New Canadians don’t deserve to be a scapegoat

Many people immigrate to Canada every single day. I myself moved to Canada just over ten years ago, having been born and raised in the UK. It was a big move! I didn’t know what to expect or what I was getting in to. There was no job lined up, and I didn’t have all that much money set aside either. I didn’t really know anyone in Canada and I wasn’t familiar with the area I was moving to. So why would anyone do it? Well, in my case, it was for my family. For others, it’s for the sake of education, for progressing their career or even to escape terrible conflicts. Whatever their reason, Canada welcomes around half a million immigrants every year. These New Canadians are for the most part welcomed with open arms – however recently I’ve felt that these they’re being used as a bit of a scapegoat.

Canada is a nation of immigrants

The vast majority of Canadians can trace their roots to other nations. The lands which we now call Canada belonged to various indigenous groups long before others tried to lay claim to them. Since Confederation (the birth of modern Canada) in 1867, Stats Canada estimates that around 17 million people have immigrated to this country. You could therefore argue that New Canadians have been shaping the country for decades! Today it’s estimated that around 20% of the Canadian population carries Permanent Residence status. These immigrants hail from all corners of the globe, with approximately 10% hailing from India, 5% from the UK and 3% from the United States.

Today Canada offers a number of routes to immigrate to Canada either permanently or temporarily. Permanent routes are largely focussed around family reunification or economic development. Temporary routes often focus on education or again, economic development.

Coming to Canada as an immigrant isn’t always as easy as people might think it is. One of the more well known immigration pathways is the Temporary Foreign Worker program. The TFWP was initially established with the aim of allowing employers to hire foreign nationals to fill temporary labour gaps. Typically employers have to complete a Labour Market Impact Assessment first. This is to prove that the role cannot be filled by a Canadian worker and, assuming they can’t, they may be eligible to hire a TFW for a period of up to one year. The program has been criticized by some as making it more difficult for young Canadians to find employment. People don’t often consider that it isn’t necessarily easy on the foreign workers either – the program was accused of “fostering conditions akin to contemporary slavery” in a recent UN report.

The route I personally took when I came to Canada was Family Sponsorship – where my existing relationship with my now-wife formed the basis of my immigration claim. The application involved copious amounts of paperwork, literal boxes of evidence to prove our relationship and a few thousand dollars for the application. It took multiple years to be approved during which time I was fortunately able to work and be in Canada with my family. Many applicants aren’t as fortunate and instead have to remain in their country of origin separated from loved ones while their applications are processed.

New Canadians contribute greatly to Canada

While there are varied feelings on the necessity of immigration, the fact is that New Canadians play a vital role in the future of the country.

They fill labour shortages – supporting Canadian businesses (this is especially true in the farming, hospitality and healthcare industries). They also pay taxes, helping to fund our social security and safety nets. They make up a staggering 25% of our healthcare workers – with one in four nurses being an immigrant who has chosen to use their new life in Canada to serve others. They bring new cultural experiences to Canada – along with new foods, perspectives, languages and traditions. Many of Canada’s favourite traditions have likely been influenced by these international arrivals.

New Canadians also contribute in an important way to population growth. Canada has seen a significant decline in it’s birth rate over the past few years with the second lowest fertility rate in the G7. “Replacement levels”of fertility (i.e. the number of births required to maintain the population size) require a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman. In Canada, that average is 1.26. In fact, most of Canada’s recent population growth is now largely due to immigration and not new births. Between 2022-23, 1.1 million new immigrants came to Canada with only 351,000 births during the same period.

Canada is also faced with a rapidly growing aging population. In 2010, there were 1.3 million people aged 80 or older. In 2024, that number is 1.9 million. That’s a huge amount of seniors who each have varied needs that place a strain on the healthcare and social care systems. Systems that, as mentioned above, rely heavily on an immigrant workforce to operate. As the population ages, they also age out of the workforce leaving gaps in the employment market that have to be filled one way or another.

The Blame Game

When I say that I feel New Canadians are becoming a scapegoat, I’m thinking about the way in which they often get blamed for societal issues.

It’s easy to understand the frustrations that are being felt by many Canadians right now. It’s also important to aim that frustration in the right direction. We’re dealing with economic hardships, rising costs of living, a breakdown in our healthcare systems and a housing crisis all at the same time. The fact is, however, that immigration alone isn’t to blame. Statements such as “the hospitals are overwhelmed due to the level of immigration” are simply inaccurate.

Decades of poor policy decisions and a shameful underinvestment in our critical services has created a situation where population growth is now outpacing the systems we have in place to support it. That would be true whether we saw growth from immigration or simply from normal birth rates. Because yes, to a degree population growth is a factor – because we failed to prepare for it. With a rapidly aging population a lot of the strain our healthcare system is currently under would likely be the same regardless of population growth. In fact, it’s probably thanks to the immigrant workforce that the healthcare system functions at all at this point.

I personally find it quite frustrating to be part of the group considered “the problem”. I’ve worked hard since landing in Canada and have certainly contributed my fair share of taxes. Heck, I even serve my local community in a healthcare role. I, and many others, actively chose to contribute to this country while being self sufficient.

Recently there’s been a fair amount of talk on the political side of things regarding immigration. The Liberal government has announced a reduction in immigration targets to allow the housing market to stabilize somewhat and seen the leader of the Conservative party Pierre Poilievre blame current immigration levels for ruining “the multigenerational consensus that bringing more people to live here is a good thing”. What I haven’t heard from him is an explanation of what the previous Conservative federal government of 2008-2015 did to help prepare the nation for population growth (not that I think the Liberals have achieved much in that regard either). Fact is, immigration rates have been slowly creeping up under successive governments for quite a while. I would urge anyone considering voting for one party over another based on “cutting immigration” to also consider those same parties plans to invest in the future of this country.

Future planning is more important than reducing immigration

In conclusion, I believe that with immigration comes many benefits. It fills gaps in our labour market, it helps to staff our hospitals and it benefits our economy. That’s to say nothing of the cultural contributions that immigrants make in our communities. Unfortunately, it’s also an easy target when it comes to pointing blame for societal and political issues. The real answer, as it often proves to be, is political. The way forward lies in sitting down and negotiating investments in this countries future instead of simply saying “less immigration, less population growth”. Take healthcare for example – emergency room waiting times are through the roof – it’s not because we have a larger population in general – it’s because beds on inpatient units are full of patients who should already be in nursing homes. The solution? More nursing homes should have been built in previous decades – they weren’t so the next best time to build them is now.

It is clear that for Canada to continue growing and prospering we’ll need to maintain some level of immigration while finding ways to develop the nations supporting industries and support systems. I would strongly encourage anyone concerned about immigration to consider the various political parties plans for future investment in those sectors when voting in the next election.

Regardless, I hope that we’ll continue to welcome immigrants into this country with open arms and receptive minds. New Canadians are Canadian and we’re all playing for the same team.