Juno News - May 21, 2024


'Temporary workers suppress Canadian wages'： Harrison Faulkner DEBATES Dan Kelly


Episode Stats

Length

27 minutes

Words per Minute

183.2255

Word Count

5,050

Sentence Count

217

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

25


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Temporary foreign workers suppress the wages of Canadians if they're willing to work with less
00:00:05.680 rights, you're willing to take a lower wage, that will put downward pressure on wages. Do you not
00:00:10.560 agree with that? I don't know. Look, unions put that argument forward. Unions that are trying to
00:00:15.800 protect the Canadian workforce. Do you think that immigration has played a role, the rapid rise in
00:00:21.640 our population has played a role in the housing crisis faced across the country? I do. I do think
00:00:26.400 that there is some evidence that we are, I think it could actually be helpful for the housing side
00:00:34.480 if we were bringing immigrants to actually help us solve the housing crisis. What would be too much
00:00:39.240 immigration in your opinion, Dan? Immigration is one of the most pressing and politically
00:00:44.960 consequential debates happening in our country right now. You can find thousands of articles and
00:00:50.020 videos online denouncing Justin Trudeau's mass immigration agenda or the same amount of content
00:00:55.460 online promoting the immigration scheme of Justin Trudeau as the solution to Canada's economy.
00:01:00.500 However, rarely is there an opportunity to have a thoughtful debate on this critical question,
00:01:06.980 but that's what we intend to do right now. Joining me on the Faulkner show is Dan Kelly,
00:01:11.780 the CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, a lobbying organization that represents
00:01:17.380 small and medium-sized businesses in Canada. Kelly and the CFIB are advocates of immigration into Canada
00:01:23.540 as a way to solve the labor shortage in this country. Now, that is not to say that they think
00:01:27.460 everything is perfect with the system, but it is certainly to say that they do believe the
00:01:31.380 international student program and the TFW program are forces for good in this country and that they
00:01:36.740 oppose the federal government's recent decision to put a cap on the number of student visas and TFWs
00:01:42.900 coming into the country. Well, with that out of the way, let's get into it. Dan, thank you so much for
00:01:46.580 coming on. Happy to be with you. So, you've written in numerous articles and you've had numerous
00:01:51.620 social media posts advocating for the Canadian government to maintain the international student
00:01:58.020 program as it is and the temporary foreign worker program as it is. I'm curious to know,
00:02:03.220 why do you feel this way? Well, look, just to be clear, we've not suggested that the government
00:02:08.420 shouldn't put in place any kind of limits whatsoever, but we are making the point that going from one
00:02:15.380 extreme to the other is not helpful, certainly not helpful for small and medium-sized firms that
00:02:20.980 often depend on the labor force input that they get from foreign workers and foreign students.
00:02:27.460 So, I get that there might need to be some degree of capping of the service.
00:02:31.780 At the same time, the switch, the speed of the switch is pretty harmful, and we do want to make sure
00:02:38.340 that we defend some of the positive benefits of foreign workers and foreign students supplementing
00:02:46.260 the Canadian labor force. This has been a real help to a lot of small and medium-sized firms that are
00:02:51.460 desperate for staff and haven't been able to find it through other means.
00:02:56.180 I want to get into that. One of the arguments that we hear about why we need the international student
00:03:00.660 program to be bringing in the number of student visas we have in the temporary foreign worker program
00:03:05.460 is that we have a labor shortage in this country. It turns out that from what we've been able to find,
00:03:10.900 the labor shortage does not exist when it comes to skilled jobs. In fact, there is a surplus of
00:03:17.540 available applicants with a bachelor's degree or a diploma for available skilled jobs, and presumably
00:03:23.780 when these students come through these colleges, they will then move to that skilled group of applicants.
00:03:31.540 Obviously, I'm assuming that labor shortage is just in the low-skilled job industry. Would you agree with that?
