The Truth About Canada (10 page)
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n 1981, Canada took in 127,000 immigrants. Ten years later, in 1991, it was 221,000, and in 2001 it was up to 253,000. In 2005, the number was up again, to over 262,000. The same year, some 36,000 emigrants left Canada, well below the 48,000 average figures for 1999 to 2001, leaving us with a large plus migration rate.
Of the 30 OECD countries, in the period from 2000 to 2005, only Italy, Ireland, and Spain had a higher plus migration ratio than Canada. Canada’s ratio is better than such countries as the United States, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and Norway, and far ahead of such countries as Japan, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Moreover, in recent years, Canada’s plus migration ratio has been increasing, from 3.8 per 1,000 in 1991, to 6 per 1,000 in 2004.
How do immigrants to Canada compare with immigrants to other OECD countries when it comes to the percentage of all those with a post-secondary education? The answer is very well indeed. In Canada, such educated immigrants make up more than one in five of all persons with a post-secondary education. Only Luxembourg, at just over one third, and Australia, at just over one quarter, do better. Of the immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1996 and 2001, more than 52 percent had a university education, compared to the Canadian-born average of only 21 percent.
Canada’s record in this respect is much better than all the other OECD countries, and much better than all the G7 countries, including the United States.
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“Brain drain?” Nineteen OECD countries have a higher percentage of persons with a post-secondary education leaving to emigrate to other OECD countries, and emigration of such persons from Canada is far below the OECD average.
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As I have pointed out often elsewhere, the brain drain mythology promoted by the likes of Conrad Black and the
National Post
has been grossly overstated. There is abundant evidence that rather than a brain drain, Canada has a huge brain
gain
, every year, year after year. Between 1986 and 2006, emigration from Canada fell by 24 percent.
In 1930, there were 1,310,000 Canadian-born people living in the United States. By 1960, there were only 953,000. By 1970, only some 812,000. And by 2000, just 678,000. In 1990, Canada had a net gain of 1.5 million people with post-secondary education. Ten years later, the net gain was 2.25 million people.
In 1981, 16.1 percent of Canada’s population was foreign-born. By 2004, it was 18.0 percent.
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In 1981, only 5 percent of Canadians were “visible minorities” other than aboriginal persons. By 1996, this was up to 11 percent, and by 2006 it was 16 percent. Statistics Canada has forecast that by 2017 about one in five Canadians could be from a visible minority. South Asians and Chinese will continue to be the largest visible minority groups.
In February 2006, Dr. Ivan Fellegi, the head of Statistics Canada, reported that about 35 percent of the Canadian population are either first-generation immigrants or the children of immigrants. While Australia had almost 25 percent of their population of immigrant stock by 2000, Canada was next at almost 19 percent, followed by the United States at 12.4 percent, France at 10.6 percent, Germany at 9 percent, and the United Kingdom at 6.8 percent. In Italy it was only 2.8 percent.
Today, about 20 percent of Canada’s population is foreign-born, compared to the OECD average of only about 8 percent. Only New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, and Luxembourg have higher foreign-born
percentages. Canada has the fifth highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the OECD. By the end of 2006, foreign-born people in Canada accounted for almost one in five of the total population, the highest proportion in 75 years.
In 2005, about 53 percent of the 262,236 permanent residents admitted to Canada came from the Asia and Pacific regions, just under 19 percent came from Africa and the Middle East, 16 percent from Europe, 9 percent from South and Central America, and 3.5 percent from the United States.
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In 2006, the number of U.S. citizens who moved to Canada, 10,942, was at a 30-year high. Jack Jedwab of the Association of Canadian Studies says that the Americans who are coming to Canada “have the highest level of education. They’re coming because many of them don’t like the politics [in the United States], the Iraq War and the security situation in the U.S. By comparison, Canada is a tension-free place. People feel safer.”
The highest percentage of immigrants to Canada in 2005 came from China, 16 percent, followed by 13 percent from India, 7 percent from the Philippines, and 5 percent from Pakistan.
In 2007, there was a terrible and inexcusable backlog of some 800,000 applicants waiting to come to Canada. Some potential immigrants have been kept waiting up to five years before being given a decision on their application. And even if granted citizenship, many professionals must wait years to have their working credentials recognized.
About 80 percent of new immigrants settle in Canada’s big cities. And, as has often been pointed out, because of our regrettable reluctance to accept foreign credentials, “in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver the taxi driver is often better educated than the passenger.”
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In 2001, almost 44 percent of the people in Toronto were foreign-born, just under 38 percent in Vancouver, and just over 18 percent in Montreal. By comparison, Miami had 40 percent, London 25 percent, and New York City only just over 24 percent. Looking ahead, Statistics Canada projects that by 2017, 51 percent of the population of Toronto will be visible minorities, 49 percent of Vancouver’s population, 28 percent of the Ontario parts of Ottawa-Gatineau, 24 percent of Calgary, and 23 percent of Windsor.
In the United States, things have changed. Migration from around the world to the United States peaked in 2000 and has declined a great deal since, down roughly 25 percent, from about 1.5 million in 1999 and 2000. The number of legal permanent residents entering the United Sates was only 647,000 in 2000, but that fell to just 455,000 in 2004. The same year, the number of “unauthorized” immigrants was estimated at 562,000.
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A major unfortunate change in Canada has been the large percentage of immigrants who now live in poverty. While employment rates for the Canadian-born have been increasing, from about 73 percent in 1981 to 81 percent in 2001, they have been dramatically falling for recent immigrants, from about 77 percent to just over 68 percent. By 2004, some 34.5 percent of immigrants to Canada who had arrived here within the previous 10 years were classified by Statistics Canada as “low income.”
