The Candice Malcolm Show - 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

00:00:18.480 Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. So we have

00:00:36.720 been talking about immigration recently on the show. We've been breaking down all of the numbers,

00:00:41.280 which I find truly shocking how much our immigration system has grown, how many people we are admitting 1.00

00:00:47.840 every year into this country, how many illegal immigrants enter the country every year and end

00:00:51.600 up making asylum claims. The entire situation is completely out of control. There's no other way 1.00

00:00:57.360 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

00:01:14.320 Kitchener. He's been a corporate lawyer in London, Hong Kong and Dubai. And so basically the story is

00:01:20.640 that Aaron and I were recently on a panel together and we were talking about immigration, that there's

00:01:26.000 just so many issues when it comes to it. We had so many different kind of areas we want to talk about.

00:01:32.160 And then the panel that we did ended up being quite short. It was a great panel, great panel discussion

00:01:36.400 hosted by Colin Craig over at Second Street. But we felt that there was so much more of a need to get

00:01:42.480 into these issues more in depth, discuss them just at a deeper level. And so I invited Aaron to come

00:01:49.600 on to the podcast and discuss them. So Aaron, welcome to the show and thank you so much for joining us.

00:01:55.920 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

00:02:08.320 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 grown up 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 100 years ago. And that politicians, policymakers just haven't really been willing to

00:02:34.160 update the conversation on immigration. You talk about the challenges broadly being in three categories,

00:02:41.200 economic impact, infrastructure, capacity, and cultural friction. So maybe we can just go

00:02:46.160 through each of those right now, or do you want to, do you want to give a little overview of what your,

00:02:50.480 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

00:02:58.000 think 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. I make the piece,

00:03:08.080 that argument in the piece, but the problem is things have changed. And then if we don't have

00:03:13.440 this conversation, if we don't grapple with these realities and face the facts,

00:03:17.360 we are going to lose support for immigration. We're already seeing that and it makes perfect 1.00

00:03:21.440 sense that we are. So I view this as trying to salvage what has been a helpful attitude towards

00:03:27.760 immigration in this country. And if we don't deal with some of the harder truths,

00:03:31.360 we're going to lose them. We're going to see a very ugly reaction that I think is going to end up

00:03:34.800 hurting Canada. So I wrote this not as an anti-immigrant diatribe or an anti-immigration

00:03:39.840 diatribe, but as a way to try and salvage the best of what I think works for Canada,

00:03:44.480 while shaving off the things that are doing harm, both to Canada and frankly, also to immigrants 0.92

00:03:49.440 themselves. Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because I think that there is a

00:03:53.600 sort of uniparty consensus when it comes to immigration that for a long time, on the conservative

00:03:58.960 side, 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 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

00:04:19.680 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

00:04:34.960 listening to their concerns. They don't feel that they're the ones who are at the center of the

00:04:38.560 policy. And I think it's important to sort of start at the very first principle. Like,

00:04:42.880 why do we have immigration? Why is Canada a country that seems to prioritize immigration?

00:04:48.960 Like, what is the purpose of our immigration system in your opinion?

00:04:52.080 Yeah. And if you can go back historically, right, we want, generally people want immigration because

00:04:56.640 they want people to come to the country because they need someone to help. They need people to

00:04:59.760 help build the country, especially a new country like Canada, a small, young country. We wanted to

00:05:04.320 bring immigrants here to build up the country, to fill the space, right? There were concerns around

00:05:08.880 the time of confederation. The West was this big open piece of land. So, you know, they were advertising

00:05:14.240 in Europe, come to Canada and you get free land. And so there is a, there is a fundamental economic

00:05:19.440 imperative for immigration. And maybe that's why, you know, in my piece, I started with the economic

00:05:24.800 argument because that really is the issue that cracked the door open on allowing us to debate

00:05:29.520 this. If you go back, you know, maybe 10 years, anyone who cast, you know, anyone who expressed

00:05:34.640 anything less than total enthusiasm for like immigration in any context anywhere was probably

00:05:39.200 going to get called a racist because there was an assumption that if you're against immigration,

00:05:42.880 it must be because of, you know, people with different skin colors who eat different foods.

00:05:47.280 The housing issue was the issue that really sort of affected so many people and it was

00:05:52.800 purely a numbers game. It's about demand, right? And adding immigrants, too many of them at one time, 1.00

00:05:58.240 just spikes demand. And if not enough supply, that leads to high prices. This is Econ 101.

00:06:03.280 That was the sort of thing that cracked the door open on the conversation and allowed us to at least

00:06:08.000 start to begin debating this. I don't think we're quite yet there with the adult conversation, but

00:06:13.520 we are starting to see more and more mainstream discussion about how do we have an immigration

00:06:17.600 system that works works well for Canada and for Canadians. Well, it's interesting that you that

00:06:21.920 you bring in housing because we're often told by the political leaders in our country that the reason

00:06:26.800 for like our vast open immigration system is because of labor market shortages. Like specifically,

00:06:32.560 we're talking about there are jobs in Canada that we cannot fill, that companies are looking to hire

00:06:37.440 people, but they can. I think construction is a pretty fair example of that. Like we clearly seem

00:06:42.240 to have a housing shortage and it seems that we don't have enough people to quickly build houses.

00:06:46.800 Like whenever governments come up with proposals, it's like, okay, this is going to take like eight

00:06:50.160 years. It's like, why? Why don't we just build them now? Well, maybe we don't have enough

00:06:53.600 construction workers, but then the people that they're bringing into the country don't seem to be

00:06:57.680 filling those. Like I'm not seeing huge influxes of like Polish construction workers coming in and

00:07:02.480 building houses in Canada. What I see, and I think we have a clip of this or we can play it, is that

00:07:09.760 we have people coming into Canada without jobs and then they end up coming and like there's a job

00:07:14.640 fair at the Toronto airport or at Walmart or McDonald's and you see dozens or hundreds of people

00:07:19.920 lining up down the street to try to get minimum wage jobs. Well, no wage jobs historically have been

00:07:24.160 for young Canadians, right? Like that's how you get your foot in the door. Like when I was 17 years

00:07:28.080 old, I worked at a fish and chips shop and that was my first job and I learned how to have a

00:07:32.400 job, right? And it's like when you have immigrants who are like in their 20s and they're coming and 1.00

00:07:37.040 they're taking those minimum wage jobs, like what are young Canadians supposed to do? So

00:07:40.800 what do you make of that sort of economic mismatch? Am I misreading it or is that what you see happening?

