled by an on-off switch. The government introduced the means for people to arrive and work, and so the people arrived. They are continuing to arrive because the policies have not been updated yet. How is it the immigrants’ fault? Why the hate and the attacks on their dignity & humanity? The nonstop online vitriol hurts me deeply to read - nowhere is “safe” - Reddit, HN, Instagram… the hate spewers seemingly spend all their time spewing on these platforms to manipulate opinions and tap into the fundamental atavistic psychological flaws of the human mind.
- ikesau 3y ago
  i recently saw a refreshing perspective on canadian immigration that addressed these issues at their origins: failures in housing policy and complacent governance. it's the perspective i wish more canadians held so we could steer the government towards policy that's better for all. maybe nativist nimbyism isn't inevitable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQkzE9PsAv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQkzE9PsAv4
  - llm_nerd 3y ago
    That video gets cited regarding every discussion about the current Canadian immigration disaster. It pushes two basic ideas- 1) If Canada had housing, services and infrastructure that met any growth in population, there would be no problem! 2) Look at all these problems occurring, isn't it wonderful‽‽‽ It's going to force a revelation and everything will be super fixed and it'll be better than ever! The future is now! Things that don't kill you make you stronger or something. That covers 100% of the video, and the delusional, pie in the sky notion pushed by the creator. If that video were presented as farce it would actually be funny. Instead it's depressing and sounds like the dope-fueled meanderings of someone absolutely decoupled from any semblance of reality. Nothing is being fixed. Housing starts have dropped. Housing projects are moving slower than they did before this influx (but wait, isn't the video holding that there has been some amazing, wonderful transformation? Where?). The health system is in shambles. Demographics ghettos grow. A whole generation are going to be living in their parent's basements indefinitely, and anyone looking for a future is moving out of Canada. Canada is poised for a very unfortunate hard turn to the right due to the policies of the very minister quoted and his peers who pushed the same "no problem here!" dismissals to growing concern. Busy making excuses as problem because disaster became catastrophe. It is very unfortunate that some of the anger and outrage about government policy is reflected in racist or xenophobic outbursts as described in the root post, but it was basically inevitable: This government basically declared war on a demographic of Canadians and they're "fighting back". I'm lucky to work in a high skill position and live in an affluent area, but I can recognize the absolute disaster that is occurring: When coffee shop chains are buying up apartments and evicting the residents to bring in an army of TFWs, something has gone profoundly awry. When international students don't actually go to classes, get a worthless diploma, and are buying a work permit and a path to residency, something has gone wrong. Canada needs immigration. Canada was built on immigration. Canada is a multicultural nation. What has been happening is a perversion of that and has put a country on edge.
amriksohata 3y ago
[flagged]
Tiktaalik 3y ago
The root causes of all this is the fact that way back in like the 1990s in order to balance the budget the Fed Liberals under Chretien did big time austerity and cut transfers to the Provinces, and then the Provinces reacted by doing big time austerity and cutting budgets to post secondary education. Then post secondary education reacted to that budget hole by increasing the amount of foreign students they brought in to cover the shortfall. This continued on and on and at some point folks really started to realize these high foreign student tuitions were an exploitable, profitable business, and we started seeing more and more private for-profit diploma mill style schools bringing in foreign students. The students paid a high price for useless hotel management degrees but in exchange got a boosted chance at permanent residency. At some point the current government realized that they had a labour shortage and that all these foreign students milling about getting useless degrees were a source of cheap labour. Accordingly they relaxed rules and allowed them to work more hours. Really poor and gross decision making all around dating back decades. In 2014 the current PM, when he was in third place in the polls, wrote a scathing op-ed against the related Temporary Foreign Worker program but after being elected did nothing but make everything worse. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-how-to-fix-the-broken-temporary-foreign-worker-program/article_c27f214f-1fa2-5fdf-af61-5a7642e4eb7c.html https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-... Given that the Conservatives were the ones that kick started the abuses of the TFW program. It's hard to believe either Liberals or Conservatives are credible on this file.
asdfasdfasdf222 3y ago