00:03:38.500 No. I will say that there are labor shortages right throughout the economy in all sorts of sectors out
00:03:45.780 there. I take your point, and you're right, that there are lots of skilled workers with university degrees
00:03:53.860 that are looking for work in particular fields, and in some cases, they may not have a job to go to.
00:03:58.900 But that often is as a result of a mismatch between the area that they've studied and the job that might
00:04:05.220 require those particular skills. So we have gaps all over the place. We have surpluses of graduates from
00:04:12.740 some programs and giant shortages in other areas. So there is a shortage of skilled workers in all sorts
00:04:19.940 of fields out there. But the premise of your point is absolutely true, and that is where some of the gaps
00:04:27.300 are most acute is in the entry-level junior parts of the economy. Retail, hospitality, the service sector,
00:04:34.980 arts and entertainment. There's a whole bunch of fields that are looking for entry-level workers that
00:04:40.500 don't have massive amounts of skills or education, but we need people. And many employers in those
00:04:48.020 environments are saying, I'm not finding any Canadian applicants, but I do have some available. You know,
00:04:54.100 there are foreign students, foreign workers that would love to take these jobs. That certainly provides
00:04:59.220 benefits to us as Canadians as a whole as well. And why do you think that Canadians aren't taking or
00:05:05.780 applying for these low-skill jobs? Well, look, we, this is part of the success of our system
00:05:12.580 in many ways. And look, I'm a parent of a 15-year-old, so I'm probably as guilty as anyone of this. But
00:05:19.460 we have upskilled the Canadian workforce like very few other countries in the world. We have,
00:05:24.580 Canada has the highest or near highest level of graduates from post-secondary education in the
00:05:32.020 entire world. And so we push young kids to get a university education, to go and learn higher and
00:05:38.900 higher skill levels. They come out of these programs and then are, you know, often deeply in debt and
00:05:44.100 they're looking for jobs in their chosen field of study and sometimes struggling to do that. Meanwhile,
00:05:50.340 we have thousands and thousands of jobs, hundreds of thousands of jobs sitting vacant in all sorts of
00:05:56.660 parts of the junior economy. I can understand why a university student that comes out of a program
00:06:01.700 20 grand in debt after the degree is saying, hey, I don't really want to go and work in that job in
00:06:06.980 the quick service restaurant or on the farmer's field. I certainly could do it, but that's not
00:06:13.860 what I studied for. That's not why I went into debt. So if Canadian young kids are not anxious to take
00:06:20.180 these jobs, parents are not pushing their kids to take these jobs. And then from the immigration program
00:06:26.020 with the higher skilled folks coming into Canada, they're not particularly keen to take these jobs.
00:06:33.300 Well, if we still do want to go to a restaurant, we still do want to be able to go to a service business,
00:06:40.100 who's going to work there? Right. So it sounds from what I'm hearing, sounds like your position is that
00:06:47.140 we actually just haven't had enough immigration in order to solve this crisis with lower skilled jobs. We need
00:06:55.220 more people to keep coming in until we have enough of them that are willing to take these low skilled
00:06:59.780 jobs that are not being taken by even new immigrants or Canadians. So I guess the question I have, do you
00:07:07.060 agree with that? Well, no, look, what I'm saying is that we have a bit of dishonesty in our immigration
00:07:13.460 system. We tell the rest of the world, send us your best and your brightest. The people that can come to
00:07:19.540 Canada through the traditional immigration program, the ones that get enough points to come to Canada,
00:07:24.660 they typically are super well-educated with higher educational attainment than most of the Canadian
00:07:31.940 domestic population. They often have tons of work experience as well to get enough points to come
00:07:36.820 to Canada. And then they come here and they find the struggle to find jobs in their chosen profession
00:07:45.220 because their skills are not recognized. They end up working in the junior parts of the economy anyway,
00:07:50.660 often because they feel kind of locked out. What I've said publicly many, many times is meanwhile,
