Immigration is really not the problem

It's almost politically incorrect these days to suggest that, actually, maybe we don't really need to reduce our immigration numbers. So ingrained is the notion that all our ills - from the housing crisis to the healthcare crisis to the productivity crisis - are a direct result of out-of-control immigration, that to even suggest otherwise is a radical action. So, kudos to Andrew Coyne for questioning this new orthodoxy in a hard-hitting article in the Globe today.

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservatives'  sort-of leader, continues to make anti-immigration his main message - hey, it worked for Donald Trump! - but, unfortunately his policy is almost identical to the (very un-Liberal, it must be said) one that the governing Liberals are already pursuing. This amounts to not just reining in the levels of immigration, but actual depopulation - "more people leaving than coming". This is unheard-of in Canadian history, and certainly a long way from the immigration policies that made Canada as successful as it is.

Mr. Coyne points out that it is by no means certain that immigration has been responsible for our housing crisis or our healthcare crisis, both of which started well before the recent years of extreme (and arguably out-of-control) immigration. Previous periods of very high immigration, such as the 1950s and 1960s were not accompanied by such crises, so the causal link is far from proven. Poor management and lack of investment are more likely the causes. The pandemic itself was a major contributing factor in much that has gone wrong since.

And, like it or not, we do need a lot of immigration, if only to pay for the ever-increasing financial burdens (for healthcare, pensions, and other things) imposed by our ageing population and low natural birthdates. Absolute population decline will put us in an even worse situation than we already find ourselves in. I have already argued this some time ago.

So, where is all this across-the-board anti-immigrant sentiment coming from. For almost the first time ever, polls in Canada suggest that the population are against immigration, a huge change in a country that has always been - as recently as just a few short years ago - strongly pro-immigration. 

For whatever reason - and I blame Donald Trump and his radical repositioning of the Overtlon window - anti-immigration is a political winner at the moment, and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. The pendulum will swing back, I believe, hopefully sooner rather than later. Maybe it will just take another pandamic-style labour shortage to bring that about. There's nothing like deteriorating service in restaurants to focus the collective mind.

Yes, we need to improve productivity, technical excellence and capital investment. But let's not throw immigration - the engine of Canadian success - under the bus at the same time.