But ... but ... we are an exclusive club. There cannot be any more Founding Members. That rare and much-coveted cup is like a secret handshake. Kinda like my vintage "HAIL LOBSTER" T-shirt from JBP ...
I am an immigrant myself (recent citizen). And I can tell you with confidence that the resentment towards NEW or UPCOMING immigrants is equally strong among existing immigrants. This is not a case of climb the ladder and pulling it up before the next person gets on it. This is a basic acknowledgement of the realities facing every single Canadian - native, immigrant or otherwise - that high immigration is leading to unsustainable pressures on infrastructure.
This is absolutely one of your best columns in recent memory, especially when you get into economic inequality and culture.
A pluralistic, live-and-let-live society can't survive the wholesale demonization of its history and culture. (And ours is one to be proud of: Our birth brought English and French, Catholics and Protestants, together). True, too, that economic inequality will hit new Canadians the hardest.
The Liberal/NDP wheelhouse used to be equality, economic injustice, and Canadian nationalism, but they've swapped the first two for critical race and gender theory, and trashed the third. (I worry Poilievre may whore for PPC votes, but his personal family history gives some comfort, and one thing is certain: We can't survive our current direction.
One of the features of the Trudeau government is that their policy seems to derive from analysis no deeper than watching a TED Talk. They'll seize on a glib observation, and charge ahead into something that feels right to them despite no more than a superficial understanding.
In the case of immigration, the Liberals justified themselves with the observation that it can counter the effects of population aging while also catering to the interests of various ethnic blocs in their voter coalition and suiting warm and fuzzy ideas about Canadian diversity.
In budgeting, they saw that Canada was in decent fiscal shape and could afford to run minor deficits, which allowed them to justify increased spending. They also glibly assumed "budgets balance themselves." There's an element of truth to that, but it's not sufficient. It also ironically undercuts Liberal claims to the great achievement of balanced budgets in the '90s by waving it away as a mere effect of a growing economy.
In energy and electric vehicles, the Liberals have gotten swept away by ideas that alternative energy sources are ready to replace conventional fossil fuels and a "climate crisis" compels immediate action. There's been little or no deep strategic analysis of how to transition a heavily energy-dependent Canadian economy. On electric cars, Liberals saw they were the new hot thing and decided we needed to be part of it. That manifested as shoveling huge sums into luring manufacturers here without actually positioning Canada to be part of the value chain.
Shallow understanding, shallow thinking, and getting caught by surprise by the fully predictable (and predicted) consequences - that's the Trudeau Liberals.
The shallow Liberal understanding of “immigration” flows from the con job perpetrated by Mckinley / Dominic Barton / the Century Initiative. Another of the sins for which Gerry Butts should have to answer.
Great article. A hundred years ago, when someone got on a ship to emigrate to Canada they had to assume that they might never return and might never see their friends and loved ones again. Immigration to Canada was pretty much a life-long commitment. That helped inspire those people to work hard at building in their new land. With today's modern financial system, modern communications and air travel immigration isn't necessarily the same kind of commitment (unless you are a refugee that is). You can try Canada out and, if it doesn't work, you can return or move on to, say, the United States. On the one hand, this is good for the individual: there is no irreversible error. On the other hand, it is less good for Canada. To combat this, you need a strong, positive narrative that makes people want to stay. As you wrote, we no longer have a positive narrative. My mother arrived in Canada at Pier 21 seventy-five years ago. Prior to that, she and her family had been in a DP camp in Germany. My grandfather had decided they were going to Brazil and when he heard that she had arranged passage to Canada, he didn't speak to her for three weeks. Of course, he and the rest of the family followed soon after. Years later, he told my mother that he had been wrong ,she had been right and that Canada was the best country in the world. I hear less of that narrative these days and it's a shame because, despite everything, it still is.
I am a Canadian by birth who gained American and Australian citizenship. In both of those countries, an applicant is not allowed to leave the country after a certain step in the process. When I was in the US, I had a 2.5 year period where I could not leave without forfeiting my application. This is a beneficial requirement as it forces an applicant to cut ties and build new ones
Also, now you can move back to your homeland and when there is civil unrest there, Canada will bring you back. There is no loyalty to Canada anymore. People want what they can get from the country. Our recovery from mismanagement will be slow. I'll be dead before Canada is truly back.
There's a big difference between immigration now and 100 years ago.
The immigrants then had more of a settler outlook. They had to build from scratch.
Our immigration levels could easily work if we started constructing brand new cities in the wide open prairies. However, that idea sounds ridiculous in today's world. Who would want to move to a supposed first-world country to live as a struggling settler?
While I fundamentally disagree with the premise that high immigration levels, permanent and temporary, are needed (most demographers note the limited impact), I do share the worry regarding the breakdown of the general consensus that immigration has and continues to benefit Canada and Canadians. But not the current and projected levels. Given the difficulties in ramping up housing, healthcare etc, the most rationale solution is trimming levels as the National Bank argues.
On whether or not the Conservatives should "articulate a Canadian identity and set of values," or just focus on the practicalities of housing, healthcare etc, I suspect the latter is a safer approach as it avoids being tarred with being xenophobic or racist. Housing and healthcare apply to both immigrants and non-immigrants, albeit more to immigrants as you note.
So I am reasonably optimistic that one can have a reasoned debate, as virtually all the recent commentary has demonstrated.
Andrew, I was 100% with you, until the last sentence but I'm a glass half empty kind of guy. I'm not at all optimistic a reasoned debate is likely, at least in the political sphere. I hope you are right.
Bruce I tend to agree with you and I’m a glass half full type. As I was reading Jen’s (strange, but nice how we readers refer to the Editors by their first name, a nice familiarity) comments. The Conservatives, or anyone else for that matter, could start a reasonable dialogue on immigration,but I suspect it would be a matter of seconds before the Trudeau Liberals dragged it down into the muck.
The conversation should not be a binary discussion on Yes Immigration vs. No Immigration, rather it should be ‘how much immigration’ and under what conditions.
Here on Prince Edward Island many locals are starting to resent immigrants because of the housing shortage. If concrete measures are not started immediately, then we will have full blown racism break out here. And that would be simply sad. Our social services are unable to keep up.
Eric, I live in Calgary which is, of course in Alberta.
My daughter has a friend, whose family had a vacation property in southeastern BC. As a result, my daughter was fortunate to spend a fair bit of time in that area and got to know many local kids her own age (about 13 - 17 she was). I was told that the local kids (and their parents) frequently referred to the Albertans as "Albortions" because the housing costs had so increased that many of the local folk were priced out and had to leave in order to have families, greater demands for services that made things harder for locals, more traffic in small towns, etc., etc.