The real issue is Canada's demographic decline. Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. We're not getting rid of these people, they will become citizens if they choose to. Personally, I doubt that any announcement by the government will be anything but a temporary hold, to be returned to high levels post-Liberal election victory. All of these people have already been educated (to varying levels of quality) so on paper, they fill out the population pyramid. The problem is the policy driving it is bad. Rather than high-skilled workers, we're letting in low-to-mid-skilled young people. On paper, this plugs the demographic hole. But a lack of planning on infrastructure (housing, etc.) means that prices of those assets has gone through the roof. This has created poor economic incentives to invest in labour intensive industries and housing rather than the innovative, productive part of the economy. What happens when you want to open a software company but can't find workers? Maybe you open a house painting company instead, if the money on offer is high enough. We shouldn't blame the immigrant -- they are trying to improve their lives. But you definitely can blame poor policy.
- office_drone 3y ago
  > Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. This is not true. 1) Immigrants are not brought in with the goal of topping up the numbers to the existing level, immigrants are being brought in with the intent of tripling the population. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative whose founders are advisors to the federal government. 2) Canada does not need immigrants to pay for its pensions. CPP and other pension in Canada are well run, invest their money, and don't just route money from young people to old. Rather, they pay the money out from the money already put in.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    > and don't just route money from young people to old Doesn't matter. Money represents goods and services. And the young people to provide care to the elderly at the currently expected levels don't exist. Things, even services, that don't exist can't be bought at any price. People often forget that money is but a proxy for other things. On the small scale of an individual or a family anything can be bought. For a country, the illusion is broken and you have to do economics with actual people, actual land, ... because otherwise prices will rapidly "adapt" and make policy impossible. Which is exactly the mistake 99% of all governments currently make.
wly_cdgr 3y ago
Good luck!
freedom-fries 3y ago
Contrary opinion: well, we like paying less! We get angry on high prices, swan at deals, and then get mad that businesses want to pay less too! Something has to give - either the buyers get shafted, or the workers. I don't believe that margins will be the first to get a cut - margins go to the wealthiest of the bunch who're running the show :)
- betaby 3y ago
  Canada is very expensive. Cheap labor doesn't help average Joe at all.
tester756 3y ago
Is Canada attractive country to live in in compare to e.g Poland?
nickd2001 3y ago
Challenge 1. "Soaring rents and house prices" Challenge 2. Lots of immigrants wanting a decent job and competing with existent population to apply for these. In a country with as much undeveloped land as Canada has, I think, there might be a win-win solution to be had here? ;) OK ok, to be fair it takes a little while to train as builders, electricians, plasterers etc etc, but it does seem like Canada has the solution right in front of them. Just build a couple more Torontos, and, problem solved?
- betaby 3y ago
  Please show on the map where would you prefer a New Toronto located.
  - nickd2001 3y ago
    That's probably up to Canadians to decide. But there's quite a lot of space. ;). Joking aside, this sort of thing was done in the UK years ago. places like Milton Keynes, Crawley, Stevenage. Its not without its issues. and not a simple endeavour. But really, its laughable to someone living in a crowded country, that one of the most , in parts, sparsely populated countries in the world, isn't apparently looking into this. It'd be a 10-15 yr plan perhaps to implement. But with government commitment, the right tax incentives etc. Look how much China has built out in the last 20 yrs. Edit- cold winters are an issue in parts of Canada but climate change is actually opening up new areas, right?
    - waldohatesyou 3y ago
      This is a very silly idea, Canada's population isn't even that large. Why would we build new cities that have no economic basis when we could just scale up our existing cities? Toronto could be a megacity but it isn't currently.
      - nickd2001 3y ago
        Such a thing has been done in the UK - as for "no economic basis" - Wikipedia says "Milton Keynes is among the most economically productive localities in the UK, ranking highly against a number of criteria. It has the UK's fifth-highest number of business startups per capita" This "very silly idea" been done and proven in the UK, when overcrowding made it necessary, and quite likely other countries - I bet China's done it. Why does any new city start? Historically its often been due to a natural resource that could be traded, transport links or some such, but there's no reason why this couldn't be jump started as has been done in the UK. Especially now with tech and many people WFH. Also from what I heard, Toronto was already considered a hideous sprawl, not necessarily desirable to further extend.
hulitu 3y ago
> Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says That's why they are not a superpower like US.

