Geoff Russ: The data is in — fewer newcomers in Canada means lower rent

National Post

3 days ago

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The supposed negligible impact on affordability was one of many myths used by the Trudeau government and its supporters to justify its immigration policy. Another myth was that mass immigration would 'raise living standards for all Canadians,' as stated by Century Initiative co-founder Mark Wiseman in 2016.
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On July 7, the Conference Board of Canada released a report that found the slowing rates of immigration could help accelerate wage growth across the country, as businesses are forced to compete for labour. It has been a long time since blue-collar Canadian workers were treated as valuable.
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Simply put, many business owners hire newcomers for low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Michael Bonner, who worked as a policy advisor in the Harper government and later as Director of Policy for the Government of Ontario, has written that, 'wages and prices are kept artificially low, and Canadians — usually young people — are priced out.'
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The market economy is the greatest engine for creating prosperity. However, business owners break the social contract when they deliberately exploit immigration to suppress wage growth.
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Right now, young Canadians are feeling the worst effects of the government's policies. The rate of youth unemployment stood at 8.2 at per cent at the beginning of 2020, but now it has risen to an alarming 11.2 per cent nationwide for those aged 15 to 24.
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University graduates, born and raised in Canada, are spending their dwindling summers desperately churning out resumes in the hopes they can secure any meaningful employment before returning to school. The fortunate among them receive a polite rejection, and many have been forced to compete with temporary workers (TFWs) for low-skilled, minimum-wage jobs.
Needless to say, Canada's standard of living has not improved. In fact, it has steadily fallen since 2019.
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Another myth of modern immigration policy is the canard that Canadians will not work the same jobs as foreign workers. This is true in some sectors, such as manual agricultural labour, but these are the exceptions.
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Canada may have a low birth rate, but young people did not suddenly disappear between 2019 and today. When nobody else is available, native-born citizens are perfectly capable of taking these allegedly undesirable jobs.
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Last year in the Globe and Mail, Christopher Worswick, an economist at Carleton University, wrote that the TFW program should be abolished completely. He outlined how many companies deliberately keep wages low and avoid improving working conditions, adding that, as foreign workers often cannot legally switch employers.
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This system of mass, low-skilled immigration is cruel and disillusioning for all. Under the Trudeau model, per-person GDP growth languished below half a per cent annually. It was hardly worth the cost.
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