My point is that resentment on higher costs, etc. is pretty much always allocated to "the other" whether that other is truly foreign or is "locally foreign" or is of the same skin hue or otherwise. This is a situation that is always with us and is always something that we must address properly.
Many of those people in the Kootenays are moving to Calgary now. That is how insane housing prices have risen in places like the Columbia Valley (Invermere), Kootenay Lake and Rossland
When people say that "Canada is becoming a third world country", they were either joking or thought to be delusional. But now Canada is facing a problem that's literally associated with third world countries issue.
It might be that I am clinging to an inherent optimism from growing up in this absolute fluke of a place where this was true for so much of my life. Nevertheless, more than I have faith in the Conservatives to pull any of this off, specifically, I have faith that while our consensus on immigration levels is absolutely waning - I still don't believe that there is enough animosity among the average Canadian towards immigrants themselves that going nativist would be a winning Conservative strategy. I feel like they simply wouldn't have the support for this.
Jen, an interesting take on the issue but let's look at a couple of your points; brushing off Alberta's concerns about high immigration with a "fine whatever" is a bit dismissive don't you think? How much does Alberta contribute to the economy and government pockets that keep this country going but just dismiss them. Second, Ontario is the recipient of immigrants in very high numbers - why is beyond me what with the costs and all but if Ontario is turning then there is an issue!
A woman who used to work with me who had immigrated from Russia with her family told me that she moved to small city Saskatchewan in able to improve her English and to avoid living in a Russian speaking country in a country in Toronto. It was her opinion that - in the 80's - Canada was allowing too many immigrants to live in enclaves where they never had to learn English or French and could live in their own language adn be served in their own language. She summed it up as 'Canada is crazy to allow this!' So what has changed? Nothing, it has gotten worse.
You didn't mention the fact that we have doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, and so forth who were trained in their home countries but can't get their credentials recognized in Canada. The woman above was a doctor, her husband was an engineer but worked as a carpenter here. How is it that we can't have a doctor from India have credentials recognized after a short period of time integrating and then turn him/her lose to practice? Why is there an Indian trained lawyer/accountant working as a greeter in a large chain store because we don't accept his credentials - last I knew one plus one equaled two all over the world except in Canada where it is a colonial construct.
If you think that multi generationla Canadians are going to benefit from high housing prices and so forth you best think again. Our federal government is looking at taxing the sale of a principal residence just like it is wanting to tax an under-utilized housing unit. Canadians are looking at reduced productivity, reduced GDP numbers, reduced foreign investment and increased taxes for the foreseeable future. You also need to think that increased numbers of workers are going to drive down real wages and productivity - if the employee can't speak english or french how will he/she end up with a good job?
I'm not against immigration but we need to get a handle on how we make the process work. Simply opening the flood gates with no plan is a plan of failure. With no requirement to become 'Canadian' then we end up with the issues we see played out on the streets today - support for terrorists. That support is not just the shouts or 'river to sea' but the machine gun secals on cars in Regina and other cities, sticker of terrorist leaders on vehicles and so forth.
One thing you can say is that JT is going to claim that a CPC government will take us all back to the 50's. In a lot of ways that may not be a bad thing - Canada built large projects, had a plan and goals, expected immigrants to integrate and immigrants gladly integrated to belong to Canada and to call themselves Canadian adn they knew that if they worked hard they would succeed and that their kids would do even better. Now, I'm not at all sure that any of that is the case in the Canada outside my window.
From a purely strategic political point of view, Alberta's concerns about immigration can be dismissed because Alberta doesn't represent any possible seat gains for the Conservatives. This is emphatically not the case in Ontario or Atlantic Canada. JG
That is true Jen but a simple dismissal without an explanation is indicativve of an 'eastern elite's attitude to the west. Just so you know, I was born and raised under hte big blue machine in Ontario (Toronto - centre of the know universe) and moved to the prairies complete with new certificate and long hair just when Trudeau the Senior was implementing his national energy program - you can guess how popular I was! but you couldn't pay me enough to move back to Toronto now!
When I read her dismissal of Alberta's thoughts I was amused as I took her writing in that fashion as her assuming the persona of a "typical" Central Canadian who knows, just KNOWS, I tell you, that we Albertans are all redneck racists. Of course, such an attitude says ever so much more about that stereotypical Central Canadian than it does about us.
In any event, I was not offended by Jen's writing in that particular spot. Come to think of it, after reading Jen's work for quite a number of years, she has not yet offended me. But there is always something to strive for, Jen!
With respect to immigrants who can't work in their profession because their credentials aren't recognized, I think we need to put a lot of the onus (and blame) on immigration officials who're admitting applications on the basis of credentials that aren't recognized in Canada. If we want to bring in more foreign-trained doctors, governments need to fund more residencies to orient them to Canadian medical practice. If we want broader recognition of foreign engineering credentials, we need the federal government to work with other countries to assess and validate those credentials. Consider this scenario: you're a registrar with a professional engineering association and you have an application from somebody with an engineering degree from a school in China that you've never heard of. Language is an impediment in reaching out to them, but you can overcome that with a translator. How do you figure out if the person you're talking to is legitimate? How do you figure out if the school is legitimate when there's several thousand schools offering engineering in China? How do you figure out if the education is comparable to accredited Canadian schools? And this is all to process 1 application.
There you said it: "we need to get a handle on how we make the process work."
I'd like to see some ideas about how to get municipalities more involved in addressing all of these challenges. John's point about the Russian immigrant not wanting to be in an "urban enclave" rings true, also the barriers to getting credentials for doctors and other professionals. This seems to me like the low hanging fruit.
Poilievre talks with all Canadians in his myriad of youtube vids, plenty of cultures, and his repsectful holiday greetings are refreshing compared to leftist pandering. Watch and see his dedication to the Canada that Liberals destroyed.
I actually think Pierre more than many of them is capable of striking balance on this issue because of his wife. Finding the comm ability to not let it splinter the conservatives though - that is another story. Fingers crossed he can manage it.
Jen, great article. Very good points. However, with respect to your comment "the odious debates about illegal and uncontrolled immigration south of the border. (The fact that we don't have a lot of illegal or uncontrolled immigration owing to our geography has always allowed us to be unduly smug on the issue.) " The debate may not seem so odious if you lived on the US/Mexico border and paid taxes there. Consider the uproar in Canada over Roxham Road - the numbers were miniscule compared to what happens every day in the US. I believe that the residents of the US that live on the US/Mexico border have a valid complaint.
