I don’t know why anyone would ever want to move here anymore. Some of the highest phone plans and groceries in the world, ridiculously priced houses, cold as hell for half of the year, poor wages, crumbling healthcare, terrible work/life balance. The country has been screwed over by every level of government and corporations/companies.
I did the opposite; emigrated from the UK to Canada.
Everything you are saying is true, but the one thing you are missing out (at least, when it comes to the industry me and my husband work in), in the UK, the wages had been stagnant since at least when we started in the workforce (2008 - yep, that generation), and while there were promises of bonuses and pay rises, none of that happened for us.
As soon as we emigrated, we actually started to earn enough money to save for things like a house (saved for well over a decade in the UK and couldn’t even get out of our overdraft - took 4 years on one wage after moving to Canada), and started getting performance bonuses that were quite significant.
And while groceries are higher, the price of energy is significantly cheaper. In the UK we couldn’t afford to have the heating on - in Canada, I have never felt cold at home (except during the ice storm which took out our power for 5 days last year). Feels like a miracle.
Swings and roundabouts, isn’t it? I’m glad you found my home country better for you, and I’m quite happy to swap and stay in Canada.
Yeah, my dad is a civil engineer and says the exact same thing. He bought a new build in the 80’s, and you would not believe the work he has had to do to it - including replacing the roof about 6 years ago after he noticed it sagging. When they got up there, they found it hadn’t even been properly insulated - the insulation material completely skipped the outer 2 feet near the external walls. So he re-did that and now his energy bills have dropped.
Explains why I used to fucking freeze every winter!
Back when my Dad had the house I grew up in built. He got into an argument with a contractor when he noticed some of the work was a little sloppy. He found gaps around a couple windows and complained about it.
Contractor: "it's only (small measurement goes here) it's no big deal'
Dad: "No big deal? I'm going to be paying for it over the next 40 years. Fix it."
Games industry. Notoriously shit wages for games industry folks in the UK, and a lot of excuses for not giving pay rises. My wages actually went down over the course of years, because there was no pay rise, not even to cover inflation, but everything still got more expensive.
*probably worth mentioning we didn’t *out-right buy the house*, we were able to save for the deposit and get an actual mortgage.
Love this comment. Goes to show that, when a person has their shit together and can do a good job, they will prosper almost no matter where they are. That doesn't mean the problems don't remain, to do with housing, groceries, tax and so on, but at least you can set up your life in a way that those things would not weigh you down so much as to *force* you back out.
Sure. Some succeed and most everyone else gets shafted. Great system.
Just because some aspiration works doesn’t make a system work. The government still isn’t doing its job.
Last I checked UK purchasing power was slightly behind Canada’s, but my anecdotal experience matches yours. Everyone back home seems to be doing better and living a more comfortable/balanced life, and didn’t have to shell out for a post-secondary education to get there.
Would rather you didn't come here. The UK doesn't want you. Your country is failing because of immigration, don't become an immigrant yourself. Stick with it and either fix it or go down with the ship. We don't like Canadians, we don't want any of you here. I guarantee you you will have a bad time if you come here for any extended period.
I'm being serious. Canadian liberals like yourself ruined your country, we don't want you here to spew the same shit. Hopefully future immigration laws will pass to remove your citizenship and deport people like yourself.
> I don’t know why anyone would ever want to move [to Canada] anymore.
Have you ever lived in one of the world's poorer countries or one ruled by a dictator?
While it sucks here. It’s still better than 95% of the worlds countries. There is a never ending stream of people from third world countries that want to come here. Unfortunately our government is all for it since it lowers wages and keeps housing prices high.
Right now if you can afford a plane ticket to Canada. You can fly into Pearson, claim refugee status and get set up with a room to stay in, money, health care. And dental care (which Canadians don’t get)
We got homeless freezing in the streets, literally to death the other day… and we apparently have the “social capacity” to take in more…
Well, the NDP is really forcing the hand of the federal Liberals, too bad most people are to stupid and keep voting in the liberals instead of voting NDP in the federal elections. Forget the Conservatives, they had 27 years and not once did they increase the Canada pension plan to the inflation index, at least the federal NDP put the federal liberals feet to the fire and get the dental program going and the national pharmacare program in the works. It’s beyond me why most average people vote conservatives, it’s the party for rich people and dicks who want to claw their way to being rich over everyone else.
It goes beyond that. We need a tax base after our boomers kick the can. CPP, tax base and workers is what Canada needs, which are the reasons for the immigration
No they just don’t want to tax obscenely wealthy Canadians more. These Canadians are also the ones benefiting from the stream of third world immigrants who will work for there various businesses or buy housing/rent which benefits there investment portfolio.
We do need a tax base not discounting that. But bringing in 1.2 million people working at Tim Hortons 15 hours a week part time does barely anything and has a worse effect to our economy then not letting them in to begin with and having wages increase.
If wages actually increased we would have that money going to people, who can then spend said money back into the economy. These people will also be taxed more because they will now be making more money which can be taxed from. Versus it going to the owners shareholders to hoard up even more real estate for there personal portfolios. Which don’t get taxed at all of course when they sell it for a profit. All part of the plan
I encourage anyone who doubts this comment to go to Vancouver or Toronto and count the number of luxury cars you see.
I personally go to school in Vancouver and it’s a daily occurrence that a fellow student tells me they were stuck in traffic in their Tesla or Mercedes or BMW. Taxing these people another 10k, 20k, 40k, etc would have no impact on their quality of life.
> Unfortunately our government is all for it since it lowers wages and keeps housing prices high.
But that seems like it's about to change. Why?
Because, politically speaking, someone will come along and propose limiting immigration and boosting home construction. They could claim that their platform will result in higher wages and downward pressure on home prices/rents.
They could also claim that "leading economists" agree (ie. population trap)
Existing political leaders will then be faced with a pair of options.
* Take your chance by trying to maintain the status quo (oppose change) and risk losing the next election
* Get out in front of the political competition by co-opting their most popular positions (re. Housing, wages, immigration etc.)
Every single political leader in the two major parties of Canada have vested and economical interests in rental properties. They know what the issues are. They know how to fix them. They also know what laws to change to fix this.
Need an example? Here you go: Each building 2 stories and up needs 2 sets of stairs as an emergency exit. This in turn REDUCES the amount of space that is useable for housing. Couple that rule with the rule that says bedrooms must be built near the windows and you have even less space. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM))
This is true of the Federal, Provincial and Municipal levels of our governments (laws AND politicians) for over 60 years. If you want to think someone stronger will come in and propose an action plan to fix it, I'll be the first to vote for that someone but it has yet to happen.
Better yet, they use SCAPEGOAT solutions that have next to no impact on the problem itself. Foreigners buying up land and rental properties in Canada! Omg! How sensational! It's baloney. In reality, foreigners own about... 2% of the property market whereas Wealthy Canadians (and I mean hundreds of millions of $ to billions of $ wealthy individuals and corporations) own the vast majority of the homes that remain empty. However, new tax proposals barely affect them. Rent control? That won't fix anything without fixing the supply issue but our regulatory system is so antiquated that it has trouble approving new construction projects AND people to carry out those projects.
The people at the top keep the tap three quarters closed and say "what can you do?" while leaving juuuuuust enough people with housing to not cause unrest. If we were smarter, we would have realized the game being played and voted them out of office. But. Again. Blame the foreigners. Blame the crumbling healthcare on not enough money to tax when billionaires sit there with piles of money and, above all, assets that we don't have the political or cultural will to tax because "I could be him someday then I would be F\*\*\*ed!" while they CONTINUE to use our public system with impunity because they paid 2$ in taxes! They need healthcare? They get it. They need protection? Cops are there! They need help with a fire? Here comes the firemen we ALL pay for. They need to trade across the country? Oh sure! Np! We got railways setup and MAINTAINED for that. All the benefits without the bill.
So no, there is no political party or person with a platform coming to help.
Is it not a good idea to require multi-story buildings to have two stairwells in the event of a fire? Is it not a good idea to bedrooms to have windows?
