Ottawa’s immigration targets expected to stay high
Ratio of people entering workforce to those retiring dropped to 0.88:1 this year
As Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino gets set to unveil on Friday the government’s new immigration targets for next year, some experts warn if Canada doesn’t stay the course of pre-COVID-19 levels, the economy will be in trouble.
“That is one of the biggest prevailing views now, and I expect that view is going to be behind Minister Mendicino’s announcement,” said Daniel Hiebert, a University of British Columbia professor who specializes in immigration policy.
But others say the government needs to carefully consider the needs of Canada and new immigrants in the current economy.
By law, the federal government must reveal its 2021-23 immigration plan for each program — skilled immigrants, family reunification and refugee protection and resettlement — by Nov. 1.
But because last year’s election took place in October, Ottawa postponed the release of its 2020-22 plan until March, right before the COVID-19 lockdown. That plan called for admissions of 341,000 newcomers this year, 351,000 in 2021 and 361,000 in 2022.
Due to travel restrictions, reduced application processing capacity and flight cancellations, only 60 per cent or some 200,000 are expected to have made it to Canada by year’s end.
Statistics Canada’s latest demographic update shows the country’s population has reached 38 million, but only recorded a 0.1 per cent growth or an increase of 25,384 persons between April and June — the lowest since 1972 — because of the pandemic. In contrast, the growth rate stood at 0.5 per cent in each of the past two years at this time.
Last year, immigration accounted for 86.5 per cent of Canada’s population growth in the second quarter. This year, that dropped to 38.2 per cent (an addition of 9,700 persons).
Until the mid-1980s, Ottawa simply turned off the immigration tab for skilled immigrants during recession, Hiebert said. But starting with Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government, Canada has maintained ANNUAL immigration levels of 225,000 and prioritized the skilled class to withstand the economic slowdown in the 1990s and 2000s.
Although immigration does not lead to an increased GDP per capita, it helps boost the country’s overall productivity and consumption, Hiebert said.
In the1980s, two people would enter the workforce for everyone who retired. In 2011, the ratio was 1:1, but last year, it was down to 0.88:1, meaning the workforce has actually shrunk, Hiebert added.
“Taking the major economic downturn aside, we definitely can use a significant number of immigrants going forward. The question then becomes when do you get back to that? Do you delay until you see the labour market improve or do you get out in front of that and get back to that level right away?” he asks.
“I don’t think there’s an easy answer. It’s one of those contingency things. My guess is Minister Mendicino is going to go quickly rather than slowly, like in the 1990s. If you bring them in, they are going to propel the recovery rather than slow it down,” Hiebert said.
The pandemic has taken a big toll on the number of permanent residents admitted under family reunification and refugee class — down 49 per cent and 59 per cent — as of the end of August.
Those under the economic class dropped by 37.5 per cent from almost 130,000 in 2019 to just 81,000 in 2020 over the same period.
However, Andrew Griffith, a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the Environics Institute, says the government has to weigh the benefits of bringing more immigrants into the country during an economic downturn.
“COVID has slowed everything down, shrunk everything down,” said Griffith, who is leading research that tracks the impacts of the pandemic on Canada immigration.
When they started tracking the COVID impacts on immigration, they thought after the initial border closures and processing stoppage, the whole system would have started recovering by now. It hasn’t.
Griffith said it is unfair to bring in newcomers during a recession, knowing they are going to have a tough time integrating economically.
“That will impact them not just in the short term but longer term. Don’t pretend that you can just turn on the plan again starting in 2021 to go to 340,000. Maybe take it down a notch and recalibrate as the economy recovers,” said Griffith, a former director general with the federal immigration department.
Howard Ramos, a sociology professor at Western University, suggests the government look carefully at Canada’s changing needs.
Given Canada’s “econocentric” immigration system, which aims at attracting newcomers to meet labour market needs, policy-makers must take stock of the new post-COVID job market before reopening the doors to immigration, he said.
“It is important for us to consider what are the implications of not having a global source of migrants. Can we assume people would want to come when the system reopens? It’s really important to start thinking now about what comes next than being reactive,” he said.
The pandemic has allowed many jobs to be performed remotely, which may change the demands for migrant workers and skilled immigrants, as well as the mix of permanent residents, such as “essential workers,” who have to be present in Canada and international students, many of them currently enrolled online from overseas.
“We need to start thinking citizenship differently in the postCOVID 21st-century world,” he said.
As Ottawa restarts its immigration — and economic — engine, Ramos said officials should focus on targeted immigration initiatives that attract immigrants to the Atlantic Provinces and northern and rural Canada that are more impacted by the current immigration decline.
“When you have a system attracting people based on their skills, not only are people needing to consume, they also contribute back, which then leads to momentum. That’s what 1990s taught Canada,” Ramos said.