- The Liberals are slyly telegraphing that immigration may be exacerbating the housing crisis, but also slyly playing a blame game. Unrepentant about their own ludicrous immigration targets for the housing crisis, numerous government officials are eyeing the temporary foreign workers and international students and targeting them for a huge reduction in numbers. Full speed ahead on their own territory though.
- We need to build a lot of housing both as rentals and single family dwellings. Over time, this might bring down the median price point of all housing but don’t bet on it. If the needs are constrained by a lack of skilled tradesmen and building materials then the inflationary pressures will continue to push up costs. Also, how many lenders will be happy to see their housing portfolios decline in value over the next 20 years? Everyone hates inflation, but deflation is a concern too.
- The economic outlook is so grim for anyone under the age of 30, how can we expect them to have children that will sustain our population? What a sad mess. Having to open floodgates for immigrants because our young people can’t have affordable housing and decent healthcare to sustain a growing family. Which reminds me, everything is local but access to obstetrical care in my sightline is limited. The days of delivering babies in a rural hospital setting is as outdated as Bonanza reruns.
- The Conservatives may not have the will or the tools to solve some of these challenges, but the opportunity is there to try. Canadians who are paying attention know that our country is up to its neck in trouble and some determination and grit to face the backlash from some corners will be rewarded.
Darcy, you write in part, "Over time, this might bring down the median price point of all housing ..."
Respectfully, I must disagree. Emphatically. Again, respectfully.
I ask that anyone with a mortgage or anyone with a bank account in Canada answer me this: Do you support a policy where house prices across the country drop, say, twenty per cent so that banks find themselves with mortgages that are substantially higher than the value of the property such that when the banks repossess they have massive losses and are then in danger of not having adequate capital to meet their liabilities to depositors and others?
My point, ultimately, is that the financial system that our "wonderful" government has in place will not allow housing prices to drop precipitously. Holding steady (at current very high levels) is the most that we can realistically hope for.
Homeowners who can't afford their mortgages will sell at a loss to new buyers who can afford the now reduced payments. The banks should have sufficient capital reserves to take 20% right downs on their mortgage portfolios. To those who overpaid or who hold share in the banks: too bad, so sad. Buyer's remorse is not a government problem.
Doug, I agree that home owners would be forced to sell at a loss; that we can agree on.
Now, a couple of disagreements. You say that banks can afford 20% write downs on their mortgage portfolios. Nope, not at all. You can look at bank balance sheets and say that they have the capital but if you decimated, say, fifty per cent of mortgages with twenty per cent write downs / write offs (i.e. 10 per cent on the over all portfolio), the Canadian banks would survive. But barely. Their stock prices would collapse, which would decimate all sorts of pension plans, RRSPs and so forth.
Then, about the new buyers? If the banks just lost 10% on their whole mortgage books do you think that they would finance any new mortgages without, oh, forty per cent down? And then, if people are losing houses big time, will there be many buyers. Speculators? Sure? Long term buyers? Maybe only a very few.
So, yes, too bad, so sad and so forth but please realize that the overall effects of your "solution" will affect the entire economy and bankrupt ever so many home owners. You are right that this is not a problem that the government should fix - Damn it! Stay out of this government! - but the government should not make it much worse by encouraging deflation in housing values.
Further, the Canadian governments (plural) have been allowing far, far too much of our wealth to be concentrated in real estate generally and housing specifically. In turn, that means that a large part of the economy is tied to construction, development, etc. All of that would collapse under your "solution" and about a million people would be thrown out of work.
I therefore reluctantly say that the best that we can hope for is to have the current valuations remain; that is, no increases but no substantive decreases.
Canada experienced a huge housing bust in the early 80s with many households losing all off their home equity and yet somehow life went on. The housing bust in the early 90s was less severe but still ended up with many selling at substantial losses. What makes current homeowners so entitled to risk free capital appreciation?
The same goes for investors holding bank shares. Companies like Nortel and RIM wiped out many a Canadian RRSP and the country still stands. Why are shareholders of the big banks so exceptional that they should be spared from the risks inherent to equity markets?
A real estate bust would derisk the mortgage market and put downwards pressure on downpayments. The rational of a downpayment is to protect the mortgage holder from reasonable downside risk in asset valuation. For example, under 20% downpayment, the asset could decline 20% before the mortgage holder suffers any loss. An asset that has already declined would have less risk of further decline and would command less of a margin against valuation risk. The problem in Canada is that downpayments should have been much higher over the past 10 years or so. Even more concerning are downpayments provided by family members using HELOCs etc., which basically squares the risk exposure to the real estate market. Regulators should have not allowed credit against existing real estate loans to serve as downpayments for additional real estate loans.
Fiinally, delaying revaluation of Canadian real estate only prolongs economic stagnation. The massive capital misallocation towards real estate (and government services) has starved the productive aspects of the economy from investment. Real estate appreciation does nothing to improve productivity. Canada is in its current malaise largely due to low business investment. Ripping off the bandaide would provide a path forward for better capital allocation and avoid a multi-decade Japan like stagnation.
Doug, I absolutely agree with much of what you say. Much but not all.
However ...
Yes, we did have housing contractions in the 80s and 90s. And, yes, there was some - some! - reduction in housing prices before they started rising once more. The suggestion herein, however, was that housing prices generally should decline dramatically to make housing more affordable for many in our society. I truly do sympathize with those who cannot buy a house; indeed, I am working to assist one of my adult children and her family in that respect - it's not easy for anyone.
The housing "busts" of the 80s (I live and lived in Alberta in the 80s so, believe me, I do know that time and what it did for housing) and the 90s, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver saw a lot of people lose their houses and in some cases go bankrupt. Clearly, people are taking a chance when they invest in anything, including in houses. The difficulty is that a general and permanent decline in the value of housing would have massive effects across the economy.
If you think banks can afford to take haircuts of twenty per cent on their mortgage portfolios, yes, they can, but that would hamper their activities throughout the economy. As for bank shareholders, again, yes, they took the risk but think of the number of pension plans that hold bank shares, including CPP. Do you want to risk people not having retirement income?
You say that a real estate bust would cause down payments to decrease. I argue the opposite. If the bank just took a bath on a lot of home mortgages, they would either steer completely away from funding new mortgages or would require much higher down payments.
You can argue that regulators "should" or "should not" but that is not the situation in which we currently live
I absolutely agree that Canadian real estate investment is much too high as a proportion of the overall economy but I think that a massive revaluation would lead to tremendous dislocation. If you think food banks are busy now, just wait until a lot of people lose their homes and cannot find an adequate new place to live.
