Juno News - How to FIX Canada’s broken immigration system

00:00:00.160 Canada's immigration system is completely broken. It doesn't need tweaks or reforms,

00:00:05.200 it needs a total overhaul. Today we're going to have an in-depth conversation with an expert who

00:00:10.320 really knows and has really thought about this issue, and we're going to talk about how to

00:00:13.840 completely change and fix our broken immigration system. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The 0.55

00:00:18.400 Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. So we have

00:00:36.640 been talking about immigration recently on the show. We've been breaking down all of the numbers,

00:00:41.200 which I find truly shocking how much our immigration system has grown, how many people we are admitting 1.00

00:00:47.760 every year into this country, how many illegal immigrants enter the country every year and end

00:00:51.520 up making asylum claims. The entire situation is completely out of control. There's no other way 1.00

00:00:57.280 to put it. I am joined today by a friend of mine, Aaron Woodrick. He is the Domestic Policy Director

00:01:03.840 over at the McDonnell Laurier Institute. He was previously with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,

00:01:08.880 that's how I know him. We worked together shortly over there, and Aaron has also practiced law in

00:01:14.240 Kitchener. He's been a corporate lawyer in London, Hong Kong and Dubai. And so basically the story is

00:01:20.560 that Aaron and I were recently on a panel together and we were talking about immigration, but there's

00:01:25.920 just so many issues when it comes to it. We had so many different kind of areas we want to talk about.

00:01:32.080 And then the panel that we did ended up being quite short. It was a great panel, great panel discussion

00:01:36.320 hosted by Colin Craig over at Second Street. But we felt that there was so much more of a need to

00:01:42.000 get into these issues more in depth, discuss them just at a deeper level. And so I invited

00:01:48.880 Aaron to come on to the podcast and discuss them. So Aaron, welcome to the show and thank you so much

00:01:54.960 for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me, Candice. Great to have a chance to talk about these,

00:01:59.200 this important issue in a little more depth. Exactly. Yeah, I thought the panel that we did was

00:02:04.320 fun, but it was like, you know, five minutes to talk about like the biggest, most important issue and

00:02:08.240 try to fix it. You know, it's like, okay, we need to spend a bit more time here. So you had a piece

00:02:12.320 over in the, on the McDonnell Laurier Institute website saying it's time for a grownup conversation

00:02:18.640 on immigration that was back in January. And if I could just sort of give a little overview,

00:02:23.920 you basically say that the challenges associated with immigration are incredibly different than they

00:02:28.160 were 50 or a hundred years ago. And that politicians, policymakers just haven't really been

00:02:33.600 willing to update the conversation on immigration. You talk about the challenges broadly being in three

00:02:40.560 categories, economic impact, infrastructure capacity, and cultural friction. So maybe we can

00:02:45.840 just go through each of those right now, or do you want to, do you want to give a little overview of what

00:02:50.000 your, what your thoughts are and what you wrote, or do you want to get right into the economic impact?

00:02:54.160 Yeah. I mean, the first thing I just wanted to say is the part of the reason I wrote this is I think

00:02:58.080 it's important to get ahead of this issue. I view this as actually a pro-immigration piece.

00:03:03.280 I'm generally pro-immigration. I think immigration has been good for Canada historically.

00:03:06.960 I make the piece, that argument in the piece, but the problem is things have changed. And then

00:03:12.640 if we don't have this conversation, if we don't grapple with these realities and face the facts,

00:03:17.280 we are going to lose support for immigration. We're already seeing that and it makes perfect sense that

00:03:21.840 we are. So I view this as trying to salvage what has been a helpful attitude towards immigration 0.99

00:03:28.240 in this country. And if we don't deal with some of the harder truths, we're going to lose them.

00:03:32.080 We're going to see a very ugly reaction that I think is going to end up hurting Canada.

00:03:35.440 So I wrote this not as an anti-immigrant diatribe or an anti-immigration diatribe,

00:03:40.320 but as a way to try and salvage the best of what I think works for Canada while shaving off the

00:03:45.840 things that are, that are doing harm both to Canada and frankly, also to immigrants themselves.

00:03:49.840 Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because I think that there is a sort of

00:03:54.320 uniparty consensus when it comes to immigration that for a long time, you know, on the conservative side,

00:03:59.200 people said, look, it's good for the economy. It's building the country. It's good for growth.

00:04:02.800 Those are all things that we support. The liberal side, the very pro like big M dogma of multiculturalism,

00:04:09.040 like kumbaya, we can all live together. And also kind of an element of like erasing Canada's history

00:04:15.360 and planting it with this new history, the kinds of elements that you and I would probably find

00:04:19.600 pretty distasteful. But I agree that I would say in the last five to 10 years, that consensus is really

00:04:25.040 wearing away that I hear more and more from Canadians who just don't feel like immigration 1.00

00:04:30.400 is working for them anymore. They don't feel that the leaders of this country are listening to their

00:04:35.600 concerns. They don't feel that they're the ones who are at the center of the policy. And I think it's

00:04:39.600 important to sort of start at the very first principle, like why do we have immigration? Why is

00:04:44.720 Canada a country that seems to prioritize immigration? Like what is the purpose of our immigration system,

00:04:51.040 in your, in your opinion? Yeah. And if you can go back historically, right, we want,

00:04:55.120 generally people want immigration because they want people to come to the country because they

00:04:58.320 need someone to help. They need people to help build the country, especially a new country like

00:05:02.080 Canada, a small, young country. We wanted to bring immigrants here to build up the country, 1.00

00:05:06.640 to fill the space, right? There were concerns around the time of confederation. The West was this big

00:05:11.440 open piece of land. So, you know, they were advertising in Europe, come to Canada and you get free land.

00:05:16.400 And so there is a, there is a fundamental economic imperative for immigration. And maybe that's why,

00:05:22.720 you know, in my piece, I started with the economic argument because that really is the

00:05:26.240 issue that cracked the door open on allowing us to debate this. If you go back, you know,

00:05:30.800 maybe 10 years, anyone who cast, you know, anyone who expressed anything less than total enthusiasm

00:05:36.640 for like immigration in any context, anywhere was probably going to get called a racist because

00:05:40.480 there was an assumption that if you're against immigration, it must be because of,

00:05:44.240 you know, people with different skin colors who eat different foods. The housing issue was the

00:05:49.360 issue that really sort of affected so many people and it was purely a numbers game. It's about demand,

00:05:54.880 right? And adding immigrants, too many of them at one time just spikes demand. And if not enough 1.00

00:05:59.920 supply that leads to high prices, this is Econ 101. That was the sort of thing that cracked the door

00:06:05.440 open on the conversation and allowed us to at least start to begin debating this. I don't think we're

00:06:11.040 quite yet there with the adult conversation, but we are starting to see more and more mainstream

00:06:15.360 discussion about how do we have an immigration system that works well for Canada and for Canadians.

00:06:20.560 Well, it's interesting that you bring in housing because we're often told by the political leaders

00:06:24.800 in our country that the reason for like our vast open immigration system is because of labor market 0.99

00:06:31.280 shortages. Like specifically, we're talking about there are jobs in Canada that we cannot fill,

00:06:35.600 that companies are looking to hire people, but they can. I think construction is a pretty fair

00:06:40.400 example of that. Like we clearly seem to have a housing shortage and it seems that we don't have

00:06:44.800 enough people to quickly build houses. Like whenever governments come up with proposals, it's like,

00:06:48.800 okay, this is going to take like eight years. It's like, why? Why don't we just build them now?

