Young at glowing heart
Canada’s newcomers are making the country young again.
Two weeks ago today, Canada celebrated the arrival of its 40 millionth compatriot. This year’s Canada Day party is officially bigger than ever! I hope you take tomorrow to get to know some of the new members of our growing national family.
The country is growing at its fastest pace since the mid-1950s. Back then, Canada’s immigration was driven largely by taking in refugees fleeing from the fallout of events like the Hungarian Revolution. During the Cold War, Canada positioned itself well as a beacon of freedom for those seeking an escape from Soviet oppression. We can, and should, use that patriotic spirit to show those in need that a better life is possible here.
Despite the opportunities that exist for newcomers, their arrival does raise some domestic policy implications. The biggest of which is probably the resulting pressure of growth on housing. I live on Prince Edward Island, the smallest province in Canada, which saw its population hit 178,000 on the same day that Canada’s hit 40 million. Based on age and household data from previous population counts and the 2021 census, I estimate that PEI should have built 3,200 net new dwelling units in the past year just to keep up with growth. Unfortunately, the province’s housing starts amounted to only around 1,200 units.
It is absolutely no surprise that housing supply is not keeping pace with population growth, and that much of this growth can be attributed to newcomers such as immigrants and non-permanent residents. But does this mean we should shut immigrants out to address some of our housing woes? Absolutely not. Canada needs newcomers, and newcomers need housing. Closing the door makes us all worse off.
There is a shortage of housing, but no shortage of scapegoats. Immigrants have historically been punished for domestic policy failures (our interment camps during the world wars are a shameful testament to this), but even modern iterations of old bigotry tend to be couched in progressive language. Of late, I’ve seen a few anti-immigrant remarks being framed as ostensibly pro-labour.
“Here’s an idea, lets stop population growth, it’s an insane idea being run by the upper class so they can have low wage workers” -An actual Twitter response to a CBC article about housing and immigration
The fact of the matter is that if you stop population growth, the only way you can realistically do that is through cutting immigration — and that would be detrimental for Rural Canada in particular. In many rural communities, more people die than are born in them each year. Immigration is keeping the population in these areas from further declining.
It’s not just about total population, but also about age. The share of Canadians in retirement age has more than doubled in the past fifty years. If it weren’t for immigration, the Canadian population would be much older. The average age of the Canadian population is around 41 years old, while the average age among just immigrants and non-permanent residents is around 26.
By my math, the intake of newcomers between July 2021 and June 2022 made the Canadian population three months younger than it would have been without newcomers.
This impact was highest for PEI, where a single year of newcomer intake lowered the age of the entire population by more than four months! In fact, the only place where immigration made the population older was Nunavut, where the scrip is flipped — the territory has Canada’s youngest incumbent population (weighted average of 26) and oldest immigrant population (age 44).
It’s important to note that these are the effects of just one year. When you factor in immigration over a longer timeline, you can see how Canadians born abroad are punching above their weight in terms of workforce age and labour participation.
Newcomers in the Canadian workforce are playing an increasingly important role in the country’s health services and trade sectors — two areas in which labour shortages are most acute. But it goes further: More than 2,400 permanent residents applied to join the Canadian Armed Forces in November 2022, representing more than a third of all applications made that month. The absence of newcomers would widen the gaps in some of Canadian society’s most critical sectors.
There are wicked problems tied to growth — but they should never be construed as impediments to it. All public institutions have responsibility, from local land use rules to promote homebuilding, to immigration programming that boosts regional retention, to cooperation between post-secondary institutions and municipalities to ensure that international students have a place to live. There is even a good argument to look long-term at pro-natal policies to ensure that Canada keeps growing over the next few decades when global populations are set to decline. It is all within the bounds of possibility to improve these outcomes, and avoid the consequences of making Canada worse off.
Tomorrow, let’s celebrate the people who make our country a better place.