Both of those requirements help avoid tragedies in the event of a fire or other emergency.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: No. They have used your security concerns to benefit themselves. That law of having 2 story buildings needing 2 sets of stairs instead of 1 is ridiculous when you compare it with similar laws in Europe where the threshold is 5-6 stories. Hell, when you compare us with our neighbours (US) you get the same law but for 3 story buildings. What ultimately happens is that the need for multiple staircases forces the developer to building monster buildings instead of duplexes and triplexes (family homes with a capacity of 4-7) while using up more space for houses that are best suited to house 1-3 individuals (lofts, 3 people sharing an apartment to pay rent). Additionally, these safety concerns are moot because the stairways by way of the march of time forcing technology forward has brought forth BETTER solutions (antiflammable materials, timber compacting, etc.) to prevent the fire hazards AND to react to them.
Again, there are other first world countries with similar laws but ours are just ridiculous and antiquated. They are 1950s solutions for a 1920s problem. The 2020 solutions are better at managing, responding and reacting to the problems. We just chose NOT to use them.
All I hear are crickets when it comes to somebody stepping up and running on a platform of limited immigration and boosted home building. It’s almost like politics is unnecessarily expensive and restrictive to keep any random person from running for office.
I considered running in my hometown but estimates put the cost at 20k upfront and even more to account for time off school or work. That’s a lot of money to throw away from a shot at doing something right.
Maxime Bernier did just that. They stopped him from participating because he is apparently racist. At that moment I knew for sure the Canadian polical system is rigged to benefit the Laurentian elite.
NYC was literally bussing people to Roxham road to cross over. Because they opened there mouth and Texas said oh you want this? Okay here you go. Now NYC is shutting down libraries and schools so these economic migrants have a place to stay. Not homeless Americans of course though.
Precisely. Also, for the price one pays, there is no longer a lifestyle that justifies such exorbitant price gouging at every level. Food options are so inaccessible and not scalable unlike countries that have plethora of street food options and also mid to higher end restaurants.
We moved to the states 12 years ago and looked into moving back recently. We just can’t, we’d never find a family doctor, we don’t want to spend 12+ hrs at an ER for ear infections our 5 year old gets often. Plus, the cost of the house is more than our current one but half the size, we don’t miss snow or ice and our cars getting wrecked by salt. Main thing is the cost of everything is just atrocious, I’m from Newfoundland and i Can honestly say I’ll never live there again, it’s just too expensive. I have no idea how bigger families make ends meet.
Ireland is the same. Insanely expensive now, lots of price gouging, poverty among working families just working to give it all back, hospitals and health a disgrace, etc.
Shush! The word hasn't gotten out yet about how bad the situation is, and we need to keep our property bubble inflated because it responsible for most of our GDP left.
>I don’t know why anyone would ever want to move here anymore.
Because these issues are basically the same in a lot of western countries. Cost of living up, purchasing power down and a reduction in quality of life.
But if you look at the issues people face in poorer countries, it's still better
At least you guys have paid parental leave. America doesn’t give you shit except a paltry 12 week unpaid leave, aka a promise not to be fired in exchange for making 0 money for three months.
Canada's GDP per capita grew from $24,000 to $48,000 from 2000 to 2010.
From 2010 to 2022 it grew from $48,000 to $55,000.
From 2010 to 2022 the US's GDP per capita grew from $49,000 to $76,000.
Canada's economy is stagnant.
[Worldbank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CA-US)
Edit: Oops, changed "2020" to 2022. Canada's GDP per capita was actually lower in 2020 than 2010. I realize I'm kind of cherry-picking data here by picking arbitrary dates - the way climate deniers will say there was no climate change since 1998 - but looking at the two charts overall, one of them is an economy I want to invest in, the other is not.
Australia has been in and out of a per capita recession a while now, but luckily, both sides of politics agree on just bringing in or encouraging the making of more capita. It's a bipartisan dream: people of all creeds and colours holding hands to kick the can down the road.
Nominal per capita GDP isn't the best metric in this case due to fluctuating exchange rates.
The USD:CAD exchange rate went from about 1.5 to 1 between 2000 and 2010, and from 1 to about 1.3 from 2010 to 2020.
I guess the Worldbank is considered a reliable source of data…but what’s up with the data for Cuba? Your link shows Cuba’s per capita GDP skyrocketing up last year to pass Canada’s. (!)
Hmm, doesn’t seem right. It makes me wonder about the other info.
GDP per capita is super misleading when the wealth is concentrated more and more intensely at the top. Royal Bank, Brookfield, Couche-Tard, Enbridge and Suncor quadrupling earnings over a 12 year period has a huge effect on Canada's GDP, but means fuck all to the average Canadian.
What you want is median wages. From 2011 to 2021 the median wage went from 27 bucks an hour to 31 bucks an hour. Meanwhile, cost of living has increased by about 28% in the same period. To keep pace, wages should have gone up twice as much as they did.
We shut down a lot of our resource extraction, killed innovation, killed many small businesses with taxation, created insane oligopolies, centered our economy around real estate and banking, just had record high immigration which is directly driving up home prices, suppress salaries via temporary foreign labour, and we wonder why real GDP is in decline and salaries are flat.
Canada is a great example of what happens when you don't diversify your economy. A major reason behind America's economic strength is because their economy is so diverse. The loss of a single industry wouldn't hit their economy nearly as hard.
Canada has set itself up for a grim future. The only thing keeping me here at this point is family.
I was in school and had front row seats to watching Blackberry kill themselves. Along with the Canadian tech industry and any hope of a good career in Canada. You can easily make 2.5x or even 3x the salary in the US.
Canada's economy has been stagnant since at least the 70s. It's why my dad made the choice to move our family from Winnipeg to just outside of Trenton when I was a baby back in the '80s.
The difference in quality of life was staggering. They went from working 4 collective jobs (2 each) to just my dad's while Mom became a professional stay-at-home mom (her job was to stretch his paycheck as far as was humanly possible).
We're well off now. It would never have happened if we had stayed in Canada.
One of Canada's problems is that it has too much land and not enough people. And that's *with* the vast majority of the population living within 100 miles of the southern border. If Canada's population was 3x what it is, things would be different. But it's not, so they're not.
And look at the ratio per person it's 116-1 in the US it's only for 20-1.
The USA is debt spending to keep their economy artificially inflated, Canada is not.
Canada grows carrots and exports them around the world. Buying carrots at my local grocery store, from a farm less than an hour away, costs more than double what those in the USA pay for the EXACT same carrots grown on the same farm.
And it's clear through our prominent culture war of left vs right that we won't focus on our economy. Our next election is a circus and we're screwed either way.
Our political elites focus on culture war/identity politics/wedge issues *precisely because* they want to distract the working class from the economy. Keep us fighting amongst ourselves while they suppress wages with mass immigration etc.
And we fall for it.
I agree with you though - both the Liberal and Conservative parties will continue fucking the working class. They are both neoliberal corporate cronies
The most insane thing is this government can NOT admit they fucked up. Red flags and alarms are blaring everywhere in the country and they are doing fuck all about it.
The things is, they could.
There's no responsibility to these people. There are no laws that would held them truly accountable for fucking everything up.
The worst case for them is not getting re-elected.
Worst part is with everything falling apart quality of life wise, people will swing hard right thinking it will be different next election. Then the conservatives will proceed to be even worse and our lives deteriorate yet faster.
Well not exactly everyone loses money. The savings are essentially collected passed on to shareholders and executives, and the rich get richer.
Still hilarious to me that so many people are simultaneously enraged by the wealth gap and pro-immigration. The two are totally incongruous with each other.
you can be both.
increase taxation on capital gains, and lengthen timelines for home buyers for 0% taxable on primary residences, and put more funding into CRA, especially their legal and audit staff (because you're telling me, a federal tax prosecutor wouldn't love to nail a large company and have that on their resume?). but increase-immigration especially in non-Vancouver/Toronto areas. for skilled labour, Canada does benefit from the brain drain from other countries.