00:06:52.480 Well, maybe we don't have enough construction workers, but then the people that they're bringing

00:06:55.760 into the country don't seem to be filling those. Like I'm not seeing huge influxes of like Polish

00:07:01.040 construction workers coming in and building houses in Canada. What I see, and I think we have a clip

00:07:06.160 of this or we can we can play it, is that we have people coming into Canada without jobs and then

00:07:12.080 they end up coming in like there's a job fair at the Toronto airport or at Walmart or McDonald's and

00:07:17.760 you see dozens or hundreds of people lining up down the street to try to get minimum wage jobs. Well,

00:07:22.560 no wage jobs historically have been for young Canadians, right? Like that's how you get your foot in 1.00

00:07:26.400 the door. Like when I was 17 years old, I worked at a fish and chips shop and that was my first

00:07:30.880 job and I learned how to have a job, right? And it's like when you have immigrants who are like 1.00

00:07:35.760 in their twenties and they're coming and they're taking those minimum wage jobs, like what are young 1.00

00:07:38.960 Canadians supposed to do? So what do you make of that sort of economic mismatch? Am I misreading it

00:07:43.600 or is that what you see happening? You're right. Like in theory, the idea of, you know,

00:07:47.840 if we've got a labor shortage, you bring in more labor, right? The problem is not all skills are

00:07:51.680 fungible. So, you know, if you have people with particular skills, say construction skills,

00:07:56.240 and you have a shortage of construction, then that's a good fit. But if you have people who come here

00:08:00.480 that don't have construction skills, that's not really going to help you on the construction

00:08:04.000 shortage issue. You reference things like service jobs, minimum wage jobs. I think you're right.

00:08:10.400 I think a lot of the people who come here and you can't really blame the immigrants, right? For them,

00:08:13.760 that is a boon. They're coming from a country where they earn far less. So for them, it's a deal to come

00:08:17.680 here and work for minimum wage at Tim Hortons. The question is, why can't we fill that labor with

00:08:22.720 Canadians? You allude to younger Canadians that used to take these jobs. You know, part of the problem 1.00

00:08:28.720 is a lot of those young Canadians, they're not willing to take those jobs. And part of the reason 1.00

00:08:33.600 they won't take them is because they look at those jobs and see, well, you know, if I earn $15 an

00:08:38.640 hour, what can I even buy with $15 an hour? You get this, there's a malaise right now amongst our

00:08:43.680 youth. And then even bigger than this, I would argue, in certain regions of the country, particularly

00:08:48.400 in Atlanta, Canada, you have a tradition of acceptance of seasonal work. And so you have,

00:08:55.280 and this was the catalyst for a lot of bringing in temporary foreign workers, is you had employers

00:09:00.960 in some parts of the country saying, we can't find anybody to work here. And that's probably true. 1.00

00:09:05.920 But then the question shouldn't just be, oh, we're just going to import all these temporary

00:09:09.280 workers to paper over. It should be to re-examine the incentive structure and whether or not some of

00:09:14.240 the entitlement programs are basically allowing Canadians to get away in some parts of the country 0.86

00:09:19.120 with working only part of the year. I mean, they're not, they're, they're papering over

00:09:24.160 the symptoms and they're not addressing the root problem here. And I think it just creates this toxic

00:09:29.920 mix of consequences that has led in large parts of the situation we're in today.

00:09:34.880 Yeah, no, that's so interesting. And look, if you're a young Canadian watching this, or if you have kids

00:09:39.200 who are in that mold, you know, it's not about making money, right? It's about getting job experience

00:09:43.600 and setting yourself up. Like I might be dating myself by making this reference. But when I was

00:09:48.400 in high school, I remember the minimum wage in British Columbia, I think it was seven or $8 an

00:09:52.240 hour. And then they brought in a new program, which if you were under a certain age, and it was your

00:09:56.800 first 500 hours working, the minimum wage dropped down to $5 an hour. So my first job, I was getting

00:10:01.840 paid $5 an hour, whereas other people, their minimum wage, if they were older and had more experience,

00:10:06.400 I think it was $8 or $10 an hour. And, you know, I worked and sometimes I would go and have a shift at my

00:10:12.640 fish and chip shop in West Vancouver, and I would have to pay for parking and the parking would be

00:10:16.400 like half of the money that I would make from the job. But it wasn't about that, right? It was just

00:10:20.720 about learning how to get up, go to work, you know, the responsibilities, I was on the till, I had to

00:10:26.240 learn a bit about money and cash register and all that kind of stuff. Like, it's not really about the

00:10:31.120 money that you're making, it's about the spill, especially when you're a teenager, and you're still

00:10:34.480 living, you still have the benefit of living at home. I want to talk a little bit, Erin, about the

00:10:39.760 student visas and how that has come to play in all of this, because it seems like it's sort of a

00:10:44.880 loophole that just allows another nine, we had 900,000 students coming to Canada last year. And

00:10:52.400 Erin, I have to say, it's kind of sad, like these aren't, these aren't 900,000 students that are going

00:10:57.040 to like, top ranked universities, like they're not going to UBC and McGill and the University of Alberta.

00:11:03.600 A lot of them are kind of getting scammed. A lot of them are going to these weird schools that you and I

00:11:07.520 have never heard of that they exist in strip malls in suburban areas. And when you think about what

00:11:13.360 these young people have done, you know, they've taken on huge risk, a lot of times they've taken

00:11:18.560 out huge loans in their home countries, they've come across the world to Canada, with the hopes of

00:11:24.720 making a better world for them, but I don't know that that's going to happen. And you know, you talk

00:11:28.800 about how minimum wage in Canada might seem low for us, it might be a lot for someone who's from like

00:11:33.920 rural India or something like that. But at the same time, they still have to afford to live 0.96

00:11:37.440 in Canada, it's still incredibly expensive to rent an apartment or to find a house to live in.

00:11:42.000 So they're still contributing to that cost of living crisis. What's your make of this whole

00:11:46.400 student visa thing? Well, I think you correctly identified part of the double tragedy here, 0.88

00:11:50.480 right? Some people think that criticizing things like this student visa loophole is anti-immigrant.

00:11:55.200 I don't see it that way at all. I see it as bad for Canadians and bad for these people who,

00:11:59.760 as you say, in many cases have been misled. They've been promised this like amazing land

00:12:04.480 of milk and honey, and they get here and they're trapped in an untenable situation.

00:12:09.040 And in a lot of cases, you know, there is some evidence that they're essentially using the student

00:12:14.160 visa approach because they can't get in through the PR stream. And so that there's sort of a perfect

00:12:19.120 storm of incentives that's led to this, Candace. And it's this, it's that for a lot of these

00:12:23.120 institutions, because politically, it's very difficult for governments to allow tuition rates for

00:12:28.960 Canadian students to rise. So they always capped or frozen those rates or kept them artificially low.