00:07:45.440 You're right. Like in theory, the idea of, you know, if we've got a labor shortage,

00:07:48.960 you bring in more labor, right? The problem is not all skills are fungible. So, you know,

00:07:52.880 if you have people with particular skills, say construction skills, and you have a shortage of

00:07:57.120 construction, then that's a good fit. But if you have people who come here that don't have

00:08:01.200 construction skills, that's not really going to help you on the construction shortage issue.

00:08:05.760 You reference things like service jobs, minimum wage jobs. I think you're right. I think a lot of

00:08:11.040 the people who come here, and you can't really blame the immigrants, right? For them, that is a

00:08:14.320 boon. They're coming from a country where they earn far less. So for them, it's a deal to come here and 1.00

00:08:18.000 work for minimum wage. It's important. The question is, why can't we fill that labor with Canadians? You 0.98

00:08:23.920 allude to younger Canadians that used to take these jobs. Part of the problem is a lot of those young 1.00

00:08:30.480 Canadians aren't, they're not willing to take those jobs. And part of the reason they won't take them 0.96

00:08:34.320 is because they look at those jobs and see, well, you know, if I earn $15 an hour, what can I even

00:08:40.240 buy with $15 an hour? You get this, there's a malaise right now amongst our youth. And then

00:08:44.400 even bigger than this, I would argue, in certain regions of the country, particularly in Atlanta,

00:08:49.040 Canada, you have a tradition of acceptance of seasonal work. And so you have, and this was the catalyst

00:08:57.040 for a lot of bringing in temporary foreign workers, is you had employers in some parts of the country

00:09:02.400 saying, we can't find anybody to work here. And that's probably true. But then the question

00:09:06.880 shouldn't just be, oh, we're just going to import all these temporary workers to paper over it. It

00:09:10.720 should be to re-examine the incentive structure and whether or not some of the entitlement programs

00:09:15.600 are basically allowing Canadians to get away in some parts of the country with working only part of 0.68

00:09:20.480 the year. I mean, they're not, they're, they're papering over the symptoms and they're not

00:09:26.000 addressing the root problem here. And I think it just creates this toxic mix of consequences that

00:09:32.160 has led in large parts of the situation we're in today. Yeah, no, that's so interesting. And look,

00:09:36.480 if you're a young Canadian watching this, or if you have kids who are in that mold, you know,

00:09:40.800 it's not about making money, right? It's about getting job experience and setting yourself up.

00:09:44.800 Like I might be dating myself by making this reference, but when I was in high school,

00:09:48.960 I remember the minimum wage in British Columbia, I think it was seven or $8 an hour. And then they

00:09:53.120 brought in a new program, which if you were under a certain age and it was your first 500 hours

00:09:58.000 working, the minimum wage dropped down to $5 an hour. So my first job, I was getting paid $5 an hour,

00:10:02.960 whereas other people, their minimum wage, if they were older and had more experience,

00:10:06.480 I think it was eight or $10 an hour. And, you know, I worked and sometimes I would go and have a shift at

00:10:12.240 my 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,

00:10:25.840 I had to learn a bit about money and cash register and all that kind of stuff. Like it's not really

00:10:29.760 about the money that you're making, it's about the spill, especially when you're a teenager and

00:10:34.160 you're still living and you still have the benefit of living at home. I want to talk a little bit,

00:10:38.880 Erin, about the student visas and how that has come to play in all of this, because it seems like

00:10:44.240 it's sort of a loophole that just allows another nine, we had 900,000 students coming to Canada

00:10:50.880 last year. And Erin, I have to say, it's kind of sad. Like these aren't, these aren't 900,000

00:10:56.320 students that are going to like top ranked universities. Like they're not going to UBC

00:11:01.280 and McGill and the University of Alberta. A lot of them are kind of getting scammed. A lot of them

00:11:05.920 are going to these weird schools that you and I have never heard of, that they exist in strip malls

00:11:09.840 in suburban areas. And when you think about what these young people have done, you know,

00:11:15.040 they've taken on huge risk. A lot of times they've taken out huge loans in their home countries.

00:11:21.280 They've come across the world to Canada with the hopes of making a better world for them,

00:11:26.160 but I don't know that that's going to happen. And you know, you talk about how minimum wage in Canada

00:11:30.400 might seem low for us. It might be a lot for someone who's from like rural India or something like

00:11:34.960 that. But at the same time they still have to afford to live in Canada. It's still incredibly

00:11:38.800 expensive to rent an apartment or to find a house to live in. So they're still contributing to that

00:11:43.360 cost of living crisis. What's your make of this whole student visa thing? Well, I think you correctly 1.00

00:11:48.720 identify part of the double tragedy here, right? Some people think that criticizing things like this

00:11:53.200 student visa loophole is anti-immigrant. I don't see it that way at all. I see it as bad for Canadians

00:11:58.480 and bad for these people who, as you say, in many cases have been misled. They've been promised this like

00:12:03.840 amazing land 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

00:12:13.760 student visa approach because they can't get in through the PR stream. And so that there's sort

00:12:18.240 of a perfect storm of incentives that's led to this, Candace, and it's this. It's that for a lot

00:12:22.880 of these institutions, because politically it's very difficult for governments to allow tuition rates

00:12:28.720 for 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

00:12:42.240 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

00:12:55.520 extremely lucrative, a lot of colleges and universities would double down on this stream. I mean,

00:13:00.400 there's lots of evidence of some colleges, especially in Ontario and British Columbia,

00:13:04.320 that the number of international students over the last decade, decade and a half,

00:13:08.240 has quintupled or in some cases gone up 10 times because there's so much money to be made. So it's

00:13:13.120 just a giant cash cow for them. And in fact, it's also spawned some of these for-profit institutes,

00:13:19.440 which are essentially storefronts, that it's just a pure money-making model. And a lot of these

00:13:24.320 students come here, they barely go to class at all. If they go, they simply find work,

00:13:29.600 they don't pass the class, but the institution won't fail them because of course, then they

00:13:33.840 wouldn't be able to continue to charge them. So they graduate with their degree or their diploma.