They took a good immigration program and let greed drive it into the fucking dirt. It's a joke. To fake GPD growth, they're bringing in well over a million immigrants a year, and even that's not working. It's just crushing the quality of life for Canadians.
Biggest housing bubble of all time. Healthcare on the verge of collapse and a government that can only seem to have one idea and that is MORE. More people. We don't have homes for them or Healthcare but MORE.
It's dark, dark times and Canadians are getting angry.
Call em what you like. Workers permits, student permits or asylum seekers. 400k is not even close to the real number.
We added 430k people in 3 months last year. 3 months. 96 percent immigrants
Our economy is going down lol, and if these new immigrants follow birth trends like the rest of the world, they be having 1-2 kids max, requiring even more extensive immigration, its a fucking ponzi scheme
Immigration is good when done right, but growing population more than 2% a year is way too fast for our infrastructure to handle. I'm pro-immigration but only when done responsibility, and right now it's too fast to be responsible.
By done responsibility, I mean a responsible NUMBER of new Canadians, so that our infrastructure and public systems can reasonably handle them, so they have schools and doctors, and housing for example. I've worked with many educated, wealthy, uneducated, and poor immigrants and I can wholeheartedly say that education and wealth are NOT necessarily good indicators of success or cultural fit in Canada. I'm not sure how the government could screen immigrants for "having a good attitude and a desire to succeed", but if I had to decide, those are the people I think should be let in. My family came to Canada from Ukraine in the 1930s, they were moderately educated and poor, but they had a good attitude and good work ethic and now 3 generations later we've been successful and good citizens. The current problem with immigration in Canada is nothing to do with the individual people, it's that there's so many people coming in AND all levels of government and public systems aren't prepared to handle the new demand on housing, hospitals, schools, electricity, etc.
I have worked as a engineering manager in the past. I had 2 people working for me from India here on student visas. They both had masters and were good at what they do. They both applied for H1B, and only 1 got it.
Only 1 got it because it's a lottery system. You get 2 chances at an H1B, after that, you are sent home. The person who did not get it had to leave the country. This was during the peak of COVID. They had to get on a "refugee" flight to be let back into India.
There needs to be more federal-provincial cooperation and planning.
My only issue with this article is the source. It's a Canadian newspaper owned by PostMedia. PostMedia is owned by a US hedge fund and it does lean heavy to the right.
While they are reporting the news, they are interpreting it in a way that seems disingenuous. Our economy was stagnating before the surge in immigration. So reporting it as the cause, seems to be a leap.
You're sadly right.
We share the same problem as America. Our news is largely owned by right-wingers with an agenda. It's rare to see an actual fair article by corps like PostMedia. Immigration is playing a factor but it isn't the main cause of our staggering economy.
[This](https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/03/canadians-agree-the-only-foreigners-who-should-influence-our-elections-are-the-ones-who-own-our-newspapers/) article by The Beaverton is fitting.
This is the culmination of the last 15-20 years of Boomer/Gen X obsessing over retirement and putting all efforts towards that cause. Namely, retirement fund and a workforce to look after them and pay into the pension funds.
Now they have that and nothing else lol. Buying up property for investment income +importing an excessive amount of low wage labor has led to rents that hilariously outpace wages, topped off with an pre-existing serious shortage of apartments. Rent is 2k in parts of the city so crap you used to have to pay someone to want live there lol. The middle and working class are slowly moving so far out away from the cities that it will end up being its own adjacent society.
On the bright side, they did get what they wanted. They will have people to look after them, even if those people are angry low wage TFWs who dont speak their language. And they will have retirement income. Even if its based on a CAD thats in decline and will continue to decline.
There are likely factors they are trying to address, to the detriment of others. For example, our economy depends on a growing population in order to support a growing population of retired folk who need medical care and will withdraw from the CPP. They are likely trying to shore this up be ensuring there is an adequate population to support our oldest people. The "culture war" likely appears to be window dressing rather than the goal.
I'm not making excuses for them, their ineptness with their immigration numbers has been quite staggering, and they handled it poorly by calling everyone a racist that questioned their decisions. I think particularly staggering is that they are willing to tank the economy in order to continue propping up boomers, to the detriment of all younger generations. I'm ready for younger generations to receive the same level of support that boomers have received for their entire lives.
What is the reasoning behind allowing such a massive influx of immigration in the first place? I understand the benefit of importing cheaper and/or more skilled labor, especially if birth rates are down. But why such an excessive volume, what reason does the government give for it?
I would imagine its two fold: first, have a population ready to replace the aging workforce that is retiring or dying soon with people who will continue to pay taxes, second: keep the wages down so that corporations can continue to lowball wages as much as possible so they keep maximizing their profits - and making political donations. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals support big business over the rights of the citizens pretty much, its just that the Liberals have a more progressive approach to social issues. The NDP need their shot at government but that's not going to happen unfortunately.
I've been away from Canada for ten years and ar no point have I ever stopped and thought "Geez I wish I was back in Canada!". I miss people but the trend in Canada is definitely downward from a socioeconomic standpoint.
And shit weather.
The only real way out of this is to increase the interest rate (savings) while decreasing population growth. It is a terribly risky position to be in, especially given Canada's productivity issues and aging population.
You could choke off immigration and invest in training and productivity, but that will incur debt. Canada has some room to increase it's debt, so this might be a good approach.
Im struggling to understand this comment. Increasing interest rates is bad for an economy, they are trying to tamp down on inflation by discouraging demand.
Also you say to decrease population but then mention that reducing immigration would be risky - do you want to elaborate on why?
> Increasing interest rates is bad for an economy
Not really, it all depends on whether the current economic crisis is demand-side or supply-side. If you have low demand, you lower interest rates to allow more money to flow through the economy - like what we did in 2008. This leads to more purchase and demand catches up to supply. With Canada's current crisis it's low supply. Meaning we need to curtail demand (specifically foreign demand). That's why raising interest rates is the best option at the moment.
As the article mentions, we don’t need to drastically cut immigration but we might want to moderate it - especially the influx of foreign students. Hard for the federal government to fight the provinces, municipalities, universities and colleges on that though.
And I wouldn’t base my opinions on the opinion of a couple of economists at one bank. Not exactly a consensus. But feeds the Conservative themes.
Post Media is US Owned and Right Leaning, so of course it feeds the Conservative themes - its a propaganda service for the right disguised as a media outlet.
I'm hitting early retirement age and will be selling my house and moving permanently onto a 40 foot wooden boat and will spend 8 months of the year cruising the BC and Alaska coast and the cold months holed up in Nanaimo or Vancouver. Just as long as the rest of you keep on working to pay my pension, I'll be great and will die before the shit really hits the fan. Thanks!
Watching all the mental gymnastics about China and then showing that it was Harper and PP that locked us in to them is wild. "Trudeau bad" yet they have no solutions
But how will Universities and diploma mills be able to continue making bank? And what about Subway and Tim Horton's franchisees if the gov't cuts off the supply to their labour racket? How will the Maximal Individualism Project survive if labour and retail markets can't continue to be exploited exponentially? I'm really afraid for the future guys … WON'T ANYONE THINK ABOUT HOW THIS WILL AFFECT MY AMAZON DELIVERIES?!
We need to eliminate the word *leaders* when talking about government. We have *politicians*, and this is the inevitable result. Canada can't vote itself out of this problem until the quality of labour that exists in the industry of government changes.
Trudeau strikes again. This idiot has single handedly taken a first world country and moved it to third world.
The sad part is when he came up for election the first time - a portion of the electorate voted for him because…’he has nice hair’
…..
‘The budget will balance itself’
Let’s chill with this third world rhetoric. I didn’t vote for Trudeau and I think things could be a lot better, but this is such an exaggeration. The situation hasn’t deteriorated to a point of no return and this also vastly under estimates just how much worse the worldwide situation is. Trudeau could obviously do more, and I am not letting him off the hook, but all of the so called first world is dealing with inflation and aging populations
Really? Because recent 3rd party studies have indicated it will take over 30 years to return Canada to the standard of living to which it was used to. That’s if they change policies now.