As for Canada's low rate of business investment, I would argue that a lot of that is simply that the cost of doing business in Canada is far too great, what with regulatory delays and danger of denial in getting projects underway, very greatly uncompetitive taxes, etc., etc. Simply put, the system makes the likelihood of any substantial investment generating adequate returns highly unlikely so many businesses are simply not risking capital.
Yup, ripping off the band aid would allow a better allocation of capital. Of course, the patient would have to live in order enjoy that better allocation and I contend that many, many patients would not survive to see the new nirvana that you and I foresee as a consequence of better allocation of capital.
All that is to say that I believe that, given the consequences of a dramatic decline in values, the best we can hope for is stasis at current levels but better allocations in the future due to better policies. Fair? Not at all. But more fair than a dramatic drop in values.
I'm not saying that the GoC and BoC should engineer a housing crash. More that they should not take steps to prevent a housing crash. The GoC has already gone too far by allowing extended amortizations and waiving the stress test on renewals.
The potential effect on retirement income is not a concern. Most soon to be retirees would have purchased homes and banks shares many years ago and would likely still enjoy huge gains even after 20-30% haircuts. If some have to work an extra few years, so be it.
I strongly agree that Canada needs to remove barriers to business investment, mostly protection of the telecom, airline, dairy, poultry and and media industries. Again that will turn many government designated winners into market determined losers. Also again, I couldn't care less of the impacts as the shareholders and employees have enjoyed decades of above market incomes.
I lived through the AB housing bust of the early 80s, although I was very young. I remember playing in the overgrown yards and peering in the windows of abandoned houses. While lots of people moved away, life went on. My parents had purchased a house in 1980 and sold it in 1995 for 30% less. It didn't recover its value until the early 2000s. I am somewhat of a market fundamentalist due to experiences from the 80s and 90s. Government actions to resist market forces are incredibly expensive and prone to failure over the longer term.
In my experience, whenever there is a softening of housing prices, it is either a reflection of interest rates that has pushed too much stock onto the market versus demand and affordability or due to a deep recession that makes borrowing difficult due to shaky labour markets.
You are right. A serious downturn in values is a bankers nightmare. But if these inflated valuations are here to stay, the prospects of young people with little equity ever owning a home is a sad reality.
I agree that if house prices stay at current levels "...the prospects of young people with little equity ever owning a home is a sad reality." The alternative is to have house prices drop and cause their parents to lose their houses because their equity is liquidated.
The fact is that we will as a country will have to work with the situation as it is now; we cannot turn back the clock. That means that the whole country will have to find ways to assist the "next" generation [I use quotes on "next" because is it the actual next generation, the subsequent one, then the one following, etc.? I submit that it is all of them.]
I have to point out that I cannot see any over arching government policy that will make this palatable so it will be up to each family to do this. Not all families have the capacity and not all families have adult children who are interested, in the same locale, etc.
In my family, my adult son and his wife both have very good jobs and both (as near as I can tell) earn substantially more than I ever did (I'm retired). They have a house that they can afford and my wife and I don't need to worry about them or their children (well, at least not economically). My adult daughter and her husband and our granddaughter rent a house where the rent will very, very likely skyrocket (already on the highish side) on renewal at mid-year; also, the house is (very polite here) not at all a prize and they will never be able to own a house, any house.
My wife and I are in our seventies and nearing our own end if you believe demographers. Therefore, what we are doing is renovating our house and we will move into a new apartment in the basement and "the kids" will move into our top two floors. Intergenerational housing where they will end up owning. Of course, this doesn't work for all; in fact it wouldn't work for many.
The point, however, is that we in the older generation, the incredibly fortunate generation, must find creative ways to assist our kids, grandkids, etc. After all it was our generation that elected and re-elected and re-re-elected the stupid face-coloring asshole who now lives in the Cottage. [It wasn't me who elected him!] The fact is that we allowed this group of weasels, nay a sneak of weasels [a wonderful plural form to describe weasels of the political variety that I found on another blog - the phrase is - alas - not my coinage.]
We as a generational group are responsible for this disaster that we currently have and it is our offspring that are suffering most. It is therefore the personal - note: PERSONAL - responsibility of all members of my generation to try to ameliorate these problems as much as possible.
Recent tributes to Ed Broadbent reminded me of a significant shift that has taken place in political outlook. Once upon a time political leaders put forward their ideas of what would work to make the country/world a better place and folks debated them, picked one and voted for their guy. How long has it been now that the main, probably the only, objective is to WIN? Period, full stop.
Say whatever it takes; stir up whatever emotion will work for you and beat it to death until the electorate gets angry enough, or hates the other guy so intensely that they'll vote for you. Then muck around with the power you've "earned" until the tide shifts again and around we go again.
I think the notion of a consensus at the parliament level on this topic very important. Debating the number of immigrants is not racist or xenophobic, it is an operational issue as to how Canada accommodates the numbers in all the very obvious ways - healthcare, housing, work, etc.
The question for PP and the Tories in general is how prepared are they to work in consensus-oriented fashion? I am not confident that he and they are as, per Jen's observation, the Prime Directive is 'own-the-Libs' at all costs. Frankly, JT has so damaged the overall Liberal brand that I believe that a grown up conversation on this issue won't deliver the next election to them no matter what the outcome (that is, a sensible, practical, and doable policy fair to the immigrants and to the country).
One aspect doesn't get much attention and that is the percentage of the new arrivals that are students. As we all know, students pay three to four times what domestic students pay and so the universities are incented to pull in as many as possible in order to square their books. If numbers are driven down with a consensus-oriented immigration policy, then the provinces, God help us, are going to have find the funds to make up the difference. Underinvestment in the universities has been a decades long problem which has been papered over with foreign student revenues. Perhaps it is time to correct this matter. (Also, some percentage of students go home after completing their studies; another percentage never goes to school and simply disappears into the general population - not sure how they administratively do this long-term, but apparently it is an issue.)
Pieces like those are why I subscribe. My God, you guys are good.
You're not the only one!
Gotta tell you ... all of us "Founding Members" ... with the coffee cups to prove it ... are feeling quite chuffed right now!
Jealous — just hoping on the bandwagon now :)
Wait, you get a coffee cup?
We will try to do coffee cups again this year. It's a giant pain in the ass though. I had to ship them all out myself by hand. JG
I would be happy with a t-shirt that isn’t oversized, cut for a man, and labeled “unisex” and “one size fits all.” 😂
But ... but ... we are an exclusive club. There cannot be any more Founding Members. That rare and much-coveted cup is like a secret handshake. Kinda like my vintage "HAIL LOBSTER" T-shirt from JBP ...