00:13:38.320 Now they can qualify through the PR stream. So this is basically just a penance that they've paid

00:13:45.120 to qualify through the PR stream. And now they can bring their family over. And so you can see how

00:13:48.720 this, it's basically trying to scam a system that was designed to weed these types of folks out

00:13:54.000 because they did not meet the normal criteria through the PR stream. So I think it's a great

00:13:57.840 tragedy. I think it does not serve either those folks coming or the people who are already here

00:14:03.440 well. And the government has belatedly started to act on this, but it's going to take a while

00:14:08.160 before they can right-size what our carrying capacity is for a student stream.

00:14:14.240 I'm surprised to see a scam so out in the open. Like usually scams, you know, a journalist does

00:14:20.080 some digging, they expose it, and then the scam ends because it's like, you can't do that. That's

00:14:25.360 not right. That's not proper. Here we have, I mean, from 2013 to 2023, the number is 3x. We went

00:14:32.240 from 300,000 international students a year to 900,000. I didn't realize that they could make that jump

00:14:37.760 to permanent residency simply by what? Graduating from a Canadian institution. And then they have the

00:14:42.160 opportunity to get a permanent residency. Is that right? Yeah. Well, there's a point system,

00:14:47.680 right? And when you have that education, it increases your points. So it won't always be

00:14:52.640 the case that you qualify through PR, but it increases your odds, right? And so a lot of people,

00:14:56.720 if they know what the criteria are and getting that credential will get them over the hump,

00:15:02.320 that then moves them into a different category. So you can see they're exploiting one loophole

00:15:06.800 to then give them the points they need to access the other stream. And again, we have that point

00:15:12.000 system for a reason. It's designed to coming back to the labor market issue. We want the people that 0.99

00:15:16.640 match the skill set. And so if people can't get into that stream and they're trying to find a backdoor

00:15:22.080 entrance, that is undermining the whole point of having a category that's set up with certain standards

00:15:28.000 and with a certain cap on it. It's really unbelievable. And also, I mean, I made this

00:15:35.360 point on one of my shows the other day that you also have people who could potentially just claim

00:15:39.680 asylum. Like if they know that they're not going to pass their classes and they're not going to qualify

00:15:43.200 for PR, once you're physically in Canada, there's nothing stopping you from just saying,

00:15:48.000 I'm a refugee. And then all of a sudden you get all these other kind of gold-plated privileges and

00:15:54.160 entitlements for refugees. I want to just quickly talk about the refugee system, the landed asylum

00:15:59.840 system. These aren't people who have gone through the United Nations and they're determined to be

00:16:04.720 refugees. These are people who come into Canada illegally and then make a claim for asylum. And

00:16:10.000 some of them get accepted, some of them don't. We had 143,000 people come into Canada this way in 2023.

00:16:16.720 143,000. Erin, I worked in the Harper government. I worked in the immigration department. I was there in

00:16:23.440 2011, 2012. And back then we were talking about like 10,000 to 12,000 a year. And now we're talking

00:16:29.280 about 140,000 people. What has happened and what do you make of this? Is this also going to contribute

00:16:35.840 to undermining public trust in immigration? Yeah. Well, I've got one point in defense 1.00

00:16:41.840 of the migrants and two, I would say against the status quo. The one in defense is I do think we need 1.00

00:16:46.560 to keep perspective sometimes in terms of the amount of illegal and unlawful attempts to enter the

00:16:52.880 country pale in comparison to Europe and America. I mean, 143,000 is a lot for a country like Canada,

00:16:58.240 but we're simply blessed by geography to be harder to access. So, I mean, if we had a southern border

00:17:03.760 like the United States does with Mexico or borders like they do in Europe with neighboring countries,

00:17:09.040 we would be experiencing millions of people trying to come here. So we should be grateful that the

00:17:14.240 number is suddenly 143,000. That said, first of all, we got to remember that like refugees and

00:17:21.120 humanitarian intakes are, there's a process. And I think people have to, people have faith in that

00:17:27.360 process. You know, you have to follow the rules and it's not fair to other migrants who, you know, 1.00

00:17:32.720 follow the rules and tick all the right boxes and submit applications for others to jump the queue

00:17:37.280 and sort of just barge into this country. It's not fair to them. And I think it undermines trust 0.99

00:17:42.480 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

00:18:06.480 for people who don't follow the process. The last thing is just generally, I mean,

00:18:10.560 the humanitarian stream is different than the economic stream, right? We bring people

00:18:14.480 here on the economic stream because there's economic benefit for the humanitarian stream.

00:18:18.000 It really comes down to, you know, what is our caring capacity at any given moment in every,

00:18:22.720 any given time? It's just like a household that decides to make charitable donations, right?

00:18:26.720 If you're having a good year, you can give a little bit more to charity.

00:18:29.200 If you're not, you have to cut back. You have to, you have to pay your own bills first.

00:18:32.400 You have to take care of your own family first. And I think that, uh,

00:18:35.920 the same as has to be true of refugees and humanity. If there are good times,

00:18:40.000 I think Canada should probably take more, but if we're experiencing tough times and we need to

00:18:43.600 spend more money on Canadians, we have to cut back. We have to reduce that number. That's just,

00:18:47.920 it's the only way you're going to maintain political support. And I think it's completely

00:18:51.360 consistent with the way most people sort of govern their own household finances.