00:07:57.860 from around the world, there are lots of people who would love to come to Canada to take some of the
00:08:02.340 jobs that Canadians themselves are not lining up to take. We need an immigration system that can do it all.
00:08:08.820 We need, of course, some highly skilled immigrants to come into Canada for jobs in universities, for jobs in
00:08:15.380 health care and education at the highest skill levels. But we also need people like my Ukrainian
00:08:21.140 ancestors that came to work on a farm. We need people who are prepared to do some of the work that
00:08:26.020 Canadians themselves are not keen to do. And if we can match that skill set up, man, that can be a huge
00:08:34.340 economic driver for the country. So I think we do need immigration at all levels for the country. We can't,
00:08:40.020 I think, the point that has been raised that I think is entirely valid, we can't have one system
00:08:46.340 for the highly skilled immigrants with a cap on it, and then no cap whatsoever on the on foreign
00:08:52.580 students and temporary foreign workers. I do get that we need to make sure that we're bringing in
00:08:57.620 strategically and that we were able to meet the service requirements of these new folks for housing
00:09:02.740 and health care and everything else. So we do need to make sure the systems are coordinated, but I don't
00:09:07.300 want us to turn off the tap of immigration, especially in some of the lower skilled categories,
00:09:13.380 because we need it. So I mean, in the case of the International Student Program, they're not
00:09:17.380 turning off the tap, are they? They're just restricting it by half. That's right. They're reducing
00:09:22.100 it from, you can have, instead of having 30% of your workforce, you have to have 20%. Now look,
00:09:27.780 the employer though has huge responsibilities before you can bring in a lower skilled immigrant.
00:09:32.820 You have to arrange for them to have housing. You have to pay for them to come to Canada,
00:09:36.980 pay for them to leave Canada. There are huge obligations on them. And I think there's the
00:09:41.380 view out there that somehow employers are just kind of playing fast and loose here. And while there
00:09:46.100 are some bad actors, for sure, for the most part, this has been a big win for the employer and for the
00:09:51.940 for the new immigrant. We also have a lot of success in the seasonal agricultural program.
00:09:56.500 But is it a big win, Dan, for the Canadian people to have an expansion of say,
00:10:01.140 the temporary foreign worker program? It may be a big win. I'm certain that it is a big win for employers.
00:10:06.260 They, of course, aren't having to pay wages to Canadians that have higher expectations and
00:10:10.900 higher working standard expectations. And I'm sure it's a benefit to the people that are coming in.
00:10:15.300 But does it ultimately benefit the Canadian people? Because there's a lot of academic
00:10:19.380 research that shows that actually, temporary foreign workers suppress the wages of Canadians.
00:10:25.060 If they're willing to work with less rights, you're willing to take a lower wage,
00:10:29.700 that will put downward pressure on wages. Do you not agree with that?
00:10:32.180 I don't know. Look, unions put that argument forward, unions that are trying to protect the
00:10:37.300 Canadian workforce. They say if we bring in more people, it will depress wages. We've seen no
00:10:43.940 studies that have actually backed that up. In fact, for the temporary foreign worker program to be able
00:10:48.260 to access it, you have to have the government set the wage level that is acceptable in that industry,
00:10:53.700 which is typically way higher than what small businesses pay. We've had lots of employers tell us that
00:10:59.700 they are, in fact, are expected to bring in a foreign worker. You have to pay more than you would
00:11:05.380 to a domestic worker in that same setting because the government sets the wage rate, not you as the
00:11:11.460 employer himself. So there are certainly lots of theories that left-wing groups, unions put forward
00:11:18.420 to suggest that bringing in immigration is depressing wages. But we've seen nothing that suggests that that's
00:11:25.060 the case. What about then this statistic that shows between April 2019 and the end of 2023,
00:11:34.100 inflation adjusted per person GDP fell 3% from 59 to 58,000. And of course, that the same thing goes