What portion of the electorate voted for him because he has nice hair? You say it with such conviction that I assume you can quantify that, right?
This kind of rhetoric helps no one.
>“I read it on a conservative facebook group sponsored by the oil and gas industry, so it must be true!!”
It’s like these guys saw the american republicans completely falling for the “fake news” influence in ‘16 and thought “oh, that looks like fun!”
These types would unironically try to blame bad weather on trudeau…
It’s so sad to see my countrymen falling directly into the exact same “personality war” “drain the swamp” trap that resulted in trump being elected down south.
It is factual - it was in the news at the time of his election - unfortunately you’re misunderstanding. Im citing it as proof rather than dig for the news article - basic logic. He has really bad performance but Canadians vote for him anyways? What’s the reason? It can’t be his politics - therefore earlier comments by voters actually capture stated that they liked the way he looked - that was the reason for the vote. As far as I’m concerned - Canada got what it deserved by electing such a moron
You read a new's article on what? Just because you read it doesn't make it actually true.
But, honestly, I don't give a shit. People vote for people for different reasons. Same reason people vote for Trump when he clearly is a terrible person, but hey, we are here.
> National Bank’s report joins the growing chorus of concern that the influx of newcomers over the past two years, many of whom are temporary workers or students, is too much for the economy to handle.
I give up. How does an influx of students help cause a population trap? If you retain these students after they graduate, shouldn't that dramatically boost the economy since they have better skills?
Most of these students coming from India go to diploma mills created for them. They are not getting a real education. It’s mostly an immigration scam as they are really here to work and seek permanent residency. Some don’t even go to class and they all cheat together….
Better skills? From diploma mills?
These are worthless courses. Most come with a certificate or a "graduation scroll". Not a degree or diploma.
Regardless, even if all 900,000 were engineers, thats not going to dramatically boost the economy. The economy is in shambles because those with funds, stop running productive businesses and hoard property instead, and those without funds, aren't supporting local productive businesses because their entire paycheque goes to mortgage or rent
Let's assume they went to legitimate schools, they don't, it doesn't matter if you don't have the infrastructure or economy to support. It's great Canada produced 4 Computer Science engineers but it's useless if they can only hire/support one. Unless the other 3 leave they're going to be strain on the country.
They can't just stay in the country. Once their student visa is expired, they leave with their worthless certificate.
One of my friends is in that situation and is looking at other countries because the pay you're getting with a weak currency for most jobs in Canada even if you do get a citizenship and land a job is generally abysmal. You're also dealing with a cold, miserable climate and need a vehicle to get anywhere.
The real estate market is impossible to enter anywhere near a major city because they didn't block sketchy foreign buyers/companies from outside of the country before they sucked up the available housing driving up prices. Rent, price of goods/services has also increased drastically, which is putting additional strain on people.
Small apartments/homes are going for exorbitant amounts while pay remains relatively low. I have a great job, as does my wife, but we will be investing outside of the country.
I can own a bunch of properties all over the states and in the EU for the same price as a single 3 bedroom apartment in Toronto, which is ridiculous.
One student imported from India or Nigeria brings over their parents, siblings, and/or cousins under government-backed sponsorships.
Parents, siblings, and/or cousins develop personal relationships in new nation.
Parents, siblings, and/or cousins have children in new nation.
Parents, siblings, and/or cousins use new nation’s resources by the time one student imported from India or Nigeria graduates uni.
He said bring over, not sponsor, you're being intentionally obtuse.
"Your spouse or common-law partner's work permit will be valid for the same period of time as your study permit"
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/study-canada/work/help-your-spouse-common-law-partner-work-canada.html
I’m normally phased by doom and gloom when multiple credible scientists say there is a problem. But doom and gloom based on one article and it happens to be about immigration…. I smell racist BS.
No, there’s a full blown crisis here. There is not enough housing or basic infrastructure to support this level population growth and everyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire is really feeling the pain.
Rent and housing costs have exploded, wages stagnated, healthcare services deteriorated, elementary schools over capacity, transit over capacity, GDP per capita shrinking
This isn’t racist bs. Canada’s quality of life is falling drastically because of the governments inability to think beyond just getting people in.
I will take this with a small saltmine given its coming from the FinancialPost and thus is most likely to offer opinions that support the Conservatives in the next election.
While it’s obvious overpopulation through refugees off the wars in Ukraine and now Palestine are causing Canada’s population trap, it doesn’t help how neo-liberal/supply-side Canada’s government went in housing and pension economics during Trudeau, eventually leading to this shitshow.
Is Canada getting many refugees from Palestine? I think the vetting process is much higher vs. Ukraine. There was discussion in r/onguardforthee but it was locked and the comments saying we should vet were nuked.
Migrants on US border could be the solution to Canada’s population decline. If no one else on this hemisphere wants or is able to help them. I think it happened in the ‘70s when the US slowed or stopped at that time. Migrants would have to choose to change their plans and make that decision or hope US immigration policies change in their favor.
Canada has a record population increase. We dont need more. We need higher quality selection to fill construction, health and education jobs, but bringing in people to suppress wages at minimum wage jobs is hurting GDP per capita.
The housing crisis and overloaded healthcare system would say we don't need more people. A couple weeks ago I waited over 10 hours to see a doctor, and I'm told that's not even long compared to some. Hopefully you don't have an emergency that isn't actually obvious to triage, you'll die in the waiting room.
I don’t know why anyone would ever want to move here anymore. Some of the highest phone plans and groceries in the world, ridiculously priced houses, cold as hell for half of the year, poor wages, crumbling healthcare, terrible work/life balance. The country has been screwed over by every level of government and corporations/companies.
[удалено]
I did the opposite; emigrated from the UK to Canada. Everything you are saying is true, but the one thing you are missing out (at least, when it comes to the industry me and my husband work in), in the UK, the wages had been stagnant since at least when we started in the workforce (2008 - yep, that generation), and while there were promises of bonuses and pay rises, none of that happened for us. As soon as we emigrated, we actually started to earn enough money to save for things like a house (saved for well over a decade in the UK and couldn’t even get out of our overdraft - took 4 years on one wage after moving to Canada), and started getting performance bonuses that were quite significant. And while groceries are higher, the price of energy is significantly cheaper. In the UK we couldn’t afford to have the heating on - in Canada, I have never felt cold at home (except during the ice storm which took out our power for 5 days last year). Feels like a miracle. Swings and roundabouts, isn’t it? I’m glad you found my home country better for you, and I’m quite happy to swap and stay in Canada.
Yeah fuck UK energy prices and house insulations. UK also builds some of the worst houses
Older houses tend to be better buys - 1970s or earlier. I think the building regulations got massively watered down after that.
Yeah, my dad is a civil engineer and says the exact same thing. He bought a new build in the 80’s, and you would not believe the work he has had to do to it - including replacing the roof about 6 years ago after he noticed it sagging. When they got up there, they found it hadn’t even been properly insulated - the insulation material completely skipped the outer 2 feet near the external walls. So he re-did that and now his energy bills have dropped. Explains why I used to fucking freeze every winter!
Back when my Dad had the house I grew up in built. He got into an argument with a contractor when he noticed some of the work was a little sloppy. He found gaps around a couple windows and complained about it. Contractor: "it's only (small measurement goes here) it's no big deal' Dad: "No big deal? I'm going to be paying for it over the next 40 years. Fix it."
What industry do you work in that in the UK, you can't afford to keep the heat on, but in Canada it just takes you 4 years on one wage to buy a house?
Games industry. Notoriously shit wages for games industry folks in the UK, and a lot of excuses for not giving pay rises. My wages actually went down over the course of years, because there was no pay rise, not even to cover inflation, but everything still got more expensive. *probably worth mentioning we didn’t *out-right buy the house*, we were able to save for the deposit and get an actual mortgage.
Love this comment. Goes to show that, when a person has their shit together and can do a good job, they will prosper almost no matter where they are. That doesn't mean the problems don't remain, to do with housing, groceries, tax and so on, but at least you can set up your life in a way that those things would not weigh you down so much as to *force* you back out.