00:12:33.680 That leaves a lot of universities and colleges looking around for other revenue streams. Well,

00:12:37.600 guess what? They can charge international students way more because, and governments don't care about

00:12:42.160 that because they obviously, these are students that obviously aren't either of age and don't live

00:12:45.760 in Canada. So charging them a lot does not impact a government's political fortune. So that's exactly

00:12:50.880 what a lot of these colleges and universities did. As soon as it became apparent that this was extremely

00:12:56.000 lucrative, a lot of colleges and universities would double down on this stream. I mean, there's

00:13:00.800 lots of evidence of some colleges, especially in Ontario and British Columbia, that like the number

00:13:05.440 of international students over the last decade decade and a half has quintupled or in some cases

00:13:09.920 gone up 10 times because there's so much money to be made. So it's just a giant cash cow for them.

00:13:15.200 And in fact, it's also spawned some of these for-profit institutes, which are essentially storefronts,

00:13:21.200 that it's just a pure money making model. And a lot of these students come here, they barely go

00:13:26.320 to the court to class at all. If they go, they simply find work, they don't pass the class,

00:13:31.200 but the institution won't fail them because of course, then they wouldn't be able to continue

00:13:34.720 to charge them. So they graduate with their degree or their diploma. Now they can qualify through the PR

00:13:40.080 stream, right? So this is basically just a, you know, a penance that they've paid to qualify through

00:13:45.840 the PR stream and now they can bring their family over. And so you can see how this, it's basically trying

00:13:50.000 to scam a system that was designed to weed these types of folks out because they did not meet the

00:13:55.520 normal criteria through the PR stream. So I think it's a great tragedy. I think it does not serve either

00:14:01.040 those folks coming or the people who are already here well. And, you know, the government has belatedly

00:14:06.160 started to act on this, but it's going to take a while before they can right size, you know, what our

00:14:10.960 carrying capacity is for a student stream.

00:14:14.000 I'm surprised to see a scam. So out in the open, like, like usually scams, you know,

00:14:19.360 a journalist does some digging, digging, they expose it. And then the scam ends because it's like,

00:14:24.400 you can't do that. That's not right. That's not proper here. We have, I mean, from, from 2013 to

00:14:29.120 29, uh, 2023, the number is three X. We went from 300,000 international students a year to 900,000.

00:14:35.840 I didn't realize that they could make that jump to permanent residency simply by what graduating

00:14:40.080 from a Canadian institution. And then they have the opportunity to get a permanent residency. Is

00:14:44.960 that, is that right? Yeah. Well, it's, it's, there's a point system, right? And when you have

00:14:48.720 that education, it increases your point. So it's, it won't, you won't always be the case that you

00:14:53.200 qualify through PR, but it increases your odds, right? And so a lot of people, if they know what

00:14:57.680 the criteria are and getting that, that credential will get them over the hump that then moves them

00:15:03.120 into a different category. So you can see they're exploiting one loophole to then give them the points

00:15:08.080 they need to access the other stream. And again, you know, we have that, we have that point system

00:15:12.320 for a reason it's designed to coming back to the labor market issue. We want the people that match 0.71

00:15:16.880 the skillset. And so, you know, if people can't get into that stream and they're trying to find a

00:15:21.440 backdoor entrance, that is undermining the whole point of having a category that's set up with certain

00:15:27.440 standards and with a certain cap on it. It's really, it's really unbelievable. And, uh, and also,

00:15:34.640 I mean, I made this point on, uh, one of my shows the other day that you also have people who could

00:15:38.560 potentially just claim asylum. Like if they know that they're not going to pass their classes and

00:15:42.240 they're not going to qualify for PR once you're physically in Canada, there's nothing stopping you

00:15:47.120 from just saying I'm a refugee. And then all of a sudden you get all these other kind of gold-plated,

00:15:52.560 uh, privileges and entitlements, uh, for refugees. I want to just quickly talk about the refugee system,

00:15:58.800 the landed asylum system. These aren't, these aren't people who have gone through the United Nations and

00:16:02.880 they're like determined to be refugees. These are people who come into Canada illegally and then 1.00

00:16:08.640 make a claim for asylum and some of them get accepted. Some of them don't. We had 143,000 people

00:16:14.400 come into Canada this way in 2023, 143,000. Erin, I, so I, I worked in the Harper government in, in,

00:16:21.760 I worked in the immigration department. I was there in 2011, 2012. And back then we were talking about

00:16:26.560 like 10 to 12,000 a year. And now we're talking about 140,000 people. Uh, what, what, what has

00:16:33.360 happened and what do you make of this? Is this also going to contribute to undermining public trust in

00:16:37.760 immigration? Yeah, I, well, I've got, I've got one point in defense of the migrants and two, I would say 1.00

00:16:43.440 against the status quo. The one in defense is, I do think we need to keep perspective sometimes in terms of

00:16:48.320 this, the amount of illegal and, you know, unlawful attempts to enter the country pale in comparison to

00:16:54.480 Europe and America. I mean, 143,000 is a lot for a country like Canada, but we're simply blessed by

00:16:59.600 geography to be harder to access. So, I mean, if we had a Southern border like the United States

00:17:04.720 does with Mexico or borders like they do in Europe with, uh, with neighboring countries, we would be

00:17:09.520 experiencing, you know, millions of people trying to come here. So we should be grateful that the

00:17:14.160 number is something like 143,000. That said, um, first of all, we got to remember that like refugees

00:17:20.960 and humanitarian, um, intakes are there's a process. And I think people have to, people have

00:17:26.720 faith in that process. You know, you have to follow the rules and it's not fair to other migrants who, 1.00

00:17:32.320 you know, follow the rules and tick all the right boxes and submit applications for others to jump

00:17:36.480 the queue and sort of just barge into this country. It's not fair to them. Um, and I think it undermines 0.99

00:17:41.920 trust in the, in the process as a whole for Canadians, right? Like I think most Canadians are willing to

00:17:47.040 accept the idea that we're going to have, we have some humanitarian obligations, but we want to be

00:17:51.040 confident about who's coming in here. Have we screened them properly? Are they following the process?

00:17:55.440 And when you have all things like rocks and road completely undermines that and rightly so, so that

00:18:00.640 you really have to have a proper process in place that people respect and that there are consequences

00:18:06.400 for people who don't follow the process. The last thing is just generally, I mean, the humanitarian

00:18:11.120 stream is different than the economic stream, right? We bring people here on the economic

00:18:15.040 stream because there's economic benefit for the humanitarian stream. It really comes down to,

00:18:19.600 you know, what is our caring capacity at any given moment in every, any given time? It's just like

00:18:24.080 a household that decides to make charitable donations, right? If you're having a good year,

00:18:27.520 you can give a little bit more to charity. If you're not, you have to cut back. You have to,

00:18:31.120 you have to pay your own bills first. You have to take care of your own family first. And I think that,

00:18:35.600 uh, the same as has to be true of refugees and humanity, if there are good times, I think Canada should

00:18:40.800 probably take more, but if we're experiencing tough times and we need to spend more money

00:18:44.480 on Canadians, we have to cut back. We have to reduce that number. That's just, it's the only way you're 1.00

00:18:48.800 going to maintain political support. And I think it's completely consistent with the way most people

00:18:52.720 sort of govern their own household finances. Well, this kind of goes back to the idea that

00:18:57.600 Canada had a sort of a historic purpose of its immigration system 50 to a hundred years ago.

