‘Brain drain’ question shadows Trudeau
Talented people who immigrate to Canada don’t necessarily abandon their home countries, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told students in Singapore Thursday, when he had to defend the consequences of this country’s efforts to draw the best and the brightest from overseas.
During the one-hour question-and-answer session at the National University of Singapore, a student from Vietnam asked the prime minister how he could ensure that new trade deals Trudeau is seeking don’t rob other countries of entrepreneurs and skilled workers.
Given the right policies, a brain drain one year could become a “brain gain” another year for any country if people are freely able to move, Trudeau replied.
“That capacity to have a world in which there are greater opportunities is I think what we need to get to,” he said.
“The idea that only certain Western countries should have a quality of life that is at the top of the ladder and everyone else should be providing resources to those countries is completely wrong.”
Canada wants to compete for global talent for its burgeoning technology and artificial-intelligence hubs and the federal government is trying hard to make the country attractive to both investors and skilled workers.
Trudeau told the Singapore students that Canada is not averse to trying to keep foreign students in the country after they graduate from Canadian schools — but he said the same people are just as likely to leave again as changes in the workforce take some workers to multiple careers in multiple cities and countries.
That movement of workers, technological shifts in labour, and the impact on workers has followed Trudeau throughout his 10-day trip to Europe and
Asia.
On Friday, Trudeau will travel to Papua New Guinea for the annual APEC summit of leaders of 21 Pacific Rim countries, where labour-force disruption is expected to be a key theme.
In Paris, Trudeau talked about voters’ nervousness about the loss of traditional jobs as a factor in the rise of nationalist politicians.
And throughout the last three days in Singapore, he has argued that politicians who
look to hold on to old industries, or protect their workers from the future, are doing their people a disservice.
Canada, he said, is doubling down on the future.
Doubling down on the future, though, brings other problems, as another student pointed out. Parts of Silicon Valley in the United States have been flooded by highly paid tech workers, gentrifying cities and making some places unaffordable for people who aren’t making elite incomes.