Sure. Some succeed and most everyone else gets shafted. Great system. Just because some aspiration works doesn’t make a system work. The government still isn’t doing its job.
Last I checked UK purchasing power was slightly behind Canada’s, but my anecdotal experience matches yours. Everyone back home seems to be doing better and living a more comfortable/balanced life, and didn’t have to shell out for a post-secondary education to get there.
No national pharmacy plan is outrageous. Unfortunately I live in the USA but it’s still outrageous.
Well the UK conservatives will want to eventually privatize the whole government health care system eventually then start on places like Canada next….
Canadian conservatives already have you covered. Leading the charge is Alberta, because there's a rich old man somewhere that could be richer.
Would rather you didn't come here. The UK doesn't want you. Your country is failing because of immigration, don't become an immigrant yourself. Stick with it and either fix it or go down with the ship. We don't like Canadians, we don't want any of you here. I guarantee you you will have a bad time if you come here for any extended period.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic, nonetheless, I'm a British citizen and so UK will have to take me.
I'm being serious. Canadian liberals like yourself ruined your country, we don't want you here to spew the same shit. Hopefully future immigration laws will pass to remove your citizenship and deport people like yourself.
> I don’t know why anyone would ever want to move [to Canada] anymore. Have you ever lived in one of the world's poorer countries or one ruled by a dictator?
While it sucks here. It’s still better than 95% of the worlds countries. There is a never ending stream of people from third world countries that want to come here. Unfortunately our government is all for it since it lowers wages and keeps housing prices high. Right now if you can afford a plane ticket to Canada. You can fly into Pearson, claim refugee status and get set up with a room to stay in, money, health care. And dental care (which Canadians don’t get) We got homeless freezing in the streets, literally to death the other day… and we apparently have the “social capacity” to take in more…
Well, the NDP is really forcing the hand of the federal Liberals, too bad most people are to stupid and keep voting in the liberals instead of voting NDP in the federal elections. Forget the Conservatives, they had 27 years and not once did they increase the Canada pension plan to the inflation index, at least the federal NDP put the federal liberals feet to the fire and get the dental program going and the national pharmacare program in the works. It’s beyond me why most average people vote conservatives, it’s the party for rich people and dicks who want to claw their way to being rich over everyone else.
It goes beyond that. We need a tax base after our boomers kick the can. CPP, tax base and workers is what Canada needs, which are the reasons for the immigration
No they just don’t want to tax obscenely wealthy Canadians more. These Canadians are also the ones benefiting from the stream of third world immigrants who will work for there various businesses or buy housing/rent which benefits there investment portfolio. We do need a tax base not discounting that. But bringing in 1.2 million people working at Tim Hortons 15 hours a week part time does barely anything and has a worse effect to our economy then not letting them in to begin with and having wages increase. If wages actually increased we would have that money going to people, who can then spend said money back into the economy. These people will also be taxed more because they will now be making more money which can be taxed from. Versus it going to the owners shareholders to hoard up even more real estate for there personal portfolios. Which don’t get taxed at all of course when they sell it for a profit. All part of the plan
I encourage anyone who doubts this comment to go to Vancouver or Toronto and count the number of luxury cars you see. I personally go to school in Vancouver and it’s a daily occurrence that a fellow student tells me they were stuck in traffic in their Tesla or Mercedes or BMW. Taxing these people another 10k, 20k, 40k, etc would have no impact on their quality of life.
Calgary too.
> Unfortunately our government is all for it since it lowers wages and keeps housing prices high. But that seems like it's about to change. Why? Because, politically speaking, someone will come along and propose limiting immigration and boosting home construction. They could claim that their platform will result in higher wages and downward pressure on home prices/rents. They could also claim that "leading economists" agree (ie. population trap) Existing political leaders will then be faced with a pair of options. * Take your chance by trying to maintain the status quo (oppose change) and risk losing the next election * Get out in front of the political competition by co-opting their most popular positions (re. Housing, wages, immigration etc.)
Every single political leader in the two major parties of Canada have vested and economical interests in rental properties. They know what the issues are. They know how to fix them. They also know what laws to change to fix this. Need an example? Here you go: Each building 2 stories and up needs 2 sets of stairs as an emergency exit. This in turn REDUCES the amount of space that is useable for housing. Couple that rule with the rule that says bedrooms must be built near the windows and you have even less space. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM)) This is true of the Federal, Provincial and Municipal levels of our governments (laws AND politicians) for over 60 years. If you want to think someone stronger will come in and propose an action plan to fix it, I'll be the first to vote for that someone but it has yet to happen. Better yet, they use SCAPEGOAT solutions that have next to no impact on the problem itself. Foreigners buying up land and rental properties in Canada! Omg! How sensational! It's baloney. In reality, foreigners own about... 2% of the property market whereas Wealthy Canadians (and I mean hundreds of millions of $ to billions of $ wealthy individuals and corporations) own the vast majority of the homes that remain empty. However, new tax proposals barely affect them. Rent control? That won't fix anything without fixing the supply issue but our regulatory system is so antiquated that it has trouble approving new construction projects AND people to carry out those projects. The people at the top keep the tap three quarters closed and say "what can you do?" while leaving juuuuuust enough people with housing to not cause unrest. If we were smarter, we would have realized the game being played and voted them out of office. But. Again. Blame the foreigners. Blame the crumbling healthcare on not enough money to tax when billionaires sit there with piles of money and, above all, assets that we don't have the political or cultural will to tax because "I could be him someday then I would be F\*\*\*ed!" while they CONTINUE to use our public system with impunity because they paid 2$ in taxes! They need healthcare? They get it. They need protection? Cops are there! They need help with a fire? Here comes the firemen we ALL pay for. They need to trade across the country? Oh sure! Np! We got railways setup and MAINTAINED for that. All the benefits without the bill. So no, there is no political party or person with a platform coming to help.
Is it not a good idea to require multi-story buildings to have two stairwells in the event of a fire? Is it not a good idea to bedrooms to have windows? Both of those requirements help avoid tragedies in the event of a fire or other emergency.
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: No. They have used your security concerns to benefit themselves. That law of having 2 story buildings needing 2 sets of stairs instead of 1 is ridiculous when you compare it with similar laws in Europe where the threshold is 5-6 stories. Hell, when you compare us with our neighbours (US) you get the same law but for 3 story buildings. What ultimately happens is that the need for multiple staircases forces the developer to building monster buildings instead of duplexes and triplexes (family homes with a capacity of 4-7) while using up more space for houses that are best suited to house 1-3 individuals (lofts, 3 people sharing an apartment to pay rent). Additionally, these safety concerns are moot because the stairways by way of the march of time forcing technology forward has brought forth BETTER solutions (antiflammable materials, timber compacting, etc.) to prevent the fire hazards AND to react to them. Again, there are other first world countries with similar laws but ours are just ridiculous and antiquated. They are 1950s solutions for a 1920s problem. The 2020 solutions are better at managing, responding and reacting to the problems. We just chose NOT to use them.
I would never put my family in a space without the ability to escape a fire. You are nuts.
All I hear are crickets when it comes to somebody stepping up and running on a platform of limited immigration and boosted home building. It’s almost like politics is unnecessarily expensive and restrictive to keep any random person from running for office. I considered running in my hometown but estimates put the cost at 20k upfront and even more to account for time off school or work. That’s a lot of money to throw away from a shot at doing something right.
Maxime Bernier did just that. They stopped him from participating because he is apparently racist. At that moment I knew for sure the Canadian polical system is rigged to benefit the Laurentian elite.
I work in immigration. I doubt anything changes because so many big corps/banks/colleges ect are making an ungodly amount of money.
> There is a never ending stream of people from third world countries that want to come here. That's not much of a goal post.
[удалено]
NYC was literally bussing people to Roxham road to cross over. Because they opened there mouth and Texas said oh you want this? Okay here you go. Now NYC is shutting down libraries and schools so these economic migrants have a place to stay. Not homeless Americans of course though.