00:19:01.760 And that, and that has changed and we haven't really caught up. Look, Canada has so many natural

00:19:05.280 advantages when it comes to immigration, which you discussed, like we don't share a border, right? It's

00:19:09.760 actually quite difficult to get to Canada and both Canada and the U S broadly have visa requirements

00:19:14.640 for, from like third world or developing countries. So it's harder for those people to even get here.

00:19:19.760 So to me, I mean, the fact that 143,000 people, yeah, it's, it's not as much as the millions of

00:19:24.640 people that are streaming across the Mexican border into the United States, but it's still a problem.

00:19:28.640 Yeah, it's not nothing. And, and, and it's so out of whack, uh, with our traditional number. One of the

00:19:33.280 things I noticed in your piece, Aaron, was that you were talking about how there was, uh, over a million

00:19:38.240 people that came to Canada in 2022, I crunched the numbers. And when you add together, so we're at

00:19:44.080 half a million for permanent residents, we're at 660,000 for, uh, for temporary foreign workers,

00:19:50.640 900,000 for students, 150,000, 140,000 for asylum seekers. Uh, we're looking at two. I mean, my math

00:19:59.600 says 2.2 million. Um, so I, I, I guess, uh, like, what do you think the right number is and how do you,

00:20:07.120 how do you calculate that? Yeah. I mean, I think the first number to look at is definitely the

00:20:11.440 students, right? That is the easiest one to reduce. Now that some of the colleges and universities

00:20:16.720 won't like it because that obviously impacts the bottom line, but other than them as the

00:20:20.160 stakeholders, that is probably the single biggest piece of that 2.2 million that you can address

00:20:26.480 most quickly. Um, the PR stream, I mean, that is on paper supposed to be the one that most closely

00:20:32.320 matches our economic needs. That's probably the toughest one. The migration one, things like tying up

00:20:36.960 rocks, rocks and road, you can probably, uh, you could probably reduce. And then the TFW is a

00:20:42.080 completely other kettle of fish, right? And we've kind of gone all over the map on this over the last

00:20:46.240 20 years. You know, there are a lot of people in the business community that said, you know,

00:20:50.000 if we don't have TFWs and I can't run my business, a lot of governments sort of exceeded to those demands.

00:20:55.760 Like I said, I think there needs to be a fundamental rethink about why is it like,

00:20:59.520 if there are Canadians in certain parts of the country or certain demographics that are not working,

00:21:03.760 and we're seeing like low workforce participation in some of these demographics.

00:21:07.680 Um, and yet we have to import temporary foreign workers. That suggests there's something else going

00:21:12.160 on. There's something wrong with the incentives. There's something wrong with government entitlements.

00:21:15.760 We need to address that first. You can't just paper over that by importing TFWs. So I think the

00:21:20.080 student stream, the TFWs are the two easiest ones from a policy standpoint to correct, uh, refugees and, 1.00

00:21:26.720 uh, you know, uh, asylum claims that as an enforcement issue. And then the toughest one to crack

00:21:31.760 is PR, but even addressing two of those four categories could easily slice that number in

00:21:36.000 half relatively quickly. Okay. Let's, let's talk about the, the permanent residence. And, uh,

00:21:40.960 I found a graph from Stats Canada. I love, I love this graph. I always look at it. This shows the,

00:21:45.680 uh, Canada's historic intake of immigrants from starting in 1952. So this goes all the way back.

00:21:52.080 For some reason, they archive this page and they stopped showing the new numbers, but you can,

00:21:57.040 and we can talk about what the new numbers are. This is just landed immigrants or they used to

00:22:01.680 call them landed immigrants, but it's actually permanent residents. And so Aaron, you could see

00:22:05.360 that this graph just from like a step away, you see peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys,

00:22:10.560 peaks and valleys. So there's a pretty big bump right around Confederation and the 1880s,

00:22:15.200 another big bump in the early, uh, the first decade of the, of the 20th century between sort of 1905 and 1910,

00:22:22.640 a little bump, uh, during world war one, huge post war bump, uh, in the fifties and then kind of up

00:22:29.360 and down and up and down and up and down. And then you hit the nineties and you just sort of see a wall

00:22:34.320 and it never goes down. It just goes up and up and stops here in 2012. Uh, you know, back when the

00:22:40.000 number was 250, we now know the number is 500. So just imagine that the graph just continues upwards

00:22:44.800 without any gaps all the way. And you know, we're at 500 that the tallest peak on this graph from 1910

00:22:51.280 was 400,000. So we're now higher than the highest peak in Canadian history.

00:22:56.800 Well, one of the things, Aaron, that strikes me, um, about this graph is that we always had

00:23:01.200 the valleys, right? So basically what would happen is that we would have a couple of years where there

00:23:04.960 would be a huge surge in immigration and we'd let in a whole bunch of people. And then the doors would

00:23:09.840 kind of close and we'd have a few years to sort of integrate everybody and to make sure that everyone

00:23:14.640 becomes Canadian and that the communities kind of merged together. And then we open it up again.

00:23:20.080 And it seems to me that starting in the nineties or maybe the early two thousands,

00:23:24.080 that, that kind of tradition just fell apart. And instead of doing the sort of gaps and open

00:23:29.840 and close, open and close, open and close, we just like left it open. And it's like,

00:23:34.080 we're living through that experiment right now. You talked a little bit about the cultural element of,

00:23:38.320 you know, multiculturalism just not quite working and some people feeling uneasy about how

00:23:42.640 much their community has changed. Uh, what, what's your comment on that?

00:23:46.480 Yeah. This is still the third rail here, right? As we can talk about the economic issues and things

00:23:50.640 like pressures on infrastructure, but people don't want to get into the cultural friction

00:23:54.720 element because it's, can be very uncomfortable for a lot of people. They don't want to seem like

00:23:58.000 a racist now to go back to your point about the peaks and valleys. I don't know if that was the

00:24:02.480 government's deliberate intention to, you know, uh, allow for these sort of breathers to allow for

00:24:07.920 integration. I suspect a lot of it was economically driven, but the effect was still to allow for that

00:24:12.880 cultural integration. And I also think when you go back a hundred years and a lot of cases you're

00:24:17.040 talking about, uh, you know, migration, for example, to rural areas, which was a lot greater

00:24:22.400 today on the overwhelming majority of migration is to urban areas, especially our already largest urban

00:24:28.560 area. So it's a very different, um, process in terms of, uh, you know, integration. I know assimilation

00:24:35.200 is a charge word for a lot of people, but just the idea of, and I think this is true of every country,

00:24:40.160 you know, most people, when they, when they move to another country, they sort of understand

00:24:44.240 implicitly that they're supposed to over time, and certainly their children over generations,

00:24:48.320 uh, adopt the ways of that country. That doesn't mean that you have to give up everything, you know,

00:24:53.760 from the homeland, but over time, there's just this sort of natural process where people, a culture,

00:24:58.800 a culture, acclimate to where they're from. I mean, it's certainly the case in, uh, my family,

00:25:03.440 you know, my, my mother's from Hong Kong. I was born here. My wife's family's from Trinidad.

