The federal government’s recent decision to reduce Canada’s permanent resident intake by 21 per cent over the next three years, coupled with more stringent limits on temporary migration, has stirred intense public debate.

Many view this move as a solution to Canada’s economic, productivity, housing, and cost-of-living challenges. This is not the case. If anything, this policy move is actually a distraction that ignores the underlying causes of these challenges and diverts attention away from the real solutions that must be addressed.

Canada’s future depends on an immigration policy that is robust, well-resourced, and inclusive. Simply slashing immigration levels is self-defeating and undermines the benefits that immigration brings to this country. It ignores the demographic realities facing Canada’s population trend, as well as the opportunities that come with immigration helping a nation achieve its economic potential.

One of the most important factors driving Canada’s economic challenges is a failure to properly integrate skilled immigrants into the workforce. When newcomers to Canada encounter barriers which limit their ability to work in their areas of specialization, the immigrants lose, but so too does the broader economy. It undermines Canadian productivity and prosperity and has negative social effects.

Over a quarter of immigrants with foreign advanced degrees are underutilized. So too are a full 10 per cent of Canadian-born workers. This underutilization is concentrated in high-demand sectors like health care and education – the exact areas where we need more skilled workers.

The opportunity is there for government to create more inclusive pathways and remove barriers for all workers, including new immigrants, to practice their trades.

Simply reducing immigration will not fix Canada’s workforce pressures, but it will certainly exacerbate them. Just as damaging, it gives a false sense that the government has provided a solution, when it has not.

Emigration is the real loss

The underlying causes of Canada’s economic challenges have not gone away. For example, while much debate focuses on immigration, there must be more attention paid to emigration – those people who leave Canada after arriving, often because the challenges have become too great to bear. They become our lost resources.

According to The Newcomer Perspective report, 30 per cent of “economic class newcomers” — people selected for their skills and ability to contribute to Canada’s economy — say they are likely to leave Canada within two years of arrival. The top three reasons are housing costs, low-income job opportunities, and general concerns about the Canadian economy.

One major challenge facing immigrants is reflected in the fact that the unemployment rate among newcomers has reached 11.7 per cent this year. That’s double the 5.7 per cent rate for everyone else.

Another study released this year, by Statistics Canada, found that more than 15 per cent of immigrants leave Canada within 20 years of landing. Perhaps most jarring, it found that, since 2001, the proportion of permanent residents choosing to become citizens has plummeted by 40 per cent.

These alarming statistics and their underlying causes must be addressed. When highly skilled immigrants leave, Canada loses a valuable talent pool for addressing critical workforce shortages, particularly in sectors like health care.

A February 2024 report from the OurCare Initiative — a national project studying the future of primary health care — found that 6.5 million Canadians, about 22 per cent of the adult population, do not have a family doctor.

In 2022, The State of the Health Workforce in Canada, a report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, indicated Canada already has a national shortage of 60,000 registered nurses. It anticipates shortages of 78,000 doctors by 2031 and 117,600 nurses by 2030.

Better governance needed to steer Canada’s migration policies

Canada’s immigration policy is at a crossroads

Instead of placing the blame for our health care crisis (and every other crisis) on immigrants, we should convert this global talent into part of our solution. Immigrants, many of whom arrive with valuable health care skills, have the potential to alleviate our shortages if given the opportunity to integrate into the workforce. This is true in other sectors as well.

Reducing immigration levels as a response to our overwhelmed government service systems not only diminishes newcomers’ contributions to our economy, it distracts from the intricate challenges we face. Blaming immigrants for broader systemic failures shifts the focus away from underlying issues that require attention and action. This diversion prevents policy makers from addressing what is actually undermining Canada’s economic efficiency.

The economic case is clear. Newcomers bring diverse perspectives which fuel creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. They help drive Canada’s prosperity by making disproportionate contributions to key sectors:

• Immigrants account for 32 per cent of all Canadian business owners.
• Canada has more than 600,000 self-employed immigrants, more than 260,000 of whom have hired paid employees.
• Nearly a quarter of all small businesses have been founded by immigrants.
• Immigrants account for a quarter of Canada’s health care workers.
• In the science and technology sector, immigrants comprise 34 per cent of the workforce, representing 40 per cent of the engineering jobs and more than half of all chemists.
• Finally, immigrants’ contribution to the food and beverage sector is massive, making up more than half (53 per cent) of all business owners with paid staff.

Integrating and retaining this rich stream of incoming talents requires a holistic approach for newcomers that includes enhanced settlement services, targeted employment and skills development, training, and foreign credential recognition programs.

Canada is already positioned to address its productivity challenges and labour shortages. A big part of that solution is supporting the huge asset that is flowing to our doors from around the world, and seizing the opportunity to leverage and channel the rich resource of our newcomers.