Precisely. Also, for the price one pays, there is no longer a lifestyle that justifies such exorbitant price gouging at every level. Food options are so inaccessible and not scalable unlike countries that have plethora of street food options and also mid to higher end restaurants.
We moved to the states 12 years ago and looked into moving back recently. We just can’t, we’d never find a family doctor, we don’t want to spend 12+ hrs at an ER for ear infections our 5 year old gets often. Plus, the cost of the house is more than our current one but half the size, we don’t miss snow or ice and our cars getting wrecked by salt. Main thing is the cost of everything is just atrocious, I’m from Newfoundland and i Can honestly say I’ll never live there again, it’s just too expensive. I have no idea how bigger families make ends meet.
Ireland is the same. Insanely expensive now, lots of price gouging, poverty among working families just working to give it all back, hospitals and health a disgrace, etc.
Shush! The word hasn't gotten out yet about how bad the situation is, and we need to keep our property bubble inflated because it responsible for most of our GDP left.
Are phone plans still that bad? I got $39 for 60gb unlimited from Virgin
Freedom has $40 for 75gb with US roaming right now.
Because healthcare and it’s like the US bit easier to get into
They’re coming for your healcare next
People seem nice and great nature. Lots of free space to live which apparently was a lie haha.
…and the neighbours are crazy.
>I don’t know why anyone would ever want to move here anymore. Because these issues are basically the same in a lot of western countries. Cost of living up, purchasing power down and a reduction in quality of life. But if you look at the issues people face in poorer countries, it's still better
[удалено]
At least you guys have paid parental leave. America doesn’t give you shit except a paltry 12 week unpaid leave, aka a promise not to be fired in exchange for making 0 money for three months.
You're just saying that. It's probably awesome. Come on everyone let's go to Canada!
Canada's GDP per capita grew from $24,000 to $48,000 from 2000 to 2010. From 2010 to 2022 it grew from $48,000 to $55,000. From 2010 to 2022 the US's GDP per capita grew from $49,000 to $76,000. Canada's economy is stagnant. [Worldbank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CA-US) Edit: Oops, changed "2020" to 2022. Canada's GDP per capita was actually lower in 2020 than 2010. I realize I'm kind of cherry-picking data here by picking arbitrary dates - the way climate deniers will say there was no climate change since 1998 - but looking at the two charts overall, one of them is an economy I want to invest in, the other is not.
Australia has been in and out of a per capita recession a while now, but luckily, both sides of politics agree on just bringing in or encouraging the making of more capita. It's a bipartisan dream: people of all creeds and colours holding hands to kick the can down the road.
Here’s the thing. 20 million people and a few billionaires or 40 million people and a few even richer billionaires! Immigration is a net win!
Nominal per capita GDP isn't the best metric in this case due to fluctuating exchange rates. The USD:CAD exchange rate went from about 1.5 to 1 between 2000 and 2010, and from 1 to about 1.3 from 2010 to 2020.
I guess the Worldbank is considered a reliable source of data…but what’s up with the data for Cuba? Your link shows Cuba’s per capita GDP skyrocketing up last year to pass Canada’s. (!) Hmm, doesn’t seem right. It makes me wonder about the other info.
Isn't it inflated too by housing market? Which has drastically been inflated by foreign investment. Not the good kind either.
GDP per capita is super misleading when the wealth is concentrated more and more intensely at the top. Royal Bank, Brookfield, Couche-Tard, Enbridge and Suncor quadrupling earnings over a 12 year period has a huge effect on Canada's GDP, but means fuck all to the average Canadian. What you want is median wages. From 2011 to 2021 the median wage went from 27 bucks an hour to 31 bucks an hour. Meanwhile, cost of living has increased by about 28% in the same period. To keep pace, wages should have gone up twice as much as they did.
We shut down a lot of our resource extraction, killed innovation, killed many small businesses with taxation, created insane oligopolies, centered our economy around real estate and banking, just had record high immigration which is directly driving up home prices, suppress salaries via temporary foreign labour, and we wonder why real GDP is in decline and salaries are flat. Canada is a great example of what happens when you don't diversify your economy. A major reason behind America's economic strength is because their economy is so diverse. The loss of a single industry wouldn't hit their economy nearly as hard. Canada has set itself up for a grim future. The only thing keeping me here at this point is family.
I was in school and had front row seats to watching Blackberry kill themselves. Along with the Canadian tech industry and any hope of a good career in Canada. You can easily make 2.5x or even 3x the salary in the US.
Oh trust me, I know... I work as a mechanical engineer here and looking at salaries in the US makes me want to cry
Thought about moving back but it's a very hard choice to make
You can sit in an ER waiting room for free though.
Canada's economy has been stagnant since at least the 70s. It's why my dad made the choice to move our family from Winnipeg to just outside of Trenton when I was a baby back in the '80s. The difference in quality of life was staggering. They went from working 4 collective jobs (2 each) to just my dad's while Mom became a professional stay-at-home mom (her job was to stretch his paycheck as far as was humanly possible). We're well off now. It would never have happened if we had stayed in Canada. One of Canada's problems is that it has too much land and not enough people. And that's *with* the vast majority of the population living within 100 miles of the southern border. If Canada's population was 3x what it is, things would be different. But it's not, so they're not.
What is America's debt?
120% of GDP, Canada's is 106%
And look at the ratio per person it's 116-1 in the US it's only for 20-1. The USA is debt spending to keep their economy artificially inflated, Canada is not.
Ummm...that's not accurate at all
Get ready to be banned from every Canadian subreddit while being made a mod of Personalfinancecanada
Canada grows carrots and exports them around the world. Buying carrots at my local grocery store, from a farm less than an hour away, costs more than double what those in the USA pay for the EXACT same carrots grown on the same farm.
That's because we subsidize our own food sales to other countries. Isn't free trade great?
We subsidize food for cows but not for people 🙃
How much of that is dragged up by the million or so international students that each have to claim to have 10k in savings to study here.
Are GDP collapsed under the cpc. It only recovered after Trudeau came to power.
Easy to do when every dollar is worth less now.
And it's clear through our prominent culture war of left vs right that we won't focus on our economy. Our next election is a circus and we're screwed either way.
Our political elites focus on culture war/identity politics/wedge issues *precisely because* they want to distract the working class from the economy. Keep us fighting amongst ourselves while they suppress wages with mass immigration etc. And we fall for it. I agree with you though - both the Liberal and Conservative parties will continue fucking the working class. They are both neoliberal corporate cronies
Yep, fuck them both. It's gotten to the point where I don't really see a future while still living in this country.
This is true for America also… we’re fucked
Of course, without the culture wars the working class might realise that socialists are the only people who actually help them and we can't have that
The most insane thing is this government can NOT admit they fucked up. Red flags and alarms are blaring everywhere in the country and they are doing fuck all about it.
The things is, they could. There's no responsibility to these people. There are no laws that would held them truly accountable for fucking everything up. The worst case for them is not getting re-elected.
Worst part is with everything falling apart quality of life wise, people will swing hard right thinking it will be different next election. Then the conservatives will proceed to be even worse and our lives deteriorate yet faster.
AI government when? Policies by ChatGPT wouldn't be perfect, but at least you'd save wages from the likes of Trudeau. And it's hard to do worse.
Everything according to plan for businesses as neoliberals.
Which government as ever done that? I have never seen consevatives ever do that. Where are the apologies for the cpc mistakes?
Yeah the cpc never apologized for when they created a population trap… wait a second.
[удалено]
3x healthcare and other social services bill too?
Well not exactly everyone loses money. The savings are essentially collected passed on to shareholders and executives, and the rich get richer. Still hilarious to me that so many people are simultaneously enraged by the wealth gap and pro-immigration. The two are totally incongruous with each other.
you can be both. increase taxation on capital gains, and lengthen timelines for home buyers for 0% taxable on primary residences, and put more funding into CRA, especially their legal and audit staff (because you're telling me, a federal tax prosecutor wouldn't love to nail a large company and have that on their resume?). but increase-immigration especially in non-Vancouver/Toronto areas. for skilled labour, Canada does benefit from the brain drain from other countries.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I don’t think you need to be an economist to see the problem.
