Minister says Canada needs newcomers as citizens push back against high targets

Canada's Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship is defending the federal government's new immigration targets that aim to reverse demographic changes that threaten the country's future.

“If we don’t continue to increase our immigration ambition and bring more working-age population and young families into this country, our questions will not be about labour shortages, generations from now,” Fraser said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The Canadian federal government recently announced plans to increase the number of immigrants entering the nation to over 500,000 a year by 2025. This decision has sparked some backlash as the country continues to suffer from failing provincial healthcare systems and an ever-growing housing crisis that seems determined to continue.

Minister Fraser revealed Canada’s new immigration targets on November 1st, stating that the move was intended to secure Canada’s future economic prosperity. 

“There were a million jobs available in the Canadian economy at a time when immigration already accounts for nearly all of our labor force growth,” Fraser said during a press conference, “We cannot maximize our economic potential if we don't embrace immigration.”

The announcement was a significant departure from Canada’s previous target of 405,000 immigrants a year, a number that is expected to grow to 465,000 next year. 

The government plans to bring in roughly 1.5 million new immigrants by the end of 2025 to help ease the growing labor shortage major industries are facing.

Statistics Canada has projected that there are over 1 million current job vacancies in Canada, a number that is only expected to grow as many of the country’s most skilled workers look south of the border for better opportunities and pay. 

But some Canadians aren’t happy with Canada’s new immigration targets. A November 2022 poll conducted by Leger and the Association of Canadian Studies found that 75% of Canadians were concerned about the new immigration targets. 

The biggest issue Canadians have with growing immigration is about how it will affect Canada’s housing, health, and social services, which are already struggling under the weight of Canada’s growing population.

Leger executive vice president Christian Bourque suggested that the poll accurately reflected real concerns Canadians have over the current lack of affordable housing and their crumbling services. 

“There’s a heightened sense of concern over stretching our tax dollar and stretching our dollar,” Bourque said.

“In good, positive economic times before the pandemic hit, these numbers might have been different,” Bourque went on to state, “But now I think there’s a growing concern of how far and how much we can afford.”

How much Canadians can afford is exactly a question federal and provincial governments should be asking. Over the last seven years, home prices have outpaced wages by over 50% according to MPA Magazine’s Jonathon Russell. 

In July of 2022, long before the government set its new immigration targets, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) was estimating that more than 3.5 million houses would need to be added to Canada’s supply just to reach affordability, a task that seems almost impossible in Canada’s current political climate. 

"Increasing supply will be difficult,” CMC officials warned in their quarterly report, “Critically, increasing supply takes time because the time to construct is significant, but so is the time to progress through government approval processes... we must act today to achieve affordability by 2030."

But housing isn’t Canada’s only problem. Healthcare analysts are increasingly raising the alarm over Canada’s crumbling healthcare services. 

Across the country, Canadians have been faced with increased wait times at hospitals, closed emergency rooms, and reduced access to ambulances and other important health services.

"We don't have enough doctors or nurses to be able to take care of all the Nova Scotians and Canadians that need access to care," Dr. Leisha Hawker, president of Doctors Nova Scotia, told CTV News in a recent interview.

Angus Reid Institute has reported that nearly 20% of Canadians don’t have access to a doctor, and the Royal Bank of Canada has projected that Canada will be short roughly 44,000 physicians before the end of the decade. 

With all of these factors combined, it's no wonder Canadians are worrying about bringing in another 1.5 million people to the country. Luckily, there is a silver lining. 

Statistics Canada has revealed that immigration has contributed to a 79.9% growth in Canada’s labor force, creating jobs, funding public services, and bringing many of the critical skills needed in key industries like housing construction and the medical field with more than 335,000 new immigrants working in health-related occupations in 2016. 

At present, more than 23% of Canada’s population is made up of new or recent immigrants and permanent residents, an all-time high. But only time will tell if the new influx of people into Canada will prove detrimental to the country’s future success.