00:18:55.040 Well, this kind of goes back to the idea that Canada had a sort of a historic purpose of its

00:18:59.600 immigration system 50 to a hundred years ago. And that, and that has changed and we haven't 0.92

00:19:03.120 really caught up. Look, Canada has so many natural advantages when it comes to immigration,

00:19:06.960 which you discussed, like we don't share a border, right? It's actually quite difficult

00:19:11.040 to get to Canada and both Canada and the U S broadly have visa requirements, uh, for,

00:19:15.440 from like third world or developing countries. So it's harder for those people to even

00:19:19.040 get here. So to me, I mean, the fact that 143,000 people, yeah, it's, it's not as much as the

00:19:24.320 millions of people that are streaming across the Mexican border into the United States, but it's still a

00:19:28.000 problem. Yeah. It's not nothing. And, and, and it's so out of whack, uh, with our traditional

00:19:32.640 number. One of the things I noticed in your piece, Aaron, was that you were talking about how there

00:19:36.800 was, uh, over a million people that came to Canada in 2022, I crunched the numbers. And when you add

00:19:42.960 together, so we're at half a million for permanent residents, we're at 660,000 for, uh, for temporary

00:19:49.600 foreign workers, 900,000 for students, 150,000, 140,000 for asylum seekers. Uh, we're looking at

00:19:58.160 two. I mean, my math says 2.2 million. Um, so I, I, I guess, uh, like, what do you think the

00:20:05.600 right number is and how do you, how do you calculate that? Yeah. I mean, I think the first

00:20:10.000 number to look at is definitely the students, right? That is the easiest one to reduce. Now that

00:20:15.440 some of the colleges and universities won't like it because that obviously impacts the bottom line,

00:20:19.040 but other than them as the stakeholders, that is probably the single biggest piece of that 2.2

00:20:24.400 million that you can address most quickly. Um, the PR stream, I mean, that is on paper supposed

00:20:30.560 to be the one that most closely matches our economic needs. That's probably the toughest

00:20:34.800 one. The migration one, things like tying up rocks and road, you can probably, uh, you can probably

00:20:40.240 reduce. And then the TFW is a completely other kettle of fish, right? And we've kind of gone

00:20:44.720 all over the map on this over the last 20 years. You know, there are a lot of people in the business

00:20:48.400 community that said, you know, if we don't have TFWs and I can't run my business, a lot of governments

00:20:53.200 sort of exceeded to those demands. Like I said, I think there needs to be a fundamental rethink about

00:20:58.560 why is it like, if there are Canadians in certain parts of the country or certain demographics that

00:21:02.960 are not working and we're seeing like low workforce participation in some of these demographics.

00:21:07.760 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

00:21:15.120 entitlements. We need to address that first. You can't just paper over that by importing TFWs.

00:21:19.680 So I think the student stream, the TFWs are the two easiest ones from a policy standpoint to correct,

00:21:25.120 uh, refugees and, uh, you know, uh, asylum claims that as an enforcement issue. And then the toughest

00:21:31.360 one to crack is PR, but even addressing two of those four categories could easily slice that number

00:21:35.920 in half relatively quickly. Okay. Let's, let's talk about the, the permanent residents. And, uh,

00:21:40.960 I found a graph from stats Canada. I love, I love this graph. I always look at it.

00:21:44.640 This shows the, uh, Canada's historic intake of immigrants from starting in 1952. So this goes

00:21:50.800 all the way back for some reason, they archive this page and they stopped showing the new numbers,

00:21:56.320 but you can, and we can talk about what the new numbers are. This is just landed immigrants.

00:22:01.440 They used to call them landed immigrants, but it's actually permanent residents. And so,

00:22:04.640 Erin, you could see that this graph just from like a step away, you see peaks and valleys,

00:22:09.920 peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. So there's a pretty big bump right around

00:22:13.200 confederation in the 1880s, another big bump in the early, uh, the first decade of the,

00:22:18.720 of the 20th century between sort of 1905 and 1910, a little bump, uh, during world war one,

00:22:25.360 huge post war bump, uh, in the fifties and then kind of up and down and up and down and up and down.

00:22:31.360 And then you hit the nineties and you just sort of see a wall and it never goes down. It just goes up

00:22:36.400 and up and stops here in 2012. Uh, you know, back when the number was 250, we now know the number

00:22:41.680 is 500. So just imagine that the graph just continues upwards without any gaps all the way.

00:22:47.280 And you know, we're at 500 that the tallest peak on this graph from 1910 was 400,000. So we're now

00:22:53.280 higher than the highest peak in Canadian history. Well, one of the things, Erin, that strikes me,

00:22:58.800 um, about this graph is that we always had the valleys, right? So basically what would happen is that

00:23:03.600 we would have a couple of years where there'd be a huge surge in immigration and we'd let in

00:23:07.920 a whole bunch of people. And then the doors would kind of close and we'd have a few years to sort of

00:23:12.560 integrate everybody and to make sure that everyone becomes Canadian and that the communities kind of

00:23:17.440 merged together. And then we open it up again. And it seems to me that starting in the nineties or maybe

00:23:22.640 the early two thousands, that, that kind of tradition just fell apart. And instead of doing the sort of

00:23:29.120 gaps and open and close, open and close, open and close, we just like left it open.

00:23:33.200 And it's like, we're living through that experiment right now. You talked a little bit

00:23:36.320 about the cultural element of, you know, multiculturalism just not quite working and

00:23:40.480 some people feeling uneasy about how much their community has changed. What's your comment on that?

00:23:46.880 Yeah, this is still the third rail here, right? So we can talk about the economic issues and things

00:23:50.720 like pressures on infrastructure, but people don't want to get into the cultural friction element

00:23:55.200 because it's can be very uncomfortable for a lot of people. They don't want to seem like a racist.

00:23:58.720 Now to go back to your point about the peaks and valleys, I don't know if that was the

00:24:02.560 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,

00:24:16.880 you're talking about, uh, you know, migration, for example, to rural areas, which was a lot greater

00:24:22.480 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

00:24:34.400 assimilation is a charge word for a lot of people, but just the idea of, and I think this is true of 1.00

00:24:39.520 every country, you know, most people, when they, when they move to another country, they sort of

00:24:43.840 understand implicitly that they're supposed to over time and certainly their children over generations,

00:24:48.400 uh, adopt the ways of that country. That doesn't mean that you have to give up everything,

00:24:53.280 you know, from the homeland, but over time, there's just this sort of natural process where people,

00:24:58.000 a culture, a culture acclimate to where they're from. I mean, it's certainly the case in, uh, my

00:25:03.120 family, 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

00:25:12.800 naturally occur over time and absent some kind of active government policy trying to interfere with

00:25:18.960 that. That's, that's both what newcomers, um, expect to do and what Canadians already here sort 0.99

00:25:25.360 of expect of newcomers. Um, and we, we haven't had that. You talk about big M multiculturalism. I, 0.97

00:25:32.000 I think that is part of the problem here. It's not small and multiculturalism. I mean, 0.86

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

00:25:40.720 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 that's a bad thing. Um, that is part of the problem. And it, it, it, it has