00:25:07.600 I know your, your husband's family comes from Iran. You know, these are, these are processes that 1.00

00:25:12.720 naturally occur over time and absent some kind of active government policy, trying to interfere with

00:25:18.880 that. That's, that's both what newcomers, um, expect to do and what Canadians already here sort of 0.98

00:25:25.520 expect of newcomers. Um, and we, we haven't had that. You talk about big M multiculturalism. I, 0.98

00:25:32.000 I think that is part of the problem here. It's not small and multicultural. I mean, 1.00

00:25:36.160 the idea of people kind of doing their own thing is not the problem. It's this official policy

00:25:40.480 where it's almost like state doctrine where you're supposed to try and preserve stuff from the past.

00:25:46.400 And if you don't, you're almost doing something wrong or you're, you know, you're letting go of

00:25:50.720 something and that's a bad thing. Um, that is part of the problem. And it, it, it, it has created,

00:25:56.880 um, it has created this tension between people who feel that, uh, you know, people who are coming here are

00:26:03.360 not, um, not part of a common national project and are sort of clinging to things from the homeland.

00:26:08.960 So I think that, uh, I think we need to have that open conversation, but what are the expectations,

00:26:13.760 you know, what, what, and what is our capacity, right? Because I think a lot of people, it comes down to

00:26:18.720 numbers. If you live in a community and you welcome people who come from different places

00:26:23.040 and speak different languages, you know, and if, if some of them come into your neighborhood,

00:26:25.760 that's the deal. If you wake up one morning and suddenly nine, every single one of your neighbors

00:26:29.600 is from somewhere else that can be jolting. That can be shocking for a lot of people.

00:26:33.600 And, um, it just makes, it's just human nature. Some people are uncomfortable by rapid

00:26:37.600 change of any sort. And I think we need to make accommodation for that. There's not,

00:26:41.360 it doesn't make you a bad person or make you hateful to, to say, I kind of like the way things

00:26:46.000 are and any change that comes, I want it to be gradual and I want to get used to it. And I, I,

00:26:50.880 I would resent the idea that this is just going to be, I'm just going to be overwhelmed by

00:26:55.040 different things tomorrow morning without being able to have any say in it.

00:26:58.320 Well, it's interesting. Uh, it does. I mean, so much of what you just said was super interesting.

00:27:03.760 Uh, the, the peaks and valleys that you, you didn't necessarily think that was intentional.

00:27:07.120 That was just sort of like, uh, reacting to world events or, or whatever, but that the outcome was

00:27:12.560 this sort of integration that would happen. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you said,

00:27:16.560 like, you know, if you live in a community and there's one or two newcomers, everybody's like really

00:27:20.640 excited about those newcomers. And it's like, oh, where are they from? Let's help them make sure that

00:27:24.320 they fit in the community. Like they have kids that are around my kid's age. Let's like make sure that

00:27:28.080 they are playing together. And you have a community that's focused on helping those people.

00:27:32.160 And that's what happens with the private refugee sponsorship when churches and charities sponsor

00:27:36.080 refugees. It's like, it's like the people who sponsor that refugee feel a personal obligation

00:27:41.680 to help them integrate, to make sure. It becomes a rallying point, right?

00:27:44.400 It becomes a rallying point. And, and the problem is when you, when you make it too much,

00:27:48.720 it starts to feel like an imposition. And that's the line you don't want to cross. You want the,

00:27:53.520 the attitude towards immigrants to be welcoming and help them integrate. And it's a win-win,

00:27:58.080 right? And when you go too far and you tip it too far, the other way, it starts to become a burden

00:28:02.640 and resentment. And that's where we don't want to go. And that's what I'm saying. That's part of the

00:28:05.840 reason I keep making these arguments is I do think immigration at the right level in the right way is a 0.74

00:28:10.320 good thing and we should support it, but we're over that line right now. And that's the reason we're

00:28:14.800 seeing a lot of this backlash. Well, yeah, like you're, you're really testing the, the generosity of

00:28:18.880 Canadians, because I think that when that happens, it still does happen. I think probably in small

00:28:22.480 towns, Aaron, where someone gets excited, like, Oh, we have a newcomer and they're from this different

00:28:26.080 culture and everyone's interested in the teacher wants the child to talk about it at school or

00:28:30.240 whatever. But, but then you, but then you look at neighborhoods, like, you know, I grew up in

00:28:33.360 Vancouver and I've talked about this on my show a bit before, but like the neighborhood that I grew up in

00:28:38.000 doesn't exist anymore in the way that it did when I was a child, right? Like in the, in the eighties and the

00:28:42.160 nineties, it was just a whole bunch of like, basically like stay at home moms. Every house had like three or four 0.99

00:28:46.880 kids. There's kids playing, riding their bikes all over. It was a very vibrant, lively neighborhoods,

00:28:51.840 Kerisdale in Vancouver. And like 10 years later, it just wasn't anymore. It was like the, uh, the Hong

00:28:58.080 Kong takeover announcement had happened. And, you know, thousands of people just kind of moved to that

00:29:03.200 one neighborhood, like that neighborhood. And, you know, my parents sold our house because we had an

00:29:07.920 offer on the house. It was way more than we paid. So we moved to a different suburb and like, I go back

00:29:13.440 there now and it's like, this is just such a different area. There's like no children, there's

00:29:17.040 no kids. And the, the, the community has gone. I know that I knew some people that are from

00:29:22.000 places like Brampton and they grew up there and it was a totally different scenario. Now you go back

00:29:26.560 and you almost feel like a little bit of a loss. Like the country that I grew up in isn't, isn't really

00:29:32.400 there anymore. Do you think those are valid, uh, feelings or how can you, how can you work around that?

00:29:37.120 Yeah. Look, I think, uh, change is inevitable, but the rate of change is not inevitable. And so it's not that,

00:29:42.960 you know, we have to freeze everything in time. And I do think some people fall prey to this like

00:29:46.800 nostalgia of like, everything was great the way when I was a kid. And so, so I think we have to

00:29:50.720 guard against that, but that's not to say that we just have to accept any change anywhere all the time

00:29:56.000 as this sort of fatalistic, we get to choose, we get to help, um, determine the rate of change,

00:30:01.760 the rate of change that works best for everyone. And I also think too, you know, a lot of people conflate,

00:30:07.280 um, a discomfort, they conflate what I would say, sort of, um, race with culture. I think what a lot

00:30:13.360 of people, what bothers them about the idea of change, isn't that they're going to be replaced

00:30:18.400 by someone who has a different skin tone than them. It's that the things they value as a Canadian,

00:30:23.440 you know, uh, cultural traditions, um, you know, uh, certain values, if those things are lost,

00:30:29.360 that's the real problem. So like, to give you an example, I know it's an old trope, but like,

00:30:33.520 you know, hockey is a essentially quintessentially Canadian thing. So if you had a whole bunch of

00:30:38.160 migrants come to a community that had a Hong, a strong hockey tradition, and all those immigrants

00:30:43.280 over time took up hockey and started playing hockey and themselves became the sort of carriers of that

00:30:47.840 tradition, I don't think anyone would care, but what does bother people is that people come and

00:30:51.920 then there's sort of no interest in hockey and the sort of that, that tradition dies out. And that's