It will be a different coffee cup! JG
I am an immigrant myself (recent citizen). And I can tell you with confidence that the resentment towards NEW or UPCOMING immigrants is equally strong among existing immigrants. This is not a case of climb the ladder and pulling it up before the next person gets on it. This is a basic acknowledgement of the realities facing every single Canadian - native, immigrant or otherwise - that high immigration is leading to unsustainable pressures on infrastructure.
This is absolutely one of your best columns in recent memory, especially when you get into economic inequality and culture.
A pluralistic, live-and-let-live society can't survive the wholesale demonization of its history and culture. (And ours is one to be proud of: Our birth brought English and French, Catholics and Protestants, together). True, too, that economic inequality will hit new Canadians the hardest.
The Liberal/NDP wheelhouse used to be equality, economic injustice, and Canadian nationalism, but they've swapped the first two for critical race and gender theory, and trashed the third. (I worry Poilievre may whore for PPC votes, but his personal family history gives some comfort, and one thing is certain: We can't survive our current direction.
One of the features of the Trudeau government is that their policy seems to derive from analysis no deeper than watching a TED Talk. They'll seize on a glib observation, and charge ahead into something that feels right to them despite no more than a superficial understanding.
In the case of immigration, the Liberals justified themselves with the observation that it can counter the effects of population aging while also catering to the interests of various ethnic blocs in their voter coalition and suiting warm and fuzzy ideas about Canadian diversity.
In budgeting, they saw that Canada was in decent fiscal shape and could afford to run minor deficits, which allowed them to justify increased spending. They also glibly assumed "budgets balance themselves." There's an element of truth to that, but it's not sufficient. It also ironically undercuts Liberal claims to the great achievement of balanced budgets in the '90s by waving it away as a mere effect of a growing economy.
In energy and electric vehicles, the Liberals have gotten swept away by ideas that alternative energy sources are ready to replace conventional fossil fuels and a "climate crisis" compels immediate action. There's been little or no deep strategic analysis of how to transition a heavily energy-dependent Canadian economy. On electric cars, Liberals saw they were the new hot thing and decided we needed to be part of it. That manifested as shoveling huge sums into luring manufacturers here without actually positioning Canada to be part of the value chain.
Shallow understanding, shallow thinking, and getting caught by surprise by the fully predictable (and predicted) consequences - that's the Trudeau Liberals.
The shallow Liberal understanding of “immigration” flows from the con job perpetrated by Mckinley / Dominic Barton / the Century Initiative. Another of the sins for which Gerry Butts should have to answer.
Thank you, George, for your thoughtful post.
They're like people who read that drinking wine is good to prevent cancer then proceed to down 3 bottles of wine every day.
Great article. A hundred years ago, when someone got on a ship to emigrate to Canada they had to assume that they might never return and might never see their friends and loved ones again. Immigration to Canada was pretty much a life-long commitment. That helped inspire those people to work hard at building in their new land. With today's modern financial system, modern communications and air travel immigration isn't necessarily the same kind of commitment (unless you are a refugee that is). You can try Canada out and, if it doesn't work, you can return or move on to, say, the United States. On the one hand, this is good for the individual: there is no irreversible error. On the other hand, it is less good for Canada. To combat this, you need a strong, positive narrative that makes people want to stay. As you wrote, we no longer have a positive narrative. My mother arrived in Canada at Pier 21 seventy-five years ago. Prior to that, she and her family had been in a DP camp in Germany. My grandfather had decided they were going to Brazil and when he heard that she had arranged passage to Canada, he didn't speak to her for three weeks. Of course, he and the rest of the family followed soon after. Years later, he told my mother that he had been wrong ,she had been right and that Canada was the best country in the world. I hear less of that narrative these days and it's a shame because, despite everything, it still is.
I am a Canadian by birth who gained American and Australian citizenship. In both of those countries, an applicant is not allowed to leave the country after a certain step in the process. When I was in the US, I had a 2.5 year period where I could not leave without forfeiting my application. This is a beneficial requirement as it forces an applicant to cut ties and build new ones
Also, now you can move back to your homeland and when there is civil unrest there, Canada will bring you back. There is no loyalty to Canada anymore. People want what they can get from the country. Our recovery from mismanagement will be slow. I'll be dead before Canada is truly back.
There's a big difference between immigration now and 100 years ago.
The immigrants then had more of a settler outlook. They had to build from scratch.
Our immigration levels could easily work if we started constructing brand new cities in the wide open prairies. However, that idea sounds ridiculous in today's world. Who would want to move to a supposed first-world country to live as a struggling settler?
While I fundamentally disagree with the premise that high immigration levels, permanent and temporary, are needed (most demographers note the limited impact), I do share the worry regarding the breakdown of the general consensus that immigration has and continues to benefit Canada and Canadians. But not the current and projected levels. Given the difficulties in ramping up housing, healthcare etc, the most rationale solution is trimming levels as the National Bank argues.
On whether or not the Conservatives should "articulate a Canadian identity and set of values," or just focus on the practicalities of housing, healthcare etc, I suspect the latter is a safer approach as it avoids being tarred with being xenophobic or racist. Housing and healthcare apply to both immigrants and non-immigrants, albeit more to immigrants as you note.
So I am reasonably optimistic that one can have a reasoned debate, as virtually all the recent commentary has demonstrated.
Andrew, I was 100% with you, until the last sentence but I'm a glass half empty kind of guy. I'm not at all optimistic a reasoned debate is likely, at least in the political sphere. I hope you are right.
Bruce I tend to agree with you and I’m a glass half full type. As I was reading Jen’s (strange, but nice how we readers refer to the Editors by their first name, a nice familiarity) comments. The Conservatives, or anyone else for that matter, could start a reasonable dialogue on immigration,but I suspect it would be a matter of seconds before the Trudeau Liberals dragged it down into the muck.
The conversation should not be a binary discussion on Yes Immigration vs. No Immigration, rather it should be ‘how much immigration’ and under what conditions.
Here on Prince Edward Island many locals are starting to resent immigrants because of the housing shortage. If concrete measures are not started immediately, then we will have full blown racism break out here. And that would be simply sad. Our social services are unable to keep up.
Eric, I live in Calgary which is, of course in Alberta.
My daughter has a friend, whose family had a vacation property in southeastern BC. As a result, my daughter was fortunate to spend a fair bit of time in that area and got to know many local kids her own age (about 13 - 17 she was). I was told that the local kids (and their parents) frequently referred to the Albertans as "Albortions" because the housing costs had so increased that many of the local folk were priced out and had to leave in order to have families, greater demands for services that made things harder for locals, more traffic in small towns, etc., etc.