00:25:56.160 created, um, it has created this tension between people who feel that, uh, you know, people who are

00:26:02.720 coming here are not, um, not part of a common national project and are sort of clinging to things

00:26:08.240 from the homeland. So I think that, uh, I think we need to have that open conversation,

00:26:12.400 but what are the expectations, you know, what, what, and what is our capacity, right? Because

00:26:17.120 I think a lot of people, it comes down to numbers. If you live in a community and you welcome people

00:26:22.000 who come from different places and speak different languages, you know, and if, if some of them come

00:26:25.280 into your neighborhood, that's the deal. If you wake up one morning and suddenly nine, every single one

00:26:29.040 of your neighbors 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 change of any

00:26:38.320 sort. And I think we need to make accommodation for that. There's not, it doesn't make you a bad

00:26:42.480 person or make you hateful to, to say, I kind of like the way things are and any change that comes,

00:26:47.360 I want it to be gradual and I want to get used to it. And I, I, I would resent the idea that this

00:26:52.480 is just going to be, I'm just going to be overwhelmed by different things tomorrow morning without

00:26:57.120 being able to have any say in it. Well, it's interesting. Uh, it does. I mean, so much of what you

00:27:02.160 just said was super interesting. Uh, the, the peaks and valleys that you, you didn't necessarily think

00:27:06.320 that was intentional. That was just sort of like, uh, reacting to world events or, or whatever,

00:27:11.120 but that the outcome was this sort of integration that would happen. And I think you hit the nail

00:27:15.840 on the head when you said like, you know, if you live in a community and there's one or two newcomers,

00:27:19.920 everybody's like really excited about those newcomers. And it's like, oh, where are they from?

00:27:23.120 Let's help them make sure that they fit in the community. Like they have kids that are around my

00:27:26.880 kids age. Let's like make sure that they are playing together and you have a community that's focused on

00:27:31.520 helping those people. And that's what happens with the private refugee sponsorship when churches and

00:27:35.280 charities sponsor refugees. It's like, it's like the people who sponsor that refugee feel a personal

00:27:40.960 obligation to help them integrate, to make sure it was a rallying point, right? It becomes a rallying

00:27:45.440 point. And, and the problem is when you, when you make it too much, it starts to feel like an

00:27:50.240 imposition and that's the line you don't want to cross. You want the, the attitude towards immigrants 1.00

00:27:54.960 to be welcoming and help them integrate. And it's a win-win, right? And when you go too far and you tip it

00:28:00.160 too far the other way, it starts to become a burden and resentment. That's where we don't want to go.

00:28:04.480 And that's what I'm saying. That's part of the reason I keep making these arguments is I do think

00:28:08.240 immigration at the right level in the right way is a good thing and we should support it.

00:28:12.160 But we're over that line right now. And that's the reason we're seeing a lot of this backlash.

00:28:15.920 Well, yeah, like you're, you're really testing the, the generosity of Canadians, because I think that

00:28:20.000 when that happens, it still does happen. I think probably in small towns, Aaron, where someone gets

00:28:24.000 excited, like, oh, we have a newcomer and they're from this different culture and everyone's

00:28:27.120 interested in the teacher wants the child to talk about it at school or whatever. But then you, but then you look at

00:28:32.160 neighborhoods like, you know, I grew up in Vancouver and I've talked about this on my show

00:28:35.360 a bit before, but like the neighborhood that I grew up in doesn't exist anymore in the way that it did

00:28:39.920 when I was a child, right? Like in the, in the eighties and the nineties, it was just a whole bunch

00:28:43.600 of like, basically like stay at home moms. Every house had like three or four kids. There's kids

00:28:47.760 playing, riding their bikes all over. It was a very vibrant, lively neighborhoods, Kerisdale in Vancouver.

00:28:53.760 And like 10 years later, it just wasn't anymore. It was like the, uh, the Hong Kong takeover

00:28:59.040 announcement had happened. And you know, thousands of people just kind of moved to that one neighborhood

00:29:04.160 like that neighborhood. And you know, my parents sold our house because we had an offer on the

00:29:08.400 house. It was way more than we paid. So we moved to a different suburb and like, I go back there now

00:29:13.760 and it's like, this is just such a different area. There's like no children, there's no kids. And

00:29:18.000 the community has gone. I know that I knew some people that are from places like Brampton and they

00:29:23.680 grew up there and it was a totally different scenario. Now you go back and you almost feel

00:29:27.360 like a little bit of a loss. Like the country that I grew up in isn't, isn't really there anymore.

00:29:33.280 Do you think those are valid feelings or how can you, how can you work around that?

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

00:29:43.040 you know, we have to freeze everything in time. And I do think some people fall prey to this,

00:29:46.640 like nostalgia of like, everything was great the way when I was a kid. And so, so I think we have

00:29:50.640 to guard against that, but that's not to say that we just have to accept any change anywhere

00:29:55.440 all the time as this sort of fatalistic, we get to choose, we get to help determine the,

00:30:00.880 the rate of change, the rate of change that works best for everyone. And I also think too,

00:30:05.040 you know, a lot of people conflate a discomfort. They conflate what I would say, sort of race with

00:30:11.840 culture. I think what a lot of people, what bothers them about the idea of change isn't that they're

00:30:17.360 going to be replaced by someone who has a different skin tone than them. It's that the 1.00

00:30:21.840 things they value as a Canadian, you know, cultural traditions, you know, certain values,

00:30:28.160 if those things are lost, that's the real problem. So like, to give you an example, I know it's an old

00:30:32.640 trope, but like, you know, hockey is a essentially quintessentially Canadian thing. So if you had a whole

00:30:37.840 bunch of migrants come to a community that had 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

00:30:47.920 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

00:30:55.280 that's again, that's not a racial thing. That's sort of a cultural integration thing. So I don't buy

00:31:00.720 this, you know, there's some sort of, I do think it's a racist view that, you know, replacement is,

00:31:05.520 is based on, you know, your skin color, your ethnic origin. I think it's a cultural question.

00:31:11.520 And I think it's a question that culture can be learned. And if you have willing partners

00:31:15.680 on the welcoming side and the new arrival side, willing to integrate, willing to assimilate,

00:31:21.600 you can still carry and it's not replacement, it's, it's different people carrying on the same

00:31:26.640 cultural traditions. And so I think we got to be very careful about that debate, because I think some

00:31:31.120 people, they mix up those things too easily. And they're, they're really not the same thing.