00:11:43.540 for real wages in this country. So I'm guessing that between 2019 and 2023, the immigration stream that we
00:11:50.980 brought in, again, record growth, just either hasn't been enough or it hasn't quite worked out the way
00:11:56.260 that we've been told by advocates of immigration, because these statistics show that Canada is getting
00:12:01.140 poorer. Yeah, well, look, I don't disagree with those findings at all. But what happened? We had a
00:12:08.420 pandemic in that period of time, at which point immigration almost halted. And Canada had the longest
00:12:15.460 lockdowns in the entire world, we shut down our business community longer than anywhere else,
00:12:22.340 causing massive dislocation of the labor force and of for employers. So we took, you know, we took
00:12:29.540 years off of our GDP growth because Canada went overboard with pandemic with pandemic restrictions.
00:12:36.900 Well, Canada does have is a bit of an outlier in this when it comes to the major economies with our
00:12:44.020 our turn, our economic downturn. So again, not only are we an outlier with the rate of growth that we've
00:12:50.420 pursued through immigration, but we're also an outlier in terms of our economic downturn. So again,
00:12:55.220 to me, when I see those statistics, I see the two being related. I don't see them being isolated incidents.
00:13:01.860 Interesting. Well, and I also wonder, you know, again, it just goes back to this question,
00:13:09.380 is the international student program, as we've seen so far, with the horror stories coming out of
00:13:15.140 these programs, with the fact that we know almost all of these students end up working in low skilled
00:13:20.500 service jobs where they can be exploited, because we've seen the reports out of there.
00:13:25.220 Is any of this ultimately good for Canadians? And if so, why? Because I'll also give you this statistic.
00:13:30.420 The overwhelming majority of students who are coming here on an international student visa,
00:13:34.580 which is over a million, by the way, which is up between the previous record, which was last year,
00:13:39.620 and again, the previous record the year before that, the overwhelming majority of these students
00:13:43.780 are studying business commerce, business management, and computing and IT with over almost
00:13:50.020 close to 100,000 studying ESL. I'm trying to understand why this program is good for Canadians.
00:13:56.500 Sure. Well, look, the fact is that we as a country are going to need, we have the demographic realities
00:14:04.420 of the country suggest that with our rapidly aging population, we are going to need workers in all
00:14:10.740 sorts of fields in order just to keep the lights on as a nation. And while, of course, that ebbs and
00:14:16.100 flows over time, and perhaps some of the limitation of the numbers is entirely appropriate to discuss from
00:14:23.220 a public policy perspective. If we turn the tap off too hard, we are going to really struggle to provide
00:14:30.100 service, basic services to Canadians in all sorts of fields. Where are the people that we're going to
00:14:35.300 need to take care of mom in a personal care home, if we don't draw a continued supply of highly skilled,
00:14:43.620 very compassionate foreign workers that come into Canada? We need to, we need to make sure that we are
00:14:49.060 being smart about this as a country. I absolutely agree with that. And whether we have gone too far
00:14:54.500 with that, and we've not kept up in terms of providing housing and basic services to some of
00:14:59.700 the new immigrants or temporary foreign workers that we're bringing in, also I think an incredibly valid
00:15:04.580 point. But I just want to defend a lot of the educational institutions right now. There are a lot of,
00:15:10.020 I mean, there is the view, again, often among unions and left, left of center groups, that, that private
00:15:16.900 vocational schools, private education is somehow a terrible thing. And these are all worthless programs
00:15:23.220 that are basically a backdoor approach to immigration. I'm not suggesting that there isn't some of that,
00:15:28.980 that we, but provinces regulate these, these training institutions and employers often really seek
00:15:36.580 out graduates rather than from PhD programs. They seek out graduates from, from private vocational
00:15:43.380 schools, technical training institutions. And those have been, I think it's been a win for the country
00:15:50.740 when we're able to bring in some immigrants that study and have some period of time where they're also