In January 2007, Statistics Canada reported that
the economic situation of new immigrants to Canada showed no improvement after the turn of the millennium — despite the fact that they had much higher levels of education and many more were in the skilled immigrant class than a decade earlier.
In 2002, low-income rates among immigrants during their first full year in Canada were 3.5 times higher than those of Canadian-born people. By 2004, they were 3.2 times higher.
These rates were higher than at any time during the 1990s.
Among new immigrants aged 15 and older, the proportion with university degrees rose from 17% in 1992 to 45% in 2004. And the share in the economic skilled immigrant class increased from 29% to 51%.
One in five recent immigrants were living in low income at least four years during their first five years in Canada. This was more than twice the corresponding rate of around 8% among Canadian-born people.
Among those who arrived in 2000, 52% of those in chronic
low income were skilled economic immigrants. About 41% had a university degree.
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According to the Royal Bank of Canada, if foreign-born workers were as successful as Canadian-born workers, personal income in Canada would be about $13-billion a year higher. But of course that’s an irrelevant figure if skilled foreign workers can’t find a decent job because their credentials aren’t recognized, their language skills are lacking, or because of discrimination.
While immigrants aged 25 to 54 have been more likely to have at least a bachelor’s degree (36 percent) compared to Canadian-born men and women (22 percent), nevertheless their unemployment rate in 2006 was four times the rate for Canadian-born university-educated workers, while for immigrants with a graduate degree it was over five times higher (12.4 percent compared to 2.4 percent).
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Canada’s current fertility rate of 1.5 children per woman means Canadians are not replacing themselves. This means an aging of the population where within 20 years there will be more deaths than births. It also means that unless immigration increases, our population will decline. Moreover, the median age will increase from just under 39 years to almost 44 years by 2025, and our natural growth in our labour force will come nowhere near to meeting demand as soon as 2016. Statistics Canada reports that in 2006 the proportion of children was the lowest ever recorded.
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Many other countries face similar problems. Some forecasts are that Italy, Spain, and Japan will lose over 20 percent of their populations over the next four decades and the population of the European Union will drop by a huge 100 million.
By 2005, new Canadians were already making up some 70 percent of the growth in the labour force. Some estimates say that by 2011 they will account for 100 percent of the growth in the labour force. Other estimates suggest that by mid-century Canada will need almost four times as many immigrants to maintain our labour force growth rate of the past few years.
The C.D. Howe Institute forecasts that even with an immigration increase to 320,000 a year, the ratio of elderly to those of working age will almost double by 2035. The Conference Board of Canada suggests that within 20 years, the ratio of workers to pensioners will move from five to one down to three to one. The impact on our health-care system and pension plans will be profound.
It’s interesting to look at the public opinion polls relating to immigrants. Almost 80 percent of Canadians believe immigrants have a good influence on our country. In Australia, it’s only 52 percent. In the United States and Britain, only 43 percent. Compared to most other Western countries, the anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada is much smaller. An August 2005 poll showed that fewer than one in three Canadians believed that we accepted too many immigrants, and most Canadians felt we were a better country because of multiculturalism.
When, in 2005, federal Immigration Minister Joe Volpe called for an increase in the number of immigrants to more than 340,000 annually by 2010/2011 a
Globe and Mail
editorial said, “Canada may be the only country in the world where it’s seen as good politics before an election to call for a major
increase
in the number of foreigners who come in.”
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It’s interesting to note that on average 84 percent of eligible immigrants to Canada become Canadian citizens. Also interesting, and most disappointing, is the fact that only 32 percent of U.S.-born immigrants who have lived in Canada for more than 30 years have become citizens. Thirty years!
While in the 1970s, 30 percent of immigrants said they knew neither English nor French, by the 1990s this had grown to 45 percent. With such high numbers, it’s obvious that lack of adequate language skills is a major factor in poor employment and income levels. Yet 80 percent of recent immigrants say they have a strong sense of belonging to Canada.
In 2006, Solutions Research Group reported that 86 percent of immigrants believed that Canada was “the best place in the world for me to live,” and 92 percent of second-generation Canadians agreed. Between 72 percent and 86 percent agreed that Canada’s health-care
and education systems were better than in their country of origin, as were safety and security.
One of the most pleasurable things I have ever done is to have acted as a citizenship judge in ceremonies swearing in new Canadian citizens. The last time I did this, there were 97 men, women, and children from 30 different countries. In particular, I remember the smiling faces of an oncologist from Boston and his family and a computer programmer from Siberia and her family. Great happiness at becoming Canadian citizens filled the room. There were smiles everywhere, and many tears of joy as we all sang “O Canada.”
I was very proud to have had this touching opportunity.
It’s worth noting that Canada has the highest proportion of immigrants in parliament of any country.
PART THREE
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WAGES IN CANADA
“Economic justice is off the radar screen.”
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hy are so many children poor in an affluent nation like Canada? One major reason is that their low-paid parents have to spend so much of their income on rent and utilities, leaving little even for such basics as food and clothing, and there is no public housing available to them.
A Queen’s University study by Richard Chaykowski found that millions of jobs in Canada don’t pay enough to keep a family out of poverty. One in six Canadian workers earns less than $10 an hour, one in 25 earns the minimum wage or less. Aside from the large number of low-paid full-time jobs, there have been growing percentages of part-time casual and temporary jobs with irregular hours, poor working conditions, few benefits, and little chance for advancement.
Chaykowski says that a third of all working Canadians earned less than poverty wages. Carol Goar of the
Toronto Star
puts it this way: “As things now stand, millions of workers are not covered by employment standards and are not eligible for jobless benefits. And temp agencies can skim off half a client’s wages. Workers can be rented and returned like spare parts.”
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