00:31:35.360 Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned that, because I have a personal anecdote about that.

00:31:38.720 Like I was really interested in field hockey when I was a kid. And when I went into like a new,

00:31:43.920 a new team, I was in grade three, and I was the only girl in grade three that wanted to play field

00:31:49.680 hockey. And it was partially like, you know, I had wonderful neighbors and I have friends from that

00:31:54.160 time who were from Hong Kong, whose families had moved and the things that they were interested,

00:31:58.080 it was more like, you know, piano and, and different kinds of like the arts, which, which is great.

00:32:03.200 I mean, I actually think that people bringing different kind of interests and values makes

00:32:08.400 the community richer and it makes it more interesting. It just so happened that there

00:32:11.920 was not enough girls in my year to create a field hockey team. So I had to go play in a different

00:32:16.640 district. So it's funny that you, that you mentioned that, but yeah, again, I think, I think it's

00:32:21.200 like the difference between having, you know, a handful of people join a district versus like having tens of

00:32:27.120 thousands that all come at the same time and kind of flood the system and just completely

00:32:30.560 change the, the, the culture and the community. It's totally about the speed in a lot of cases.

00:32:35.840 And the other thing too, to remember is, you know, in, in the, in the West and especially

00:32:39.520 in the Anglosphere countries, I mean, we're, there's a reason we're very appealing destinations

00:32:43.520 for people from all over the world. And so we should bear that in mind when people,

00:32:47.200 some people argue, well, you know, are we, are we, you know, imposing our ourselves on these new

00:32:53.120 arrivals? I mean, they're coming here because they, they already know what it's like here. They already have

00:32:57.040 a sense of what it's like. They want to join our project. And so this idea that the first thing we

00:33:01.600 do when we tell them to tell them when they show up is, you know what, you should just keep everything

00:33:06.160 the way it is. And you don't have to, I, I think that's a strange message that hits a lot of their

00:33:10.720 ears almost weirdly. And you know, I, I obviously have no issue with people doing their own thing.

00:33:16.720 And, you know, I come from, you know, my dad's side of the family's German can from Kitchener,

00:33:21.200 Ontario, it says old German Canadian community. There's still sort of old traditions that linger there.

00:33:26.000 Right. But, but it's not it's not in terms of the mainstream and sort of the day to day life

00:33:31.920 and preferences and culture. It's, it's, it's similar to anywhere else in the country. And

00:33:36.000 I think that's the kind of thing that, you know, if communities want to band together and of their own

00:33:41.360 whim sort of preserve certain traditions that they're certainly welcome to do that. They don't

00:33:45.040 need the government to have an official policy of preservation, or in some cases, even subsidize

00:33:50.240 that difference. I don't, I don't necessarily, you know, I have no problem with small D diversity.

00:33:56.480 It's when, I guess, Candace, when you start to capitalize a lot of these 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?

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

00:34:14.720 old Berlin, right? And then, and then the government forced you to change the name of

00:34:18.880 that community because they didn't want the German 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,

00:34:26.160 didn't the referendum like overwhelm you? No, that was, no, but, but there was, I mean,

00:34:29.760 there was this, um, it's interesting because at the time this was during the first world war.

00:34:35.200 And, uh, I guess the Berlin city council wanted to show that German Canadians were loyal to,

00:34:41.120 to the empire and not to Germany. And so they had this referendum and they

00:34:44.640 picked Lord Kitchener as the, as the name, but it was interesting because at the time it, it seemed

00:34:50.320 important to show that you were committed to the country. Right. And I think today that is something

00:34:54.560 a lot of Canadians feel like, um, it may not even be true. I do think there are a lot of immigrants

00:34:58.720 that are proud to be Canadian. And frankly, in a lot of cases would love to shout it from the rooftop

00:35:02.480 rooftops, but they, they often have governments telling them that no, no, no, you don't need to

00:35:06.320 worry about that. You can carry on, you know, everything, um, that you, 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,

00:35:15.840 you know, if you go back a hundred years, there's a community that was so concerned about not being

00:35:19.680 seen as like sufficiently patriotic. They actually changed the name of the community, uh, because

00:35:23.920 they wanted to signal that, no, no, like we're Canadian and our loyalty is here. It's not from,

00:35:29.360 uh, not to our ancestral homeland. Well, that's, that's such a more optimistic way of looking at it

00:35:34.160 in the way I saw it. I think you still see a little bit of that today. Like I've talked about

00:35:39.840 this in the past as well. Like my husband was born in Iran and they fled the, the, the mullahs and

00:35:44.240 they fled the Islamic regime in the nineties. And Kaz is like the most patriotic Canadian that I know,

00:35:49.920 like he has a maple leaf tattoo and he's just like, he loves Canada. He wants the Canadian identity.

00:35:54.240 He embraces like even the cheesiest aspects of Canadiana. Right. And I, and it's interesting

00:35:59.600 cause now in this like kind of like post Canada world where everyone's woke and we have to like

00:36:04.800 denounce our ancestors and everybody's so ashamed of what the Canadians did to early Canadians did in 0.99

00:36:10.080 developing the country. It's like, it, you know, it's such a mixed message to newcomers because on

00:36:15.040 the one hand they're coming to Canada because they like Canada and they, and they're excited about the

00:36:19.120 opportunity. And that's the kind of like new, like lifeline that you want coming into your country.

00:36:23.680 You want people coming in who are enthusiastic, who want to start businesses, who want to start jobs,

00:36:27.280 who love the country, like wrap themselves in the flag. Uh, but then you have the sort of like

00:36:32.640 elites or the, the, the, the kind of old stock Canadians sitting here talking about how awful 1.00

00:36:37.520 Canada is and how it's this horrible, racist, uh, you know, Dennis vital country. It's, it's so,

00:36:42.880 it's so sad. It can be bewildering for new migrants who come here and to be told that Canada

00:36:48.320 is this horrible place. That's got a racist. I mean, a lot of these people, the first thing they say is,

00:36:52.480 you know, where I come from, I mean, compared, compared to where I come from,

00:36:56.240 you're the problem. We have real problems back where I'm from. I mean, Canada, these problems

00:37:00.080 pale in comparison. I think a lot of Canadians lack that context. Like, is there racism in Canada?