00:15:55.540 working at the quick service restaurant in the service location, taking jobs that otherwise would just go
00:16:01.380 begging for staff. Wage levels absolutely are an important piece of this. Employers have been
00:16:08.180 raising wages dramatically just to try to keep up. But I got to tell you, the program, generally speaking,
00:16:15.380 has been working quite well. What I love about where we should go is if we bring people over on a temporary basis,
00:16:23.780 we should give them a pathway to permanent residency. So if they come over on a temporary basis and they say,
00:16:30.340 let's work for a year or two while you're studying or in a job, then you can flip to permanent, a permanent
00:16:36.100 status in Canada. To me, that takes away some of the worries about whether or not the employer is
00:16:41.460 going to have some kind of unfair advantage and, and, and actually treat the employee poorly.
00:16:47.140 So you would advocate to give international students, almost all international students who come
00:16:52.100 here and are working permanent residency, even if they're not fulfilling jobs that are required in the
00:16:57.060 economy right now, say like the service industry, say like, no, that's not what I'm saying at all.
00:17:01.380 I do want to make sure that, that, well, in fact, to be able to come to Canada, uh, to, to have a,
00:17:08.260 uh, to have permanent status, you have to be able to fill a job. The temporary foreign worker program
00:17:12.260 is different than the foreign student program. The temporary foreign worker program is already assessed
00:17:16.420 that there is a job sitting vacant. Uh, the employer is expected to provide housing. The employer
00:17:21.540 is expected to pay the prevailing wage rate. So that program is separate from the foreign student
00:17:26.100 program. The foreign student program, if you're in Canada, you're working well, you're providing value,
00:17:32.020 giving you a pathway that after a couple of year period, you could flip to permanent status,
00:17:37.300 we believe would be a good outcome and balance the labor market needs, uh, with of course, the,
00:17:43.220 the needs of foreign workers and, uh, and of Canadians. But it's, you, you would say that it's good value,
00:17:48.180 even if they're not, for example, working in the healthcare industry or they're working
00:17:52.740 in construction, it would be good value if they were still in the service and food industry.
00:17:56.420 Uh, what we, well, well, who are we going to find to work in the service industry,
00:18:02.020 in food services, other services, uh, in, in, in a ton of educational categories. We're not,
00:18:08.980 we're not, we don't have a lineup of Canadian young people saying, hey, I want to go and work in,
00:18:14.020 uh, Estevan, Saskatchewan at the, at the, uh, local, uh, pizza place. We are struggling to find
00:18:21.300 people to take those jobs. Wages are a part of it, but it's not the only part of it. We,
00:18:26.580 we have basically discouraged Canadian young people from getting work, uh, experience in some of these
00:18:32.740 small businesses. We just don't have enough young people to supplement the workforce of the country.
00:18:37.780 And that's why these programs have been overall big wins for us as a country. Uh, do we need to
00:18:44.260 make sure that we have some controls in place and make sure that we are, we are not, uh, bringing in
00:18:49.700 more immigrants than the, than the nation can handle from a housing and healthcare perspective?
00:18:54.020 Of course, we need to think about those things, but we need to make sure that we're doing this in
00:18:57.700 balance. Well, we recently heard from Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown. I'm going back to the, the,
00:19:03.140 uh, the international student question here. Sure. We recently heard from Patrick Brown that there were
00:19:08.180 80 diploma mill colleges in Brampton. I think you were, you were noting that these private colleges
00:19:14.020 are, are fundamentally good for the Canadian economy. They, they, they do good. So would you
00:19:19.220 agree that the colleges, which we've, which we've heard about are essentially just diploma mills? Um,
00:19:25.620 would you agree that those 80 colleges in Brampton are good for the Canadian economy? And if so,
00:19:31.060 I don't know which of the 80, uh, colleges, uh, mayor, my Brown was speaking of, but I can tell you
00:19:37.620 is that there are, there are hundreds and hundreds of fantastic vocational schools across the country.