My point is that resentment on higher costs, etc. is pretty much always allocated to "the other" whether that other is truly foreign or is "locally foreign" or is of the same skin hue or otherwise. This is a situation that is always with us and is always something that we must address properly.
Many of those people in the Kootenays are moving to Calgary now. That is how insane housing prices have risen in places like the Columbia Valley (Invermere), Kootenay Lake and Rossland
When people say that "Canada is becoming a third world country", they were either joking or thought to be delusional. But now Canada is facing a problem that's literally associated with third world countries issue.
It might be that I am clinging to an inherent optimism from growing up in this absolute fluke of a place where this was true for so much of my life. Nevertheless, more than I have faith in the Conservatives to pull any of this off, specifically, I have faith that while our consensus on immigration levels is absolutely waning - I still don't believe that there is enough animosity among the average Canadian towards immigrants themselves that going nativist would be a winning Conservative strategy. I feel like they simply wouldn't have the support for this.
Or maybe, I just hope.
Hope is always acceptable!
Jen, an interesting take on the issue but let's look at a couple of your points; brushing off Alberta's concerns about high immigration with a "fine whatever" is a bit dismissive don't you think? How much does Alberta contribute to the economy and government pockets that keep this country going but just dismiss them. Second, Ontario is the recipient of immigrants in very high numbers - why is beyond me what with the costs and all but if Ontario is turning then there is an issue!
A woman who used to work with me who had immigrated from Russia with her family told me that she moved to small city Saskatchewan in able to improve her English and to avoid living in a Russian speaking country in a country in Toronto. It was her opinion that - in the 80's - Canada was allowing too many immigrants to live in enclaves where they never had to learn English or French and could live in their own language adn be served in their own language. She summed it up as 'Canada is crazy to allow this!' So what has changed? Nothing, it has gotten worse.
You didn't mention the fact that we have doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, and so forth who were trained in their home countries but can't get their credentials recognized in Canada. The woman above was a doctor, her husband was an engineer but worked as a carpenter here. How is it that we can't have a doctor from India have credentials recognized after a short period of time integrating and then turn him/her lose to practice? Why is there an Indian trained lawyer/accountant working as a greeter in a large chain store because we don't accept his credentials - last I knew one plus one equaled two all over the world except in Canada where it is a colonial construct.
If you think that multi generationla Canadians are going to benefit from high housing prices and so forth you best think again. Our federal government is looking at taxing the sale of a principal residence just like it is wanting to tax an under-utilized housing unit. Canadians are looking at reduced productivity, reduced GDP numbers, reduced foreign investment and increased taxes for the foreseeable future. You also need to think that increased numbers of workers are going to drive down real wages and productivity - if the employee can't speak english or french how will he/she end up with a good job?
I'm not against immigration but we need to get a handle on how we make the process work. Simply opening the flood gates with no plan is a plan of failure. With no requirement to become 'Canadian' then we end up with the issues we see played out on the streets today - support for terrorists. That support is not just the shouts or 'river to sea' but the machine gun secals on cars in Regina and other cities, sticker of terrorist leaders on vehicles and so forth.
One thing you can say is that JT is going to claim that a CPC government will take us all back to the 50's. In a lot of ways that may not be a bad thing - Canada built large projects, had a plan and goals, expected immigrants to integrate and immigrants gladly integrated to belong to Canada and to call themselves Canadian adn they knew that if they worked hard they would succeed and that their kids would do even better. Now, I'm not at all sure that any of that is the case in the Canada outside my window.
From a purely strategic political point of view, Alberta's concerns about immigration can be dismissed because Alberta doesn't represent any possible seat gains for the Conservatives. This is emphatically not the case in Ontario or Atlantic Canada. JG
That is true Jen but a simple dismissal without an explanation is indicativve of an 'eastern elite's attitude to the west. Just so you know, I was born and raised under hte big blue machine in Ontario (Toronto - centre of the know universe) and moved to the prairies complete with new certificate and long hair just when Trudeau the Senior was implementing his national energy program - you can guess how popular I was! but you couldn't pay me enough to move back to Toronto now!
Jen Gerson: Eastern Elitist.
Oh, so you are trying to claim her as your own, now!
Join the winning team.
Oh, so you are moving to Alberta now?
Why does Substack not provide a laugh button? A simple Heart does not make the grade here.
John B must be new.
John, I am an Albertan and Jen is an Albertan.
When I read her dismissal of Alberta's thoughts I was amused as I took her writing in that fashion as her assuming the persona of a "typical" Central Canadian who knows, just KNOWS, I tell you, that we Albertans are all redneck racists. Of course, such an attitude says ever so much more about that stereotypical Central Canadian than it does about us.
In any event, I was not offended by Jen's writing in that particular spot. Come to think of it, after reading Jen's work for quite a number of years, she has not yet offended me. But there is always something to strive for, Jen!
With respect to immigrants who can't work in their profession because their credentials aren't recognized, I think we need to put a lot of the onus (and blame) on immigration officials who're admitting applications on the basis of credentials that aren't recognized in Canada. If we want to bring in more foreign-trained doctors, governments need to fund more residencies to orient them to Canadian medical practice. If we want broader recognition of foreign engineering credentials, we need the federal government to work with other countries to assess and validate those credentials. Consider this scenario: you're a registrar with a professional engineering association and you have an application from somebody with an engineering degree from a school in China that you've never heard of. Language is an impediment in reaching out to them, but you can overcome that with a translator. How do you figure out if the person you're talking to is legitimate? How do you figure out if the school is legitimate when there's several thousand schools offering engineering in China? How do you figure out if the education is comparable to accredited Canadian schools? And this is all to process 1 application.
There you said it: "we need to get a handle on how we make the process work."
I'd like to see some ideas about how to get municipalities more involved in addressing all of these challenges. John's point about the Russian immigrant not wanting to be in an "urban enclave" rings true, also the barriers to getting credentials for doctors and other professionals. This seems to me like the low hanging fruit.
Please, please please...
Poilievre talks with all Canadians in his myriad of youtube vids, plenty of cultures, and his repsectful holiday greetings are refreshing compared to leftist pandering. Watch and see his dedication to the Canada that Liberals destroyed.
I actually think Pierre more than many of them is capable of striking balance on this issue because of his wife. Finding the comm ability to not let it splinter the conservatives though - that is another story. Fingers crossed he can manage it.