00:37:04.480 Of course there is, but like relative. And as someone who's, you know, in a mixed race relationship,

00:37:08.560 who's lived in many places around the world, I mean, I've experienced racism everywhere. I've

00:37:13.280 experienced the least racism in Canada compared to all these other places, including other, uh,

00:37:18.000 developed countries. So I, I think, you know, it's one thing to say, yeah, of course,

00:37:22.080 we always want to, uh, combat racism, but the idea that Canada is sort of uniquely or

00:37:27.600 particularly racist is just, uh, mind boggling to most people who have lived anywhere else.

00:37:33.920 Well, uh, yeah. And, and a lot of the sort of racism that you do encounter, like one of my

00:37:38.160 best friends growing up was half Chinese and half, uh, her mom was from Newfoundland. So she was like a

00:37:43.440 new fee, uh, half Chinese and people kind of came up with silly little nicknames to describe her 1.00

00:37:49.120 ethnicity, but it was always like in a kind of loving way. And I remember asking her once if it

00:37:53.760 bothered her and she was like, no, it's hilarious. Right. Like it's, it's not meant to be mean.

00:37:58.480 It's like kids kind of make jokes maybe to like ease attention. And, and we used to be able to do

00:38:02.880 that. And now it's like, everything's so politically correct. You can't even,

00:38:05.680 you can't even make jokes like that. Yeah. And I firmly believe that most of what's called racism

00:38:10.880 and a lot of cases is just the lack of familiarity or in some cases, clumsiness.

00:38:15.600 Right. I think that, uh, you know, there's very few people that have some sort of deep ideological

00:38:21.440 belief in like racial superiority or purity. There's just not very many of those people.

00:38:25.520 Most people, it is just a casual, um, unfamiliarity or in some cases discomfort. And that's a natural

00:38:31.120 thing, right? Like the analogy I made has been, uh, to people who people have different food preferences,

00:38:36.080 right? Like some people love trying new things. Other people, like they know exactly what they

00:38:39.680 like, and they don't want to try anything new. And I think that's like that with personalities

00:38:42.800 and cultures. Some people just know what they like and they, other stuff seems weird and strange.

00:38:47.680 And other people, they just love trying new stuff and they love sort of learning about new cultures

00:38:53.120 and languages and things like that. Neither of those things is right or wrong. It's just a

00:38:56.240 personality difference. And I think we do a disservice to like truly like deep seated ideological racism

00:39:01.920 when we kind of conflate clumsiness or just discomfort with some sort of really nefarious,

00:39:07.760 like evil racism. Yeah. I mean, it, when, when I listened to Jordan Peterson talk about

00:39:12.240 personality traits and he talks about like trait openness versus like people who are low in

00:39:16.480 openness. That's basically what it is. Like I happen to be really high in openness. I love traveling

00:39:20.240 around the world. You know, I'm interested in other cultures. I married someone from a different

00:39:23.680 culture. Like I just happened to be high in openness where someone else might not be. And that's

00:39:28.080 not their fault. It doesn't make me a bad person. It's just who they are. Okay. Well,

00:39:31.680 Aaron, I want to talk about one other thing. I know, I know you've got to run in a minute here.

00:39:34.960 We've had a great conversation. I really appreciate it. But let's, let's get into the

00:39:39.440 kind of crux of the matter, right? Like we're told that part of the reason why we need mass

00:39:43.600 migration, why we need so many people, it's not just economic, it's not cultural. It's about 0.59

00:39:47.840 fertility rates and it's about the declining birth rate. The numbers in Canada have come out and it's

00:39:51.920 truly shocking. Our fertility rate is 1.1 right now. Okay. Replacement is 2.1. It used to be that women 1.00

00:39:59.040 used to have, you know, many, many children. Obviously things have changed and most children now survive

00:40:04.080 into adulthood. But it seems to me that immigration kind of covers up this other issue, which is that

00:40:09.920 Canadian families aren't having as many kids as they used to. And we talked about this in the other

00:40:15.520 interview we did. There's a Carta study showing that most women want to have more children than 1.00

00:40:20.000 they're actually having. About 25% of women don't end up having kids even though they wanted kids 1.00

00:40:27.360 because they can't find a right partner. They can't make it work. Like to me, this is a huge,

00:40:32.000 huge issue in our culture and in our world that just gets like no attention. Like nobody talks about

00:40:38.480 it. Maybe because it's such a personal choice and it's so personal that people feel uncomfortable

00:40:43.120 talking about it in terms of public policy. But, you know, we're here to have an uncomfortable

00:40:46.880 conversation. So, you know, you've got a big family, you've got a bunch of kids. So maybe you can,

00:40:50.960 you can give us some insights and talk about what you think needs to be done.

00:40:54.240 Yeah. I'm great. I'm doing what I can to pull up that 1.1. I've got three, but I wish I had more.

00:41:00.480 Um, look, it's hard to think of any other issue where if women had this big a concern,

00:41:06.480 the government would just completely ignore it. Right. I mean, if it got, if there was a survey

00:41:10.080 that showed, you know, 60% of women said that they're paying too much for, uh, for, for, uh, 1.00

00:41:15.920 hygienic products, I mean, the government would drop everything and like fix that. And yet here,

00:41:19.840 we have a lot of evidence that, you know, a vast majority of women are not having as many

00:41:23.840 children as they want. Well, what are governments doing about that? That seems to me like it should

00:41:27.840 be a central, like policy fixation for any government that's concerned, not just about

00:41:32.640 women, but about, uh, you know, the, the birth rate generally, you're absolutely right. That

00:41:36.880 immigration is just being used to paper over that. And that's a problem for a couple of reasons.

00:41:40.560 One, it's not, it's not going to be enough. Uh, you know, you, you probably need a mix of higher

00:41:44.800 birth rates and immigration to maintain growth. And I am pro growth. I'm not one of these people that

00:41:49.120 believes you can shrink, you know, people talk about Japan, um, shrinking. I'm like,

00:41:54.080 talk to me in 20 years. I think Japan has other issues there.