00:30:55.440 again, that's not a racial thing. That's sort of a cultural integration thing. So I don't buy this,

00:31:00.960 you know, there's some sort of, I do think it's a racist view that, you know, replacement is,

00:31:05.680 is, is based on, um, you know, your, your skin color, your ethnic origin. I think it's a cultural

00:31:11.040 question. And I think it's a question that culture can be learned. And if you have willing partners

00:31:15.600 on the welcoming side and the new arrival side, willing to integrate, willing to assimilate,

00:31:21.520 um, you can still care and it's not replacement. It's, it's different people carrying on the same

00:31:26.560 cultural traditions. And so I, I think we ought to be very careful about that debate,

00:31:30.560 because I think some people, they mix up those things too easily and they're really not the same

00:31:34.480 thing. Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned that. Cause I, I have a personal anecdote about

00:31:38.480 that. Like I was really interested in field hockey when I was a kid. And, uh, when I went into like a

00:31:43.600 new, uh, a new team, I was in grade three and I was the only girl in grade three that wanted to play

00:31:49.440 field hockey. And, and it was partially like, you know, I had wonderful neighbors and I have friends,

00:31:53.440 uh, from that time who were from Hong Kong, whose families had moved and the things that they were

00:31:57.680 interested, it was more like, you know, piano and, and different kinds of like the arts,

00:32:02.080 which, which is great. I mean, I actually think that, um, people bringing different

00:32:06.960 kind of interests and values makes the community richer and it makes it more interesting.

00:32:10.720 Um, it just so happened that there was not enough girls in my year to create a field hockey team.

00:32:14.880 So I had to go play in a different, uh, district. Um, so it's funny that you, that you mentioned that,

00:32:19.520 but yeah, again, I think, I think it's like the difference between having, you know, a handful of

00:32:24.080 people join a district versus like having tens of thousands that all come at the same time and

00:32:28.960 kind of flood the system and just completely change the, the, the culture and the community.

00:32:33.520 It's totally about the speed in a lot of cases. And the other thing too, to remember is,

00:32:37.360 you know, in, in, in the West and especially in the Anglosphere countries, I mean, we're,

00:32:40.960 there's a reason we're very appealing destinations for people from all over the world. And so we should

00:32:45.760 bear that in mind when people, some people argue, well, you know, are we, are we, you know, imposing our,

00:32:51.360 our ourselves on these new arrivals? I mean, they're coming here because they, they already

00:32:55.440 know what it's like here. They already have a sense of what it's like. They want to join our project.

00:32:59.680 And so this idea that the first thing we do when we tell them to tell them when they show up is,

00:33:04.160 you know what, you should just keep everything the way it is. And you don't have to, I,

00:33:07.600 I think that's a strange message that hits a lot of their ears almost weirdly. And, uh, you know,

00:33:13.600 I, I obviously have no issue with people doing their own thing. And, you know, I come from, uh, you know,

00:33:18.800 my dad's side of the family's German can from Kitchener, Ontario, it says old German Canadian

00:33:22.640 community. There's still sort of old traditions that linger there. Right. But, but it's not, um,

00:33:28.080 it's not in terms of the mainstream and sort of the day-to-day life and preferences and culture,

00:33:33.360 it's, it's, it's similar to the anywhere else in the country. And I think that's the kind of thing

00:33:37.280 that, um, you know, if communities want to band together and of their own, uh, whim sort of preserve

00:33:42.320 certain traditions that they're certainly welcome to do that. They don't need the government to

00:33:46.240 have an official policy of preservation or in some cases, even subsidize that difference. Uh,

00:33:51.600 I don't, I don't necessarily, uh, you know, I have no problem with small D diversity. It's when, 1.00

00:33:57.040 I guess, Candace, when you start to capitalize a lot of these, uh, policies into government

00:34:01.200 doctrine, that's where you start to run into trouble. Yeah. When you have someone telling

00:34:04.800 you that diversity is your strength and that's not a slogan, that's like an order, right? Uh, talk,

00:34:10.080 talk about forced, uh, assimilation. You know, you're from, you're from Kitchener. It used to be called

00:34:14.640 the old Berlin, right? And then, and then the government forced, uh, you to change the name

00:34:18.800 of that community because they didn't want the German, uh, affiliation. I think they had a referendum,

00:34:22.800 but the, but the point was, the point was. But the referendum went the other way. Didn't,

00:34:26.080 didn't the referendum like. No, no, that was no, but, but there was, I mean, there was this, um,

00:34:31.680 it's interesting because at the time this was during the first world war and, uh, I guess the Berlin

00:34:37.040 city council wanted to show that German Canadians were loyal to, to the umpire and not to Germany. So they had

00:34:43.680 this referendum and they picked Lord Kitchener as the, as the name, but it was interesting because

00:34:48.240 at the time it, it seemed important to show that you were committed to the country. Right. And I

00:34:53.360 think today that is something a lot of Canadians feel like, um, it may not even be true. I do think

00:34:57.760 there are a lot of immigrants that are proud to be Canadian. And frankly, in a lot of cases would

00:35:01.120 love to shout it from the rooftop rooftops, but they, they often have governments telling them that no,

00:35:05.120 no, no, you don't need to worry about that. You can carry on, you know, everything, um, that, you know,

00:35:10.720 do you bring from, from the, from the homeland. Um, uh, so I, I just find it interesting that,

00:35:15.760 you know, if you go back a hundred years, there was a community that was so concerned

00:35:18.800 about not being seen as like sufficiently patriotic. They actually changed the name of the community,

00:35:23.360 uh, because they wanted to signal that, no, no, like we're Canadian and our loyalty is here.

00:35:28.480 It's not from, uh, not to our ancestral home. Well, that's, that's such a more optimistic way of

00:35:33.680 looking at it here than, uh, than the way I saw it. I think you still see a little bit of that today.

00:35:38.720 Like I I've talked about this in the past as well. Like my husband was born in Iran and they fled the,

00:35:43.280 the, the mullahs and they fled the Islamic regime in the nineties. And Kaz is like the most patriotic

00:35:49.120 Canadian that I know. Like he has a maple leaf tattoo and he's just like, he loves Canada. He

00:35:52.960 wants the Canadian identity. He embraces like even the cheesiest aspects of Canadiana. Right. And I,

00:35:58.720 and it's interesting because now in this like kind of like post Canada world where everyone's woke and

00:36:03.920 we have to like denounce our ancestors and everybody's so ashamed of what the Canadians 1.00

00:36:08.480 did to early Canadians did in developing the country. It's like, it, you know, it's such a 0.93

00:36:13.280 mixed message to newcomers because on the one hand they're coming to Canada because they like Canada

00:36:18.080 and they, and they're excited about the opportunity. And that's the kind of like new, like lifeline that

00:36:22.720 you want coming into your country. You want people coming in who are enthusiastic, want to start

00:36:26.240 businesses, who want to start jobs, who love the country, like wrap themselves in the flag.