Jen, great article. Very good points. However, with respect to your comment "the odious debates about illegal and uncontrolled immigration south of the border. (The fact that we don't have a lot of illegal or uncontrolled immigration owing to our geography has always allowed us to be unduly smug on the issue.) " The debate may not seem so odious if you lived on the US/Mexico border and paid taxes there. Consider the uproar in Canada over Roxham Road - the numbers were miniscule compared to what happens every day in the US. I believe that the residents of the US that live on the US/Mexico border have a valid complaint.
This was rather my point. JG
Great article this morning.
A few observations:
- The Liberals are slyly telegraphing that immigration may be exacerbating the housing crisis, but also slyly playing a blame game. Unrepentant about their own ludicrous immigration targets for the housing crisis, numerous government officials are eyeing the temporary foreign workers and international students and targeting them for a huge reduction in numbers. Full speed ahead on their own territory though.
- We need to build a lot of housing both as rentals and single family dwellings. Over time, this might bring down the median price point of all housing but don’t bet on it. If the needs are constrained by a lack of skilled tradesmen and building materials then the inflationary pressures will continue to push up costs. Also, how many lenders will be happy to see their housing portfolios decline in value over the next 20 years? Everyone hates inflation, but deflation is a concern too.
- The economic outlook is so grim for anyone under the age of 30, how can we expect them to have children that will sustain our population? What a sad mess. Having to open floodgates for immigrants because our young people can’t have affordable housing and decent healthcare to sustain a growing family. Which reminds me, everything is local but access to obstetrical care in my sightline is limited. The days of delivering babies in a rural hospital setting is as outdated as Bonanza reruns.
- The Conservatives may not have the will or the tools to solve some of these challenges, but the opportunity is there to try. Canadians who are paying attention know that our country is up to its neck in trouble and some determination and grit to face the backlash from some corners will be rewarded.
Darcy, you write in part, "Over time, this might bring down the median price point of all housing ..."
Respectfully, I must disagree. Emphatically. Again, respectfully.
I ask that anyone with a mortgage or anyone with a bank account in Canada answer me this: Do you support a policy where house prices across the country drop, say, twenty per cent so that banks find themselves with mortgages that are substantially higher than the value of the property such that when the banks repossess they have massive losses and are then in danger of not having adequate capital to meet their liabilities to depositors and others?
My point, ultimately, is that the financial system that our "wonderful" government has in place will not allow housing prices to drop precipitously. Holding steady (at current very high levels) is the most that we can realistically hope for.
Homeowners who can't afford their mortgages will sell at a loss to new buyers who can afford the now reduced payments. The banks should have sufficient capital reserves to take 20% right downs on their mortgage portfolios. To those who overpaid or who hold share in the banks: too bad, so sad. Buyer's remorse is not a government problem.
Doug, I agree that home owners would be forced to sell at a loss; that we can agree on.
Now, a couple of disagreements. You say that banks can afford 20% write downs on their mortgage portfolios. Nope, not at all. You can look at bank balance sheets and say that they have the capital but if you decimated, say, fifty per cent of mortgages with twenty per cent write downs / write offs (i.e. 10 per cent on the over all portfolio), the Canadian banks would survive. But barely. Their stock prices would collapse, which would decimate all sorts of pension plans, RRSPs and so forth.
Then, about the new buyers? If the banks just lost 10% on their whole mortgage books do you think that they would finance any new mortgages without, oh, forty per cent down? And then, if people are losing houses big time, will there be many buyers. Speculators? Sure? Long term buyers? Maybe only a very few.
So, yes, too bad, so sad and so forth but please realize that the overall effects of your "solution" will affect the entire economy and bankrupt ever so many home owners. You are right that this is not a problem that the government should fix - Damn it! Stay out of this government! - but the government should not make it much worse by encouraging deflation in housing values.
Further, the Canadian governments (plural) have been allowing far, far too much of our wealth to be concentrated in real estate generally and housing specifically. In turn, that means that a large part of the economy is tied to construction, development, etc. All of that would collapse under your "solution" and about a million people would be thrown out of work.
I therefore reluctantly say that the best that we can hope for is to have the current valuations remain; that is, no increases but no substantive decreases.
Damned incompetent government!
Canada experienced a huge housing bust in the early 80s with many households losing all off their home equity and yet somehow life went on. The housing bust in the early 90s was less severe but still ended up with many selling at substantial losses. What makes current homeowners so entitled to risk free capital appreciation?
The same goes for investors holding bank shares. Companies like Nortel and RIM wiped out many a Canadian RRSP and the country still stands. Why are shareholders of the big banks so exceptional that they should be spared from the risks inherent to equity markets?
A real estate bust would derisk the mortgage market and put downwards pressure on downpayments. The rational of a downpayment is to protect the mortgage holder from reasonable downside risk in asset valuation. For example, under 20% downpayment, the asset could decline 20% before the mortgage holder suffers any loss. An asset that has already declined would have less risk of further decline and would command less of a margin against valuation risk. The problem in Canada is that downpayments should have been much higher over the past 10 years or so. Even more concerning are downpayments provided by family members using HELOCs etc., which basically squares the risk exposure to the real estate market. Regulators should have not allowed credit against existing real estate loans to serve as downpayments for additional real estate loans.
Fiinally, delaying revaluation of Canadian real estate only prolongs economic stagnation. The massive capital misallocation towards real estate (and government services) has starved the productive aspects of the economy from investment. Real estate appreciation does nothing to improve productivity. Canada is in its current malaise largely due to low business investment. Ripping off the bandaide would provide a path forward for better capital allocation and avoid a multi-decade Japan like stagnation.
Doug, I absolutely agree with much of what you say. Much but not all.
However ...
Yes, we did have housing contractions in the 80s and 90s. And, yes, there was some - some! - reduction in housing prices before they started rising once more. The suggestion herein, however, was that housing prices generally should decline dramatically to make housing more affordable for many in our society. I truly do sympathize with those who cannot buy a house; indeed, I am working to assist one of my adult children and her family in that respect - it's not easy for anyone.
The housing "busts" of the 80s (I live and lived in Alberta in the 80s so, believe me, I do know that time and what it did for housing) and the 90s, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver saw a lot of people lose their houses and in some cases go bankrupt. Clearly, people are taking a chance when they invest in anything, including in houses. The difficulty is that a general and permanent decline in the value of housing would have massive effects across the economy.
If you think banks can afford to take haircuts of twenty per cent on their mortgage portfolios, yes, they can, but that would hamper their activities throughout the economy. As for bank shareholders, again, yes, they took the risk but think of the number of pension plans that hold bank shares, including CPP. Do you want to risk people not having retirement income?