65 points by djkivi 3y ago

The world must end reliance on cheap labour or we're always going to have slums next to the factories that make our clothes. Can you have a population of 8 billion humans with something close to a modern lifestyle... we can try I guess

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
electric_mayhem 3y ago
Obligatory Neal Stephenson: “When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery” ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Since AI can do three of those better now, I see a lot of pizza in our future.
  - voisin 3y ago
    I would vote for this future.
gosub100 3y ago
I'm more concerned about the people in Canada being shafted out of entry-level jobs. Who do their government represent, Indians or Candians?
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  The paradox of globalization is that it benefits the ultra wealthy of every nation but only hurts the working classes of wealthy nations.

canadiantim 3y ago

Easy fix. Simply increase immigration to a million+ people per year thereby driving down domestic wages and now voila we have cheap domestic labour.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
A less easy fix, but one that's better for everyone is that we all just stop buying mountains and mountains of absolutely useless plastic and digital crap. Sure we need lots of human labour to keep the world going round, but dealing with the obscenity of consumerism is where a better world begins. These are the results [0], a kind of misery and 'poverty' (an 'affluenza') caused by unchecked material indulgence. Surely we can address this culturally on the demand side? [0] https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/techno-clutter-farnell.html https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/techno-clutter-farnell...
- BigFnTelly 3y ago
  Great read. I'm glad that the author stressed how systemic tech addiction is, and not a moral failure of the individual. It's only slightly ironic that he asked for readers to plug his article on social media, but the word needs getting out.
maxglute 3y ago
We already have cheap domestic labour, we fly in Mexicans and South Americans and squeeze them in share houses to do cheap and dangerous migrant labour work on a seasonal basis. But you're suppose to keep that unsightliness away from cities / urban dwellers. People start to question when one bedrooms become unaffordable and basements are housing 8 students / food couriers whose bike just exploded in the subway and now no one can bring ebikes on transit. Cheap labour is suppose to make us feel richer and be invisible.
dade_ 3y ago
Except we are also complaining about a housing crisis. Homeless shelters that were already full of the homeless, are now joined with refugees, and apparently international students that also can't find a home to share with 24 other people. https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/01/25-international-students-basement-brampton/ https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/01/25-international-student... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mayor-refugees-shelters-1.6961606 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mayor-refugees-shelte...

kzz102 3y ago

This looks like the result of an abuse of the foreign students visa as work visas, partly due to leftover pandemic era policy. In a typical government response, instead of actually fixing the loophole, they use the blunt weapon of cutting visa quotas, and then make generalized comments against foreign labor.

lainga 3y ago
Possibly someone has just got ahold of internal poll figs and are making moves (inter alia the said generalized comments against foreign labor) to appease swing voters

Scoundreller 3y ago

> He will announce further changes soon to restrict students’ off-campus work hours He just extended the “temporary” increase to the weekly hours limit 2 months ago… And expanded it to a larger group of study visa students. https://www.cicnews.com/2023/12/canada-extending-international-student-off-campus-work-hours-policy-until-april-2024-1241764.html https://www.cicnews.com/2023/12/canada-extending-internation... He doesn’t even need to start by changing anything, he could have started by doing nothing and let his own department’s exemptions expire.

canadiantim 3y ago
The current government is filled with a very special kind of person

maxglute 3y ago

500k -> 1.1M foreign students since end of covid. Truely absurd. I hope this is 5th dimension chess to con Indians on false hope of PR to inject a few years of expensive international tuition to pay for covid response. Doesn't make sense to let them work and possibly send remittances back home (as if cost of living is not high enough) because that's what you get when you start brain draining more than those who can afford to buy citizenship.

biotopia 3y ago
I see you're trying to drive a wedge between India and Canada, dirtyid, or Chinese citizen who lives in Canada who loves China and hates western world. It really doesn't matter what you're doing you know, China is a Great Depression and will stay there for 20 years. Also proving the point that Canada and US should not be importing more Chinese pinkies into the country
- maxglute 3y ago
  Oh no, you got me. I'm a Chinese Canadian citizen living in Canada who advocates for Canadian geopolitical interests before Chinese ones, which I advocate before US ones. That means useful immigration, including Indians who can pay and contribute to economy, not when it gets remitted back to India like MENA model, or eat away at locals QoL. I'm fine with going back to 600k immigration levels, which is still high and having Canadian schools 40% Indian, because frankly PRC talent staying in PRC is good for PRC. For reference, I also advocate Canada cooperating with India on sikh seperatist (and India cooperating with Canada on assassinating Canadian on Canadian soil) to get relations back on track.

apwell23 3y ago

ok this explains why 90% of college age kids in my neighborhood are in canada now.