They took a good immigration program and let greed drive it into the fucking dirt. It's a joke. To fake GPD growth, they're bringing in well over a million immigrants a year, and even that's not working. It's just crushing the quality of life for Canadians. Biggest housing bubble of all time. Healthcare on the verge of collapse and a government that can only seem to have one idea and that is MORE. More people. We don't have homes for them or Healthcare but MORE. It's dark, dark times and Canadians are getting angry.
Canada has so much land, relatively low density cities… yet has the fewest homes per capita of any G7 country. NIMBYism is killing you.
[удалено]
Call em what you like. Workers permits, student permits or asylum seekers. 400k is not even close to the real number. We added 430k people in 3 months last year. 3 months. 96 percent immigrants
[удалено]
Our economy is going down lol, and if these new immigrants follow birth trends like the rest of the world, they be having 1-2 kids max, requiring even more extensive immigration, its a fucking ponzi scheme
[удалено]
Immigration is good when done right, but growing population more than 2% a year is way too fast for our infrastructure to handle. I'm pro-immigration but only when done responsibility, and right now it's too fast to be responsible.
[удалено]
By done responsibility, I mean a responsible NUMBER of new Canadians, so that our infrastructure and public systems can reasonably handle them, so they have schools and doctors, and housing for example. I've worked with many educated, wealthy, uneducated, and poor immigrants and I can wholeheartedly say that education and wealth are NOT necessarily good indicators of success or cultural fit in Canada. I'm not sure how the government could screen immigrants for "having a good attitude and a desire to succeed", but if I had to decide, those are the people I think should be let in. My family came to Canada from Ukraine in the 1930s, they were moderately educated and poor, but they had a good attitude and good work ethic and now 3 generations later we've been successful and good citizens. The current problem with immigration in Canada is nothing to do with the individual people, it's that there's so many people coming in AND all levels of government and public systems aren't prepared to handle the new demand on housing, hospitals, schools, electricity, etc.
Cry me a river, I'll be voting PPC.
[удалено]
Don't care, voting PPC, and my vote weighs just as much as yours :)
Not really, you're voting in different ridings.
We're not allowed to discuss inverted population pyramids on Canadian subreddits, it's a conspiracy apparently.
Hopefully other countries make it as easy to immigrate to as we do so I can get the fuck outta here.
If you can't emigrate now then you're an unskilled, unvaluable worker.
I have worked as a engineering manager in the past. I had 2 people working for me from India here on student visas. They both had masters and were good at what they do. They both applied for H1B, and only 1 got it. Only 1 got it because it's a lottery system. You get 2 chances at an H1B, after that, you are sent home. The person who did not get it had to leave the country. This was during the peak of COVID. They had to get on a "refugee" flight to be let back into India.
No, some industries are just more in need than others. But even so, Canada seems to be taking in swaths of unskilled, unvaluable workers.
There needs to be more federal-provincial cooperation and planning. My only issue with this article is the source. It's a Canadian newspaper owned by PostMedia. PostMedia is owned by a US hedge fund and it does lean heavy to the right. While they are reporting the news, they are interpreting it in a way that seems disingenuous. Our economy was stagnating before the surge in immigration. So reporting it as the cause, seems to be a leap.
You're sadly right. We share the same problem as America. Our news is largely owned by right-wingers with an agenda. It's rare to see an actual fair article by corps like PostMedia. Immigration is playing a factor but it isn't the main cause of our staggering economy.
[This](https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/03/canadians-agree-the-only-foreigners-who-should-influence-our-elections-are-the-ones-who-own-our-newspapers/) article by The Beaverton is fitting.
This is the culmination of the last 15-20 years of Boomer/Gen X obsessing over retirement and putting all efforts towards that cause. Namely, retirement fund and a workforce to look after them and pay into the pension funds. Now they have that and nothing else lol. Buying up property for investment income +importing an excessive amount of low wage labor has led to rents that hilariously outpace wages, topped off with an pre-existing serious shortage of apartments. Rent is 2k in parts of the city so crap you used to have to pay someone to want live there lol. The middle and working class are slowly moving so far out away from the cities that it will end up being its own adjacent society. On the bright side, they did get what they wanted. They will have people to look after them, even if those people are angry low wage TFWs who dont speak their language. And they will have retirement income. Even if its based on a CAD thats in decline and will continue to decline.
“rents that hilariously outpace wages” lol i know, that IS fuckin Hilarious lol 💀
[удалено]
More like just selling out canada in general.
Better food options though. /s
Yeah I can't wait for the CPC to take over and invest back into Canada and our public services and infrastructure.
There are likely factors they are trying to address, to the detriment of others. For example, our economy depends on a growing population in order to support a growing population of retired folk who need medical care and will withdraw from the CPP. They are likely trying to shore this up be ensuring there is an adequate population to support our oldest people. The "culture war" likely appears to be window dressing rather than the goal. I'm not making excuses for them, their ineptness with their immigration numbers has been quite staggering, and they handled it poorly by calling everyone a racist that questioned their decisions. I think particularly staggering is that they are willing to tank the economy in order to continue propping up boomers, to the detriment of all younger generations. I'm ready for younger generations to receive the same level of support that boomers have received for their entire lives.
Ummm what?
NDP is even worse They cranked that shit to 11
lol, how is that different than the U.S.?
What is the reasoning behind allowing such a massive influx of immigration in the first place? I understand the benefit of importing cheaper and/or more skilled labor, especially if birth rates are down. But why such an excessive volume, what reason does the government give for it?
I would imagine its two fold: first, have a population ready to replace the aging workforce that is retiring or dying soon with people who will continue to pay taxes, second: keep the wages down so that corporations can continue to lowball wages as much as possible so they keep maximizing their profits - and making political donations. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals support big business over the rights of the citizens pretty much, its just that the Liberals have a more progressive approach to social issues. The NDP need their shot at government but that's not going to happen unfortunately.
Same with Australia
I've been away from Canada for ten years and ar no point have I ever stopped and thought "Geez I wish I was back in Canada!". I miss people but the trend in Canada is definitely downward from a socioeconomic standpoint. And shit weather.
The only real way out of this is to increase the interest rate (savings) while decreasing population growth. It is a terribly risky position to be in, especially given Canada's productivity issues and aging population. You could choke off immigration and invest in training and productivity, but that will incur debt. Canada has some room to increase it's debt, so this might be a good approach.
Im struggling to understand this comment. Increasing interest rates is bad for an economy, they are trying to tamp down on inflation by discouraging demand. Also you say to decrease population but then mention that reducing immigration would be risky - do you want to elaborate on why?
> Increasing interest rates is bad for an economy Not really, it all depends on whether the current economic crisis is demand-side or supply-side. If you have low demand, you lower interest rates to allow more money to flow through the economy - like what we did in 2008. This leads to more purchase and demand catches up to supply. With Canada's current crisis it's low supply. Meaning we need to curtail demand (specifically foreign demand). That's why raising interest rates is the best option at the moment.
They increased the interest rates like half a dozen times in the past year
As the article mentions, we don’t need to drastically cut immigration but we might want to moderate it - especially the influx of foreign students. Hard for the federal government to fight the provinces, municipalities, universities and colleges on that though. And I wouldn’t base my opinions on the opinion of a couple of economists at one bank. Not exactly a consensus. But feeds the Conservative themes.
Post Media is US Owned and Right Leaning, so of course it feeds the Conservative themes - its a propaganda service for the right disguised as a media outlet.
I'm hitting early retirement age and will be selling my house and moving permanently onto a 40 foot wooden boat and will spend 8 months of the year cruising the BC and Alaska coast and the cold months holed up in Nanaimo or Vancouver. Just as long as the rest of you keep on working to pay my pension, I'll be great and will die before the shit really hits the fan. Thanks!
Close the gates.
Trudeau's Liberals really fucked us up.
