Juno News - May 24, 2020


Is immigration the only solution for economic recovery？


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

147.97896

Word Count

853

Sentence Count

5

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 our parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux was originally estimating that Canada would face 252
00:00:12.120 billion dollars in federal debt because of the coronavirus pandemic but he recently admitted
00:00:17.580 this estimate of 252 billion was too optimistic and that in all likelihood our federal deficit
00:00:24.840 will be 1 trillion dollars or more and meanwhile because of the coronavirus shutdown measures
00:00:30.720 Canada's unemployment rate has risen to 13% for comparison it was 5.5% in January of this year
00:00:38.820 and in April alone we lost 2 million jobs this has many questioning how are we going to get on the road
00:00:46.500 to economic recovery well immigration minister Marco Mendicino hinted at an answer earlier this
00:00:53.520 month Mendicino said immigration will absolutely be key to our success and our economic recovery we
00:01:01.380 continue to rely on immigration it will be an economic driver and this will be the north star
00:01:07.080 of our policy going forward now if you ask me it's gonna be hard to convince Canadians who
00:01:12.840 are facing an unemployment crisis that we should be pleased about resuming the plan to welcome 1
00:01:18.660 million new immigrants in the next three years so it's my prediction that we're going to be
00:01:23.220 facing heavy government messaging trying to convince us of the economic virtues of
00:01:28.740 immigration and I think we need to have an understanding of the facts minister Mendicino and the minister who
00:01:35.700 came before him Ahmed Hussein as well as other immigration enthusiasts often cite Canada's aging population
00:01:43.140 as the reason why Canada needs higher immigration levels so for Canada's population to replace itself
00:01:49.780 every woman would need to have an average of 2.1 children and this figure currently sits at 1.54
00:01:57.780 Canadians are having fewer children for a variety of economic and social reasons but this has made people
00:02:04.180 concerned that we're not going to have enough workers and thus taxpayers to fund our social programs down the road
00:02:11.780 many are proclaiming immigration is the only answer and minister Mendicino said just as much in March when
00:02:19.540 he said immigration is the only solution Mendicino's predecessor Ahmed Hussein echoed this sentiment when
00:02:27.140 he said why do we need immigration well five million Canadians are set to retire by 2035 and we have fewer
00:02:35.380 people working to support seniors and retirees however a policy piece authored by three economists concluded
00:02:43.460 immigration is not a solution to demographic problems such as population aging and what a large body of
00:02:50.820 evidence indicates is that immigration is neither good nor bad for the economy as assessed by its impact on
00:02:58.420 the living standards of current citizens so you can you can say well immigration results in higher gdp
00:03:05.300 for the country but that doesn't mean per capita gdp is higher that doesn't mean people's individual
00:03:10.180 circumstances are better just because the country's gdp is higher immigration is not a solution to an aging
00:03:16.420 workforce because working age immigrants bring along dependents with them whether that's a non-working spouse
00:03:22.740 who is taking care of children or parents and grandparents who are coming through family reunification
00:03:29.380 programs and those sorts of things so when politicians claim that immigration will remedy Canada's demographic
00:03:36.340 challenges they either have not looked at the research or they're lying the liberal government kind of acts as if
00:03:43.540 bringing over immigrants will instantly repair our economy and help us repay our debt so they kind of
00:03:49.140 treat them as if they're economic tools but they're going to be disappointed by using this approach
00:03:54.500 because it's very likely with higher immigration we will actually see a higher deficit this is from
00:04:00.660 the policy options piece newly arrived immigrants are a net drag on government budgets they pay less
00:04:07.780 in taxes on average and make average or slightly above average use of government services and benefits
00:04:13.220 second generation immigrants do well however which may offset this net drag to some extent
00:04:19.140 but the initial impact of a large increase in immigration should be expected to be
00:04:23.940 an increase in taxes a decrease in services an increase in deficits or some combination of the three
00:04:30.580 and when we're discussing immigration a lot of people bring up how
00:04:34.340 well a higher labor supply means that wages are depressed because now the market is flooded
00:04:40.340 however more canadian research is needed on that topic so if you have any resources feel free to drop them in the comment section
00:04:47.780 but one paper that's actually a phd dissertation found that for every 10 percent increase in new
00:04:54.660 immigrants in canada the wages of previous immigrants decrease by 2.6 percent so this means that an influx of
00:05:03.300 immigration does affect wages but it affects the wages not of the native-born population but of previous
00:05:11.540 established immigrants who came here 10 years ago or or prior if politicians wish to promote
00:05:19.220 immigration based on social factors that's a totally different story but when it comes to the
00:05:23.940 economics their claims that immigration is going to cure all of our financial woes simply do not hold
00:05:31.220 water i'm lindsay shepard with true north thanks so much for watching and i'll see you next time