00:36:29.760 Uh, but then you have the sort of like elites or the, the, the, the kind of old stock Canadians 0.99

00:36:35.280 sitting here talking about how awful Canada is and how this is horrible, racist, uh, you know, 0.62

00:36:41.120 Dennis vital country. It's, it's so, it's so sad. It can be bewildering for new mark migrants who come 1.00

00:36:46.720 here and to be told that Canada is this horrible place. That's got a racist. I mean, a lot of these 0.98

00:36:51.120 people, the first thing they say is, you know, where I come from, I mean, compared, compared to where I

00:36:55.440 come from, you know, the problem, we have real problems back where I'm from. I mean, Canada,

00:36:59.520 these problems pale in comparison. I think a lot of Canadians lack that context. Like,

00:37:03.280 is there racism in Canada? Of course there is, but like relative. And as someone who's, you know,

00:37:07.200 in a mixed race relationship, who's lived in many places around the world, I mean, I've experienced

00:37:11.920 racism everywhere. I've experienced the least racism in Canada compared to all these other places,

00:37:16.640 including other, uh, developed countries. So I, I think, you know, it's one thing to say,

00:37:21.440 yeah, of course we always want to, uh, combat racism, but the idea that Canada is sort of

00:37:26.160 uniquely or particularly racist is just, uh, mind boggling to most people who have lived anywhere

00:37:33.040 else. Well, uh, yeah. And, and a lot of the sort of racism that you do encounter, like one of my best

00:37:38.400 friends growing up was half Chinese and half, uh, her mom was from Newfoundland. So she was like a Newfie, 0.99

00:37:44.320 uh, half Chinese and people kind of came up with silly little nicknames to describe her ethnicity,

00:37:49.600 but it was always like in a kind of loving way. And I remember asking her once if it bothered her

00:37:54.240 and she was like, no, it's hilarious. Right. Like it's, it's, it's not meant to be mean. It's

00:37:58.640 like kids kind of make jokes maybe to like ease attention. And, and we used to be able to do that.

00:38:03.040 And now it's like, everything's so politically correct. You can't even, you can't even make

00:38:06.320 jokes like that. Yeah. And I firmly believe that most of what's called racism in a lot of cases is

00:38:12.000 just the lack of familiarity or in some cases, clumsiness. Right. I think that, uh, you know,

00:38:17.280 there's very few people that have some sort of deep ideological belief in like racial superiority

00:38:23.280 or purity. There's just not very many of those people, most people, it is just a casual, um,

00:38:28.080 unfamiliarity, or in some cases discomfort. And that's a natural thing, right? Like the analogy

00:38:32.160 I made has been, uh, to people who people have different, uh, food preferences, right? Like some

00:38:36.480 people love trying new things. Other people, like they know exactly what they like and they don't want

00:38:40.160 to try anything new. And I think that's like that with personalities and cultures, some people just

00:38:44.320 know what they like and they, other stuff seems weird and strange and other people,

00:38:48.240 they just love trying new stuff and they love sort of learning about new cultures and languages,

00:38:53.680 things like that. Neither of those things is right or wrong. It's just a personality difference.

00:38:57.120 And I think we do a disservice to like truly like deep seated ideological racism when we kind of

00:39:02.320 conflate clumsiness or just discomfort with some sort of really nefarious, like evil racism.

00:39:09.280 Yeah. I mean, when, when I listened to Jordan Peterson talk about personality traits and he talks

00:39:13.440 about like trait openness versus like people who are low in openness, that's basically what it is.

00:39:17.920 Like I happen to be really high in openness. I love traveling around the world. You know,

00:39:21.280 I'm interested in other cultures. I married someone from a different culture. Like I just

00:39:24.320 happen to be high in openness where someone else, um, might not be. And that's not their fault. It

00:39:28.720 doesn't make me a bad person. It's just who they are. Okay. Well, Erin, I want to talk about

00:39:32.640 one other thing. I know, I know you've got to run in a minute here. We've had a great conversation.

00:39:36.000 I really appreciate it. Uh, what, what, let's, let's get into the kind of crux of the matter, right?

00:39:40.480 Like we're told that part of the reason why we need mass migration, why we need so many people,

00:39:45.200 it's not just economic, it's not cultural. It's, it's about fertility rates and it's about the

00:39:49.200 declining birth rate. The numbers in Canada have come out and it's truly shocking. Our fertility

00:39:53.360 rate is 1.1 right now. Okay. Replacement is 2.1. Uh, it used to be that women used to have, 1.00

00:39:59.440 you know, many, many children, uh, obviously things have changed and, and most children now survive

00:40:04.000 into adulthood. Uh, but, but it seems to me that immigration kind of covers up this other issue,

00:40:08.880 uh, which is that Canadian families aren't having as many kids as they used to. And, and we, we talked

00:40:14.720 about this in the other interview we did. There's a Carta study showing that most women want to have 1.00

00:40:18.960 more children than they're actually having. Um, about 25% of women don't end up having kids, 0.95

00:40:25.520 even though they wanted kids, uh, because they can't find a right partner. They can't make it work. Like,

00:40:30.320 to me, this is a huge, huge issue in our culture and in our world that just gets like no attention. Like,

00:40:37.440 nobody talks about it maybe because it's such a personal choice and it's, it's so personal

00:40:41.600 that people feel uncomfortable talking about it in terms of public policy. Um, but you know,

00:40:45.920 we're here to have an uncomfortable conversation. So, you know, you've got a big family, you've got

00:40:49.200 a bunch of kids, so, uh, maybe you can, you can give us some insights and talk about what, what you

00:40:53.440 think needs to be done. Yeah. I'm great. I'm doing what I can to pull up that, uh, 1.1. I've got three,

00:40:58.240 but, uh, I wish I had more. Um, look, it's hard to think of any other issue where if women had this big 1.00

00:41:05.840 a concern, the government would just completely ignore it. Right. I mean, if it got, if there was

00:41:09.520 a survey that showed, you know, 60% of women said that they're paying too much for, uh, for, 0.94

00:41:15.280 for, uh, hygienic products, I mean, the government would drop everything and like fix that. And yet,

00:41:19.520 here we have a lot of evidence that, you know, a vast majority of women are not having as many

00:41:23.760 children as they want. Well, what are governments doing about that? That seems to me like it should be a

00:41:28.160 central like policy fixation for any government that's concerned, not just about women, but about, 0.99

00:41:33.360 you know, the, the birth rate generally, you're absolutely right. That immigration is just being 1.00

00:41:38.000 used to paper over that. And that's a problem for a couple of reasons. One, it's not, it's not going

00:41:41.600 to be enough. Uh, you know, you, you probably need a mix of higher birth rates and immigration to 0.99

00:41:46.320 maintain growth. And I am pro growth. I'm not one of these people that believes you can shrink,

00:41:49.920 you know, people talk about Japan, um, shrinking. I'm like, talk to me in 20 years. I think Japan has 0.98

00:41:56.320 other issues there. No, it's a tragedy in Japan when you go to the suburbs and there's just like ghost

00:42:01.280 towns right outside of Tokyo. It is a real problem. I think people fixate on, on the fact,

00:42:06.080 all Japan's still a wealthy place. They are, they're coasting and they are, they're slowly 0.99

00:42:10.400 shriveling and declining. And then that is a real problem. The other thing too, that people who

00:42:14.000 mentioned is a lot of the immigrants we do get, once they come here, guess what? They start to adopt

00:42:18.960 the same lifestyle choices. And so the fertility rate actually drops among second generation immigrants. 0.86

00:42:24.320 So you're not actually solving the problem in the long run. Um, I would say Candace, this is a,

00:42:29.120 this is a problem afflicting the whole world, especially the developed world. You know, Canada is

00:42:34.720 even middle of the pack. This places like Korea are down to like 0.8 children. It is a real problem.

