TORONTO (TIP): As pleas by various cities and provinces for review of the changes made in the immigration policy have been overlooked by the federal government, Canada has experienced its worst-ever decline in its population over the last eight decades.
Many businesses in small towns and cities are facing closure due to a lack of workforce. Recently, Canada’s leading news network, CBC, highlighted the plight of a young Indian immigrant who had been running a restaurant in Saskatchewan. The owner, who came as an international student in 2010, says that by early next year, her last two chefs, whose work permits were not renewed, will leave for India, jeopardizing her business.
Her story is not an isolated case; the shortage of workforce, both skilled and unskilled, has put many employers in a difficult situation.
According to Statistics Canada, the country witnessed an unprecedented drop in numbers of its population in the third quarter of this year. The total population, which had touched the 40 million mark a couple of years ago, has declined by 76000.
When the present minority Liberal government headed by Mark Carney presented its first budget, it talked about halving international student permits in coming years. Making clear that it needs brains and not a workforce, the budget said that Ottawa was set to launch an initiative to recruit more than 1,000 top international researchers to Canada, with the budget injecting up to Can $17 billion (US $12 billion) into a suite of recruitment measures. Canada’s Finance Minister Francois Philippe Champagne was quoted as saying that Canada wants to attract the “best and the brightest.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney had stated that he wanted to restore immigration rates to “sustainable levels” while attracting the “best talent in the world to help build our economy.”
While the impact of the new immigration policy will take a while to reflect its impact on the Canadian economy, the Liberal government had proposed in its budget that it wants to keep new permanent residents at less than 1 per cent of the population beyond 2027, while reducing the number of temporary residents to less than 5 percent by the end of 2027.
The latest figures by Statistics Canada indicate that the impact of the new immigration policy has started reflecting the shift in demographic indicators.
Even the birth rate in Canada has shown a visible decline over the past six decades. It was immigration that had been sustaining population growth. Many economists have warned the government a stagnant or negative population growth could harm some sectors of the economy even if it improves the country’s per capita productivity.
(Prabhjot Singh is a Toronto-based profusely awarded senior journalist who specializes in Sports and Political reporting)