You say that a real estate bust would cause down payments to decrease. I argue the opposite. If the bank just took a bath on a lot of home mortgages, they would either steer completely away from funding new mortgages or would require much higher down payments.
You can argue that regulators "should" or "should not" but that is not the situation in which we currently live
I absolutely agree that Canadian real estate investment is much too high as a proportion of the overall economy but I think that a massive revaluation would lead to tremendous dislocation. If you think food banks are busy now, just wait until a lot of people lose their homes and cannot find an adequate new place to live.
As for Canada's low rate of business investment, I would argue that a lot of that is simply that the cost of doing business in Canada is far too great, what with regulatory delays and danger of denial in getting projects underway, very greatly uncompetitive taxes, etc., etc. Simply put, the system makes the likelihood of any substantial investment generating adequate returns highly unlikely so many businesses are simply not risking capital.
Yup, ripping off the band aid would allow a better allocation of capital. Of course, the patient would have to live in order enjoy that better allocation and I contend that many, many patients would not survive to see the new nirvana that you and I foresee as a consequence of better allocation of capital.
All that is to say that I believe that, given the consequences of a dramatic decline in values, the best we can hope for is stasis at current levels but better allocations in the future due to better policies. Fair? Not at all. But more fair than a dramatic drop in values.
I'm not saying that the GoC and BoC should engineer a housing crash. More that they should not take steps to prevent a housing crash. The GoC has already gone too far by allowing extended amortizations and waiving the stress test on renewals.
The potential effect on retirement income is not a concern. Most soon to be retirees would have purchased homes and banks shares many years ago and would likely still enjoy huge gains even after 20-30% haircuts. If some have to work an extra few years, so be it.
I strongly agree that Canada needs to remove barriers to business investment, mostly protection of the telecom, airline, dairy, poultry and and media industries. Again that will turn many government designated winners into market determined losers. Also again, I couldn't care less of the impacts as the shareholders and employees have enjoyed decades of above market incomes.
I lived through the AB housing bust of the early 80s, although I was very young. I remember playing in the overgrown yards and peering in the windows of abandoned houses. While lots of people moved away, life went on. My parents had purchased a house in 1980 and sold it in 1995 for 30% less. It didn't recover its value until the early 2000s. I am somewhat of a market fundamentalist due to experiences from the 80s and 90s. Government actions to resist market forces are incredibly expensive and prone to failure over the longer term.
Good points.
In my experience, whenever there is a softening of housing prices, it is either a reflection of interest rates that has pushed too much stock onto the market versus demand and affordability or due to a deep recession that makes borrowing difficult due to shaky labour markets.
You are right. A serious downturn in values is a bankers nightmare. But if these inflated valuations are here to stay, the prospects of young people with little equity ever owning a home is a sad reality.
I agree that if house prices stay at current levels "...the prospects of young people with little equity ever owning a home is a sad reality." The alternative is to have house prices drop and cause their parents to lose their houses because their equity is liquidated.
The fact is that we will as a country will have to work with the situation as it is now; we cannot turn back the clock. That means that the whole country will have to find ways to assist the "next" generation [I use quotes on "next" because is it the actual next generation, the subsequent one, then the one following, etc.? I submit that it is all of them.]
I have to point out that I cannot see any over arching government policy that will make this palatable so it will be up to each family to do this. Not all families have the capacity and not all families have adult children who are interested, in the same locale, etc.
In my family, my adult son and his wife both have very good jobs and both (as near as I can tell) earn substantially more than I ever did (I'm retired). They have a house that they can afford and my wife and I don't need to worry about them or their children (well, at least not economically). My adult daughter and her husband and our granddaughter rent a house where the rent will very, very likely skyrocket (already on the highish side) on renewal at mid-year; also, the house is (very polite here) not at all a prize and they will never be able to own a house, any house.
My wife and I are in our seventies and nearing our own end if you believe demographers. Therefore, what we are doing is renovating our house and we will move into a new apartment in the basement and "the kids" will move into our top two floors. Intergenerational housing where they will end up owning. Of course, this doesn't work for all; in fact it wouldn't work for many.
The point, however, is that we in the older generation, the incredibly fortunate generation, must find creative ways to assist our kids, grandkids, etc. After all it was our generation that elected and re-elected and re-re-elected the stupid face-coloring asshole who now lives in the Cottage. [It wasn't me who elected him!] The fact is that we allowed this group of weasels, nay a sneak of weasels [a wonderful plural form to describe weasels of the political variety that I found on another blog - the phrase is - alas - not my coinage.]
We as a generational group are responsible for this disaster that we currently have and it is our offspring that are suffering most. It is therefore the personal - note: PERSONAL - responsibility of all members of my generation to try to ameliorate these problems as much as possible.
Recent tributes to Ed Broadbent reminded me of a significant shift that has taken place in political outlook. Once upon a time political leaders put forward their ideas of what would work to make the country/world a better place and folks debated them, picked one and voted for their guy. How long has it been now that the main, probably the only, objective is to WIN? Period, full stop.
Say whatever it takes; stir up whatever emotion will work for you and beat it to death until the electorate gets angry enough, or hates the other guy so intensely that they'll vote for you. Then muck around with the power you've "earned" until the tide shifts again and around we go again.
Makes me sad.
I think the notion of a consensus at the parliament level on this topic very important. Debating the number of immigrants is not racist or xenophobic, it is an operational issue as to how Canada accommodates the numbers in all the very obvious ways - healthcare, housing, work, etc.
The question for PP and the Tories in general is how prepared are they to work in consensus-oriented fashion? I am not confident that he and they are as, per Jen's observation, the Prime Directive is 'own-the-Libs' at all costs. Frankly, JT has so damaged the overall Liberal brand that I believe that a grown up conversation on this issue won't deliver the next election to them no matter what the outcome (that is, a sensible, practical, and doable policy fair to the immigrants and to the country).
One aspect doesn't get much attention and that is the percentage of the new arrivals that are students. As we all know, students pay three to four times what domestic students pay and so the universities are incented to pull in as many as possible in order to square their books. If numbers are driven down with a consensus-oriented immigration policy, then the provinces, God help us, are going to have find the funds to make up the difference. Underinvestment in the universities has been a decades long problem which has been papered over with foreign student revenues. Perhaps it is time to correct this matter. (Also, some percentage of students go home after completing their studies; another percentage never goes to school and simply disappears into the general population - not sure how they administratively do this long-term, but apparently it is an issue.)