00:19:43.860 And there may be some poor quality ones, but we should be making sure that the poor quality schools
00:19:49.940 are rooted out by provincial governments, uh, whether they're serving a foreign worker or whether
00:19:54.980 they're serving a Canadian worker. We, we should make sure that we have basic, good quality education.
00:20:01.780 Well, the question I have for you then is would you, or would anyone at the CFIB for that matter,
00:20:08.100 be willing to send their own child to one of these private colleges to get an education?
00:20:14.100 Well, there's, there's tens of thousands of Canadian young people in these very colleges themselves.
00:20:19.860 Well, the ones that, the ones, the ones that primarily serve international students.
00:20:22.980 Unless you're going to give me a name of one that I know about, I'm not going to be able to tell you
00:20:27.140 whether that one is a good one or not. Okay. Well, how about, how about Conestoga and Brampton?
00:20:32.660 Sure. I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with, uh, with that program or that institution. What I can tell you
00:20:38.340 is that there are loads of colleges that are of great quality. And some have said that there are
00:20:43.780 some poor quality ones. We should be, of course, ensuring that the quality of education, whether it
00:20:48.740 is for a foreign, foreign student or a Canadian student is, is that these are quality institutions
00:20:55.220 providing quality education. That absolutely should be part of it.
00:20:58.180 So again, I just, I'm, I'm obviously, I disagree with you on the temporary foreign worker and the
00:21:05.860 international student question, because we've seen a major surge in these, in the number of students,
00:21:13.140 but we we've also seen tens of thousands of construction jobs being lost. I'm just, I'm just
00:21:19.620 wondering what would be too much immigration in your opinion, Dan? Look, I agree with you that there are,
00:21:25.540 we haven't done a good job of bringing in, uh, ensuring that construction has a good stream of
00:21:33.140 immigrants, uh, and temporary foreign workers that the, the, the immigration program, the traditional
00:21:39.060 immigration program works well for the highest levels of education and experience, uh, out there.
00:21:45.700 And that has been kind of the Canadian consensus that the, that immigration is good as long as we're
00:21:50.260 bringing in people with lots of university education, lots of experience in strong French
00:21:55.060 language skills. If they come to Canada, if, if new immigrants come to Canada for, in those categories,
00:22:01.380 that's a net positive for the country. However, the challenge is, is we often bring in immigrants
00:22:07.140 at that high level, uh, with those high levels of education and experience, the jobs that are sitting
00:22:12.340 vacant are in some of the junior parts of the economy in construction, agriculture, the service economy,
00:22:18.100 and then the immigrant ends up taking some of these jobs and they like Canadians themselves say,
00:22:23.540 wait a minute, this isn't why I went to school. And they either return to their home country or they
00:22:28.980 become very disen, disengaged, uh, and, and unhappy about the fact that they're taking jobs that are way
00:22:36.580 below their skills and experience. What we need to do is we need to make sure that the immigration system
00:22:43.780 brings in folks for specific jobs with the expectation that they're actually doing those
00:22:48.980 specific jobs. The temporary, the, the foreign student program, the, the, the actual work in Canada
00:22:54.740 is a side piece of what they're, what they're there to do. They're primarily there to study here to study,
00:23:00.500 but along with that, if they can fill jobs that are going vacant, that's a great thing. In construction,
00:23:06.340 though, I agree with you. We are really struggling to find construction workers. The shortage of labor is
00:23:12.500 through the roof and the immigration system, even now with these changes, with these programs,
00:23:17.620 does not deliver, uh, the people that are skilled in construction trades and that needs to change.
00:23:24.420 Uh, do you think that immigration has played a role, the rapid rise in our population has played
00:23:30.180 a role in the housing crisis faced across the country?
00:23:32.580 Yeah, I do. I do think that there is, that there is some evidence that, that the, we are,