KorematsuFredt 3y ago

[flagged]

codeisawesome 3y ago

I’m an immigrant. I’ll be the first in line to agree that all the demands (and the specifics of those demands: personal space, hygiene, clothing, noise etc) for assimilation by western societies that I’ve ever heard re: immigrants, are reasonable - assuming such luxuries can be afforded (nobody crams themselves 8 to a room by choice). But, people aren’t robots whose movements are controlled by an on-off switch. The government introduced the means for people to arrive and work, and so the people arrived. They are continuing to arrive because the policies have not been updated yet. How is it the immigrants’ fault? Why the hate and the attacks on their dignity & humanity? The nonstop online vitriol hurts me deeply to read - nowhere is “safe” - Reddit, HN, Instagram… the hate spewers seemingly spend all their time spewing on these platforms to manipulate opinions and tap into the fundamental atavistic psychological flaws of the human mind.

ikesau 3y ago
i recently saw a refreshing perspective on canadian immigration that addressed these issues at their origins: failures in housing policy and complacent governance. it's the perspective i wish more canadians held so we could steer the government towards policy that's better for all. maybe nativist nimbyism isn't inevitable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQkzE9PsAv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQkzE9PsAv4
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  That video gets cited regarding every discussion about the current Canadian immigration disaster. It pushes two basic ideas- 1) If Canada had housing, services and infrastructure that met any growth in population, there would be no problem! 2) Look at all these problems occurring, isn't it wonderful‽‽‽ It's going to force a revelation and everything will be super fixed and it'll be better than ever! The future is now! Things that don't kill you make you stronger or something. That covers 100% of the video, and the delusional, pie in the sky notion pushed by the creator. If that video were presented as farce it would actually be funny. Instead it's depressing and sounds like the dope-fueled meanderings of someone absolutely decoupled from any semblance of reality. Nothing is being fixed. Housing starts have dropped. Housing projects are moving slower than they did before this influx (but wait, isn't the video holding that there has been some amazing, wonderful transformation? Where?). The health system is in shambles. Demographics ghettos grow. A whole generation are going to be living in their parent's basements indefinitely, and anyone looking for a future is moving out of Canada. Canada is poised for a very unfortunate hard turn to the right due to the policies of the very minister quoted and his peers who pushed the same "no problem here!" dismissals to growing concern. Busy making excuses as problem because disaster became catastrophe. It is very unfortunate that some of the anger and outrage about government policy is reflected in racist or xenophobic outbursts as described in the root post, but it was basically inevitable: This government basically declared war on a demographic of Canadians and they're "fighting back". I'm lucky to work in a high skill position and live in an affluent area, but I can recognize the absolute disaster that is occurring: When coffee shop chains are buying up apartments and evicting the residents to bring in an army of TFWs, something has gone profoundly awry. When international students don't actually go to classes, get a worthless diploma, and are buying a work permit and a path to residency, something has gone wrong. Canada needs immigration. Canada was built on immigration. Canada is a multicultural nation. What has been happening is a perversion of that and has put a country on edge.

amriksohata 3y ago

[flagged]

Tiktaalik 3y ago

The root causes of all this is the fact that way back in like the 1990s in order to balance the budget the Fed Liberals under Chretien did big time austerity and cut transfers to the Provinces, and then the Provinces reacted by doing big time austerity and cutting budgets to post secondary education. Then post secondary education reacted to that budget hole by increasing the amount of foreign students they brought in to cover the shortfall. This continued on and on and at some point folks really started to realize these high foreign student tuitions were an exploitable, profitable business, and we started seeing more and more private for-profit diploma mill style schools bringing in foreign students. The students paid a high price for useless hotel management degrees but in exchange got a boosted chance at permanent residency. At some point the current government realized that they had a labour shortage and that all these foreign students milling about getting useless degrees were a source of cheap labour. Accordingly they relaxed rules and allowed them to work more hours. Really poor and gross decision making all around dating back decades. In 2014 the current PM, when he was in third place in the polls, wrote a scathing op-ed against the related Temporary Foreign Worker program but after being elected did nothing but make everything worse. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-how-to-fix-the-broken-temporary-foreign-worker-program/article_c27f214f-1fa2-5fdf-af61-5a7642e4eb7c.html https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-... Given that the Conservatives were the ones that kick started the abuses of the TFW program. It's hard to believe either Liberals or Conservatives are credible on this file.