00:42:40.560 Um, I know what you, and you've mentioned places like in Hungary, there are some other countries where

00:42:44.560 they're attempting some pretty radical policy leap, pulling some really levers like, you know, making

00:42:50.320 income tax free. If you have four children or more there, you know, there's some encouraging

00:42:54.080 examples. Japan has a few examples like that, that are encouraging. You know, I do fear a bit that

00:42:59.120 part of this is cultural, um, that we live in a very increasingly atomized individualized world where

00:43:06.240 sort of self-fulfillment and career and sort of, um, you know, individual needs or adult needs are, are

00:43:12.800 supplanting what used to be like longstanding, uh, uh, evolutionary driven needs to have children.

00:43:19.120 And that's hard to reverse, but we should try and we should pull every lever we can.

00:43:23.760 And I think that governments have, like, we basically haven't emptied the tank yet on seeing

00:43:27.440 what, what governments can do to move the needle on fertility, because we're not even talking about

00:43:31.440 it at all, as you say. And I think that's a conversation in the coming years that

00:43:35.360 policymakers really need to focus on. Well, I find that there's so much pessimism

00:43:38.960 around it. Like, it's like, okay, so Asia has been dealing with this issue for decades

00:43:42.640 and they've tried a lot of stuff, right? Like Singapore has tried a lot of different policies

00:43:46.400 to encourage, uh, families to have kids. And basically what they found was that the people

00:43:50.720 who already probably planned on having kids just had kids sooner, but it didn't actually

00:43:54.880 like increase the total number. And so then we just like throw those policies out and we're like,

00:43:59.200 okay, we're not going to do those anymore, but it's like, we haven't tried those in Canada, right?

00:44:02.560 The idea of, um, you know, providing longer, uh, parental leave or allowing mom to stay home with the

00:44:09.280 kids for like three or four years. And like, I, I think that there's a lot, I think, I think that,

00:44:14.000 I mean, when I think of my generation, a lot of my friends, you know, we were really told

00:44:18.800 that we could be anything and do anything. And the emphasis was to go to university,

00:44:22.720 like figure out what you want to do, the whole like personal fulfillment thing.

00:44:26.240 And then by the time you're done university, you're kind of on a track to either go to

00:44:29.840 professional school or go get a career. Okay. Well, I've put all this effort into school.

00:44:33.840 I don't want to leave the market place when I'm 25. I want to stay. Yeah. I want to stay.

00:44:38.000 And I want to focus on my career. And then by the time you're like looking around at having kids,

00:44:42.160 you're like into your thirties and your window is really small. A lot of people struggle to even

00:44:47.040 get pregnant and have kids in their thirties. And that's the norm. Like the norm is that women 1.00

00:44:51.680 are having kids in their thirties. In my friend group, it was like, it was like mid thirties that

00:44:55.920 people were, were starting to have kids. And you know, that's that if you wanted, if you always

00:45:00.400 wanted to have three kids, you always want to have four kids and you start when you're 35, like you just

00:45:05.200 it's really hard to do that. And I don't think that women are being told the truth. That's why I think 1.00

00:45:09.360 it is feminism. It's like lies that we tell women that they're going to have personal fulfillment 1.00

00:45:14.000 from some career that they may love. You may love your career, but look, if you're, if you're in your

00:45:18.640 forties and you miss that window and you can't have kids, that biological instinct that you talked about,

00:45:22.960 it's going to come up and it's going to hit you hard. And it's, it's just, it's tragic. It's really

00:45:27.360 sad when that does happen. I really deeply feel for women who miss the opportunity. And, and I feel like

00:45:33.520 more people need to talk about that so that younger women don't make those same mistakes. 1.00

00:45:36.800 Yeah. I, uh, we have to, I mean, we have to do another podcast just on this issue. Cause I,

00:45:40.960 I do think there's a, um, there's a cultural challenge in that like parenting is hard,

00:45:47.760 but it's rewarding. And we live in a society now where increasingly everything is, is, is all about

00:45:53.280 you and parenting is a sacrifice and the, and the sort of benefits of it, the sort of rewards of it

00:45:59.680 are diffuse and over time. And in a lot of cases they, you only notice them years later. That's a,

00:46:05.360 that's a hard sell to people where it's like, you can have a career, you can travel and you can sort

00:46:10.240 of get everything you want well into your thirties. And then, as you say, even if you want kids,

00:46:14.640 then maybe you're having one or maybe two, you're not having three or four anymore.

00:46:18.480 And it's just everything else in our culture is pushing against this idea of the value of parenting,

00:46:24.480 which seems like a whole lot of work, uh, to, to people that want to have a busy career and travel

00:46:29.520 and help do those other self-fulfillment things. So, um, you know, it's, it's, it's going to take

00:46:33.680 some work, but, uh, I do think, I do think there's going to be a reckoning at some point, because we're

00:46:38.240 going to reach a point where birth rates could continue to decline to the point where now we have

00:46:42.480 problems, uh, even sustaining the sort of the, the, the social safety net that we have, for example,

00:46:47.440 there's not going to be enough people work, especially with longer lifespan. So, um, it's, uh, it is a

00:46:52.240 challenge and I agree with you as a parent, you know, I, uh, it's the most rewarding, the most important

00:46:56.880 thing I do in my life. And it's really hard to explain that to somebody who doesn't have kids

00:47:01.360 without sounding kind of sappy and sentimental, but, um, it, it does have real consequences. Once,

00:47:06.320 once you miss that window, there's no going back. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's, I think you're

00:47:11.120 right. We're going to have to do a whole other podcast on this, Aaron, because you could talk

00:47:14.000 about the macro issues like social safety nets, and then you can talk about the individual feelings

00:47:17.440 of people. Uh, there's been some interesting, uh, I feel like at least the conversation is being had

00:47:22.000 more and I, and I see it more in podcasts, but, uh, I, I think it's going to take a lot more than just,

00:47:27.520 uh, you know, the two of us talking about how great it is, uh, to be parents and how wonderful

00:47:31.120 and fulfilling it is to have little kids. I, I, I have, uh, three kids and we actually have, uh,

00:47:35.360 one on the way, so we're going to have four kids. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. We're pretty

00:47:39.360 excited and pretty overwhelmed, but anyway, Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. I, I enjoyed and

00:47:44.720 appreciate the conversation on immigration. And I think, I think we really have our work cut out for us,

00:47:48.640 uh, as a country, but I like your optimism when it comes to, you know, this, we have to have these

00:47:52.880 difficult conversations so that we can save our immigration system so that we don't lose that

00:47:56.480 consensus. And I think that's a really important takeaway message. Yeah, this was great. Thanks

00:48:00.800 so much for the wide raising chat. Pleasure to be here. Okay. All right, Aaron, take care. That's

00:48:04.640 Aaron Lee Woodrick from the McDonald Laurier Institute. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm

00:48:07.840 Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - March 18, 2024

How to FIX Canada’s broken immigration system

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