00:23:39.220 I think it could actually be helpful for the housing side if we were bringing immigrants to actually
00:23:44.100 help us solve the housing crisis. So that's my earlier point. If we brought in immigrants that could
00:23:49.300 actually come and live in Canada and help supplement the, the, uh, the workforce in the construction
00:23:55.300 trades, that would be, I think, a very powerful thing. We're not doing that very well at all.
00:23:59.940 Uh, but I do think that the point has been made and I think well, that we have limits on the permanent
00:24:06.900 immigration system, but we've not had any kind of limits on temporary foreign workers and foreign
00:24:11.700 students. And as a result, that program has grown dramatically. And that's why I think that there are
00:24:18.020 some attempts to try to scale it back. My point though, is if we scale it back too far, too fast,
00:24:24.100 we are going to create other pressures. And that is on the fact that we're going to just create more
00:24:29.300 vacant positions, which don't help us as Canadians in any way, shape or form.
00:24:35.300 So I, I'm just wondering, do you, do you think that Canada has brought in too many people right
00:24:41.140 now or not enough? Uh, I look, I, I, I would be hard pressed to say what the exact number of immigrants
00:24:48.980 we should bring into Canada is. I think the point though, that has been made is that if we have unlimited
00:24:54.740 immigration on one piece of our immigration system limits on the other, that that's not particularly
00:25:00.020 helpful. I get that point. Uh, and, and, and so we, we accept that there needs to be some capping
00:25:07.060 of that, but to go from kind of unlimited to a very narrow cap is something that I worry about. If we
00:25:13.700 turn the dial too far, too fast, that can create problems. We've taken a long time to build a good,
00:25:20.420 solid immigration system. One of the things that we do best in Canada is immigrant settlement.
00:25:25.860 We, I think it's not perfect here by any means, but we have a better reputation around the world
00:25:31.460 for bringing in immigrants, helping them acclimatize and get used to this. We don't have societal
00:25:36.820 dislocations where we have a big anti-immigrant, uh, view of viewpoint on the part of most Canadians.
00:25:43.300 And that's a real strength. If we turn off the tap and we limit immigration too far, too fast,
00:25:49.140 we're going to create even more acute labor shortages. And I do think that that, we need
00:25:54.500 to think about that for the future of the country. Well, the last question I have for you, Dan, is on
00:25:59.380 that. You raised the point that we don't have an anti-immigration, uh, like a, a movement in this
00:26:04.980 country, but we've seen the data. We've seen the public polling that actually a majority of Canadians
00:26:10.260 and a majority of immigrants want immigration to be capped and want it to be slowed down. Why do you
00:26:15.780 think that your position is now the minority amongst even immigrants? I mean, why do you
00:26:21.460 think there's been such a major change in the way Canadians perceive immigration?
00:26:25.060 Well, I think part of it is that Canadians are experiencing a housing, uh, shortage. There's
00:26:29.860 no question about that. And there, and, and we're looking at ways that we can fix that. I think it's,
00:26:35.460 I think it's entirely appropriate to have the discussion about how many immigrants we should bring
00:26:40.260 into Canada, uh, as a whole. I'm not here to be the advocate for unlimited immigration. Just,
00:26:46.260 just have, uh, you know, everybody that wishes to come, come to Canada. I get the point that we
00:26:50.900 need to make sure that we're doing, that we're being smart about this. I guess I, I also just want
00:26:55.780 to make sure that I'm waving the flag to say, uh, going, going too far the other way is not going to
00:27:00.580 help us. Um, you, we, we need to, you know, if you live in an area we've experienced this coming out of
00:27:07.940 the pandemic where there were massive labor shortages in all sorts of areas of the economy
00:27:14.020 and Canadians were pretty unhappy about that too.
00:27:18.500 Right. Well, Dan, I really appreciate you taking the time and, uh, having a good back and forth on
00:27:24.020 this issue. It's, it's a rare, it's a rare occurrence. I think when we get to have a debate about
00:27:28.180 immigration and so I do really appreciate you, uh, you willing to chat and speak with us. Happy to be with you.