The Peterborough Examiner e-edition

New immigration targets unrealistic

KEVIN ELSON REACH PETERBOROUGH WRITER KEVIN ELSON AT KEVINELSON1122@GMAIL.COM.

The federal government recently announced new immigration targets for the next three years. If all goes to plan, Canada will become home to 465,000 additional permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025.

To tackle our skilled labour shortage, a declining fertility rate, and to combat the impacts of our aging population, Canada has increasingly relied on immigration over the years to not only maintain our population but foster growth.

Now, by no means am I against reasonable levels of immigration, but there is no denying that there are negative impacts that come with the potential benefits. For instance, the biggest question to come forward during a housing crisis is where exactly are new Canadians supposed to live?

Premier Doug Ford has suggested these immigration targets will increase the strain on an already dire housing situation. In a controversial move, the Ford government is proposing to remove 3,000 hectares of land from the environmentally protected Greenbelt in favour of development while adding 3,800 hectares somewhere else.

I don’t agree with Ford’s approach, but to fathom such a historically large increase to our immigration targets, it is interesting to put things into perspective.

Adding 1.45 million people to our population would theoretically require constructing an additional 17 cities the size of Peterborough across Canada to provide the adequate housing, amenities and services new Canadians will require. That would amount to nearly 600,000 new homes, 17 hospitals, 50 fire stations and around 500 schools.

Of course, it is not all that simple. We will not be building entirely new cities. However, logically, something will have to give. Either we will lose valuable green space through sprawl, or we will have to contend with significant infill within established urban centres.

Although the primary focus of immigration has revolved around economic immigrants, including skilled labourers in sectors such as health care, manufacturing and construction, there are other issues that still need to be addressed when it comes to some regulated professions.

In 2016, only 38 per cent of university-educated immigrants found employment in a job that required a university degree compared to 60 per cent for Canadian-born workers. It is one thing to bring more doctors, nurses and tradespeople to Canada but if they cannot find work in the field they are trained for we will not be relieving labour shortages.

There are also around one million Canadians who are unemployed while one million jobs remain vacant. The issue is certainly not a lack of people in Canada, but a lack of focused effort toward providing the required education, certification and training to those who could fill in the gaps.

The real underlying issue when it comes to our population woes is our historically low fertility rate. If the affordability crisis and overall quality of life issues were addressed, perhaps our fertility rate would improve, reducing the need for drastic immigration surges.

Maybe our focus should not be on increasing our population at all costs, but instead on improving the quality of life in Canada as a whole so that those who are already here and those who will one day come can live a prosperous life.

We are trying to solve the wrong problems with unsustainable solutions while condemning more people to living a life of hardship in Canada. We must find a way to relieve some of the pressures on our housing and health-care sectors beyond unsustainable immigration targets.

Further, we cannot continue to pillage skilled labourers from around the world from regions that need them just as much as we do. The idea that people are a commodity whose existence is merely to increase production, consumption and taxation is truly dystopian.

OPINION

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2022-11-25T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-25T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://thepeterboroughexaminer.pressreader.com/article/281582359639076

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