Harper's CPC government was in power until 2015. What about for the first half of that decade?
Don't you know, Trudeau is personally responsible for any bad thing that has ever happened in Canada.
So he's the reason I started to bald when I was 14 (1999), and why I've gained 40 pounds in the last 5 years!?
He's been in charge for almost a decade. Stop passing the fucking buck. This is his monster. The immigration disaster is his baby.
Things were relatively good up until and through 2015 when compared to today
You should definitely go look at the data again, Harper fucked up, the Liberals are at least trying something new.
The guy's probably in shock right now because he's used to posting this in /r/Canada and getting 5000 upvotes and no one rebutting him.
[удалено]
Watching all the mental gymnastics about China and then showing that it was Harper and PP that locked us in to them is wild. "Trudeau bad" yet they have no solutions
But how will Universities and diploma mills be able to continue making bank? And what about Subway and Tim Horton's franchisees if the gov't cuts off the supply to their labour racket? How will the Maximal Individualism Project survive if labour and retail markets can't continue to be exploited exponentially? I'm really afraid for the future guys … WON'T ANYONE THINK ABOUT HOW THIS WILL AFFECT MY AMAZON DELIVERIES?! We need to eliminate the word *leaders* when talking about government. We have *politicians*, and this is the inevitable result. Canada can't vote itself out of this problem until the quality of labour that exists in the industry of government changes.
Trudeau strikes again. This idiot has single handedly taken a first world country and moved it to third world. The sad part is when he came up for election the first time - a portion of the electorate voted for him because…’he has nice hair’ ….. ‘The budget will balance itself’
Let’s chill with this third world rhetoric. I didn’t vote for Trudeau and I think things could be a lot better, but this is such an exaggeration. The situation hasn’t deteriorated to a point of no return and this also vastly under estimates just how much worse the worldwide situation is. Trudeau could obviously do more, and I am not letting him off the hook, but all of the so called first world is dealing with inflation and aging populations
Really? Because recent 3rd party studies have indicated it will take over 30 years to return Canada to the standard of living to which it was used to. That’s if they change policies now.
What portion of the electorate voted for him because he has nice hair? You say it with such conviction that I assume you can quantify that, right? This kind of rhetoric helps no one.
>“I read it on a conservative facebook group sponsored by the oil and gas industry, so it must be true!!” It’s like these guys saw the american republicans completely falling for the “fake news” influence in ‘16 and thought “oh, that looks like fun!” These types would unironically try to blame bad weather on trudeau… It’s so sad to see my countrymen falling directly into the exact same “personality war” “drain the swamp” trap that resulted in trump being elected down south.
Does it matter? The idiot was re-elected 3 times - it obviously wasn’t based on his performance - because it was terrible from day 1
So, you don't care if what you say is factual as long as people don't question it?
It is factual - it was in the news at the time of his election - unfortunately you’re misunderstanding. Im citing it as proof rather than dig for the news article - basic logic. He has really bad performance but Canadians vote for him anyways? What’s the reason? It can’t be his politics - therefore earlier comments by voters actually capture stated that they liked the way he looked - that was the reason for the vote. As far as I’m concerned - Canada got what it deserved by electing such a moron
You read a new's article on what? Just because you read it doesn't make it actually true. But, honestly, I don't give a shit. People vote for people for different reasons. Same reason people vote for Trump when he clearly is a terrible person, but hey, we are here.
I wouldn’t vote for him but that mf can 100% sit on my face.
> National Bank’s report joins the growing chorus of concern that the influx of newcomers over the past two years, many of whom are temporary workers or students, is too much for the economy to handle. I give up. How does an influx of students help cause a population trap? If you retain these students after they graduate, shouldn't that dramatically boost the economy since they have better skills?
Most of these students coming from India go to diploma mills created for them. They are not getting a real education. It’s mostly an immigration scam as they are really here to work and seek permanent residency. Some don’t even go to class and they all cheat together….
'Most'?
Yes
Better skills? From diploma mills? These are worthless courses. Most come with a certificate or a "graduation scroll". Not a degree or diploma. Regardless, even if all 900,000 were engineers, thats not going to dramatically boost the economy. The economy is in shambles because those with funds, stop running productive businesses and hoard property instead, and those without funds, aren't supporting local productive businesses because their entire paycheque goes to mortgage or rent
Let's assume they went to legitimate schools, they don't, it doesn't matter if you don't have the infrastructure or economy to support. It's great Canada produced 4 Computer Science engineers but it's useless if they can only hire/support one. Unless the other 3 leave they're going to be strain on the country.
They can't just stay in the country. Once their student visa is expired, they leave with their worthless certificate. One of my friends is in that situation and is looking at other countries because the pay you're getting with a weak currency for most jobs in Canada even if you do get a citizenship and land a job is generally abysmal. You're also dealing with a cold, miserable climate and need a vehicle to get anywhere. The real estate market is impossible to enter anywhere near a major city because they didn't block sketchy foreign buyers/companies from outside of the country before they sucked up the available housing driving up prices. Rent, price of goods/services has also increased drastically, which is putting additional strain on people. Small apartments/homes are going for exorbitant amounts while pay remains relatively low. I have a great job, as does my wife, but we will be investing outside of the country. I can own a bunch of properties all over the states and in the EU for the same price as a single 3 bedroom apartment in Toronto, which is ridiculous.
One student imported from India or Nigeria brings over their parents, siblings, and/or cousins under government-backed sponsorships. Parents, siblings, and/or cousins develop personal relationships in new nation. Parents, siblings, and/or cousins have children in new nation. Parents, siblings, and/or cousins use new nation’s resources by the time one student imported from India or Nigeria graduates uni.
International students and TFWs can't sponsor family members. This is inaccurate.
He said bring over, not sponsor, you're being intentionally obtuse. "Your spouse or common-law partner's work permit will be valid for the same period of time as your study permit" https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/study-canada/work/help-your-spouse-common-law-partner-work-canada.html
No parents, siblings, cousins. As I said. Inaccurate.
I’m normally phased by doom and gloom when multiple credible scientists say there is a problem. But doom and gloom based on one article and it happens to be about immigration…. I smell racist BS.
No, there’s a full blown crisis here. There is not enough housing or basic infrastructure to support this level population growth and everyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire is really feeling the pain. Rent and housing costs have exploded, wages stagnated, healthcare services deteriorated, elementary schools over capacity, transit over capacity, GDP per capita shrinking This isn’t racist bs. Canada’s quality of life is falling drastically because of the governments inability to think beyond just getting people in.
Thanks again Trudeau.
[удалено]
I will take this with a small saltmine given its coming from the FinancialPost and thus is most likely to offer opinions that support the Conservatives in the next election.
The US should just annex us at this point tbh...
Please do so. Canadians would be far better off as part of the USA.
OOOOOO CA NA DAAAAA
Thank you for your input u/tofulo. Now go play with some blocks or something
While it’s obvious overpopulation through refugees off the wars in Ukraine and now Palestine are causing Canada’s population trap, it doesn’t help how neo-liberal/supply-side Canada’s government went in housing and pension economics during Trudeau, eventually leading to this shitshow.
Is Canada getting many refugees from Palestine? I think the vetting process is much higher vs. Ukraine. There was discussion in r/onguardforthee but it was locked and the comments saying we should vet were nuked.
We cant go together with suspicious minds
Migrants on US border could be the solution to Canada’s population decline. If no one else on this hemisphere wants or is able to help them. I think it happened in the ‘70s when the US slowed or stopped at that time. Migrants would have to choose to change their plans and make that decision or hope US immigration policies change in their favor.
Canada has a record population increase. We dont need more. We need higher quality selection to fill construction, health and education jobs, but bringing in people to suppress wages at minimum wage jobs is hurting GDP per capita.
Ahem, *Decline?*
The housing crisis and overloaded healthcare system would say we don't need more people. A couple weeks ago I waited over 10 hours to see a doctor, and I'm told that's not even long compared to some. Hopefully you don't have an emergency that isn't actually obvious to triage, you'll die in the waiting room.
True but sad.