asdfasdfasdf222 3y ago

The real issue is Canada's demographic decline. Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. We're not getting rid of these people, they will become citizens if they choose to. Personally, I doubt that any announcement by the government will be anything but a temporary hold, to be returned to high levels post-Liberal election victory. All of these people have already been educated (to varying levels of quality) so on paper, they fill out the population pyramid. The problem is the policy driving it is bad. Rather than high-skilled workers, we're letting in low-to-mid-skilled young people. On paper, this plugs the demographic hole. But a lack of planning on infrastructure (housing, etc.) means that prices of those assets has gone through the roof. This has created poor economic incentives to invest in labour intensive industries and housing rather than the innovative, productive part of the economy. What happens when you want to open a software company but can't find workers? Maybe you open a house painting company instead, if the money on offer is high enough. We shouldn't blame the immigrant -- they are trying to improve their lives. But you definitely can blame poor policy.

office_drone 3y ago
> Immigrants were brought in to fill that gap and pay for pensions and other goodies that expect a growing base of tax paying productive workers. This is not true. 1) Immigrants are not brought in with the goal of topping up the numbers to the existing level, immigrants are being brought in with the intent of tripling the population. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative whose founders are advisors to the federal government. 2) Canada does not need immigrants to pay for its pensions. CPP and other pension in Canada are well run, invest their money, and don't just route money from young people to old. Rather, they pay the money out from the money already put in.
- candiodari 3y ago
  > and don't just route money from young people to old Doesn't matter. Money represents goods and services. And the young people to provide care to the elderly at the currently expected levels don't exist. Things, even services, that don't exist can't be bought at any price. People often forget that money is but a proxy for other things. On the small scale of an individual or a family anything can be bought. For a country, the illusion is broken and you have to do economics with actual people, actual land, ... because otherwise prices will rapidly "adapt" and make policy impossible. Which is exactly the mistake 99% of all governments currently make.

wly_cdgr 3y ago

Good luck!

freedom-fries 3y ago

Contrary opinion: well, we like paying less! We get angry on high prices, swan at deals, and then get mad that businesses want to pay less too! Something has to give - either the buyers get shafted, or the workers. I don't believe that margins will be the first to get a cut - margins go to the wealthiest of the bunch who're running the show :)

betaby 3y ago
Canada is very expensive. Cheap labor doesn't help average Joe at all.

tester756 3y ago

Is Canada attractive country to live in in compare to e.g Poland?

nickd2001 3y ago

Challenge 1. "Soaring rents and house prices" Challenge 2. Lots of immigrants wanting a decent job and competing with existent population to apply for these. In a country with as much undeveloped land as Canada has, I think, there might be a win-win solution to be had here? ;) OK ok, to be fair it takes a little while to train as builders, electricians, plasterers etc etc, but it does seem like Canada has the solution right in front of them. Just build a couple more Torontos, and, problem solved?

betaby 3y ago
Please show on the map where would you prefer a New Toronto located.
- nickd2001 3y ago
  That's probably up to Canadians to decide. But there's quite a lot of space. ;). Joking aside, this sort of thing was done in the UK years ago. places like Milton Keynes, Crawley, Stevenage. Its not without its issues. and not a simple endeavour. But really, its laughable to someone living in a crowded country, that one of the most , in parts, sparsely populated countries in the world, isn't apparently looking into this. It'd be a 10-15 yr plan perhaps to implement. But with government commitment, the right tax incentives etc. Look how much China has built out in the last 20 yrs. Edit- cold winters are an issue in parts of Canada but climate change is actually opening up new areas, right?
  - waldohatesyou 3y ago
    This is a very silly idea, Canada's population isn't even that large. Why would we build new cities that have no economic basis when we could just scale up our existing cities? Toronto could be a megacity but it isn't currently.
    - nickd2001 3y ago
      Such a thing has been done in the UK - as for "no economic basis" - Wikipedia says "Milton Keynes is among the most economically productive localities in the UK, ranking highly against a number of criteria. It has the UK's fifth-highest number of business startups per capita" This "very silly idea" been done and proven in the UK, when overcrowding made it necessary, and quite likely other countries - I bet China's done it. Why does any new city start? Historically its often been due to a natural resource that could be traded, transport links or some such, but there's no reason why this couldn't be jump started as has been done in the UK. Especially now with tech and many people WFH. Also from what I heard, Toronto was already considered a hideous sprawl, not necessarily desirable to further extend.

hulitu 3y ago

> Canada Must End Reliance on Cheap Foreign Labor, Minister Says That's why they are not a superpower like US.