00:41:58.000 No, it's a tragedy in Japan when you go to the suburbs and there's just like ghost towns right 1.00

00:42:01.760 outside of Tokyo. It's sad.

00:42:03.280 It is a real problem. I think people fixate on, on the fact, oh, Japan's still a wealthy place.

00:42:07.920 They are, they're coasting and they are, they're slowly shriveling and declining. And then that is

00:42:12.240 a real problem. The other thing too, that people who mentioned is a lot of the immigrants we do get, 0.96

00:42:16.800 once they come here and guess what, they start to adopt the same lifestyle choices. And so the

00:42:21.280 fertility rate actually drops among second generation immigrants. So you're not actually

00:42:25.360 solving the problem in the long run. Um, I would say Candace, this is a, this is a problem

00:42:30.000 afflicting the whole world, especially the developed world. You know, Canada is even middle of the pack.

00:42:35.600 This places like Korea are down to like 0.8 children. It is a real problem. Um, I know what you,

00:42:41.600 and you've mentioned places like in Hungary, there are some other countries where they're

00:42:44.960 attempting some pretty radical policy leap, pulling some really levers like, you know,

00:42:49.600 making a income tax free. If you have four children or more there, you know,

00:42:53.280 there's some encouraging examples. Japan has a few examples like that, that are encouraging.

00:42:57.360 You know, I do fear a bit that part of this is cultural, um, that we live in a very increasingly

00:43:03.360 atomized individualized world where sort of self-fulfillment and career and sort of, um,

00:43:10.400 you know, individual needs or adult needs are, are supplanting what used to be like

00:43:14.640 longstanding, uh, uh, evolutionary driven needs to have children. And that's hard to reverse,

00:43:20.640 but we should try and we should pull every lever we can. And I think that governments have, like,

00:43:25.040 we basically haven't emptied the tank yet on seeing what, what governments can do to move the needle

00:43:29.760 on fertility, because we're not even talking about it at all, as you say. And I think that's a

00:43:33.600 conversation in the coming years that policymakers really need to focus on.

00:43:37.120 Well, I find that there's so much pessimism around it. Like, it's like,

00:43:39.840 okay, so Asia has been dealing with this issue for decades and they've tried a lot of stuff,

00:43:44.320 right? Like Singapore has tried a lot of different policies to encourage, uh, families to have kids.

00:43:48.160 And basically what they found was that the people who already probably planned on having kids just

00:43:52.960 had kids sooner, but it didn't actually like increase the total number. And so then we just like

00:43:57.840 throw those policies out and we're like, okay, we're not going to do those anymore. But it's like,

00:44:01.120 we haven't tried those in Canada, right? The idea of, um, you know, providing longer, uh, parental

00:44:07.520 leave or allowing mom to stay home with the kids for like three or four years. And like, I, I think

00:44:12.560 that there's a lot, I think, I think that, I mean, when I think of my generation, a lot of my friends,

00:44:17.200 you know, we were really told that we could be anything and do anything. And the emphasis was go to

00:44:21.600 university, like figure out what you want to do, the whole like personal fulfillment thing. And then by the

00:44:26.960 time you're done university, you're kind of on a track to either go to professional school or go

00:44:31.280 get a career. Okay. Well, I've put all this effort into school. I don't want to leave the market place

00:44:35.600 when I'm 25. I want to stay. Yeah. I want to stay and I want to focus on my career. And then by the

00:44:40.320 time you're like looking around at having kids, you're like into your thirties and your window is

00:44:44.400 really small. A lot of people struggle to even get pregnant and have kids in their thirties. And that's

00:44:49.280 the norm. Like the norm is that women are having kids in their thirties. In my friend group, it was like, 0.99

00:44:54.800 it was like mid thirties that people were starting to have kids. And you know, if you wanted, if you

00:45:00.240 always wanted to have three kids, you always want to have four kids and you start when you're 35,

00:45:03.920 like you just, it's really hard to do that. And I don't think that women are being told the truth. 1.00

00:45:08.400 That's why I think it is feminism. It's like lies that we tell women that they're going to have 1.00

00:45:12.640 personal fulfillment from some career that they may love. You may love your career, but look, if you're,

00:45:18.240 if you're in your forties and you miss that window and you can't have kids, that biological instinct

00:45:22.160 that you talked about, it's going to come up and it's going to hit you hard. And it's, it's just,

00:45:26.480 it's tragic. It's really sad when that does happen. I really deeply feel for women who

00:45:31.440 miss the opportunity. And, and I feel like more people need to talk about that so that younger

00:45:35.280 women don't make those same mistakes. Yeah. I, uh, we have to, I mean, 1.00

00:45:38.800 we have to do another podcast just on this issue. Cause I, I do think there's a, um,

00:45:44.240 there's a cultural challenge in that like parenting is hard, uh, but it's rewarding. And we live in a

00:45:49.600 society now where increasingly everything is, is, is all about you and parenting is a sacrifice and

00:45:56.160 and the sort of benefits of it, the sort of rewards of it are diffuse and over time. And in

00:46:02.160 a lot of cases they, you only notice them years later. That's a, that's a hard sell to people where

00:46:07.200 it's like, you can have a career, you can travel and you can sort of get everything you want well into

00:46:12.400 your thirties. And then, as you say, even if you want kids, then maybe you're having one or maybe

00:46:16.560 two, you're not having three or four anymore. And it's just everything else in our culture is

00:46:20.880 pushing against this idea of the value of parenting, which seems like a whole lot of work,

00:46:26.560 uh, to, to people that want to have a busy career and travel and help do those other self-fulfilling

00:46:31.040 things. So, um, you know, it's, it's, it's going to take some work, but, uh, I do think,

00:46:36.160 I do think there's going to be a reckoning at some point because we're going to reach a point where

00:46:39.520 birth rates could continue to decline to the point where now we have problems, uh, even sustaining the

00:46:44.480 sort of the, the, the social safety net that we have, for example, there's not going to be enough

00:46:48.320 people work, especially with a longer lifespan. So, um, it's, uh, it is a challenge and I agree

00:46:53.040 with you as a parent, you know, I, uh, it's the most rewarding, the most important thing I do in my life.

00:46:58.720 And it's really hard to explain that to somebody who doesn't have kids without sounding kind of

00:47:02.720 sappy and sentimental, but, um, it, it does have real consequences. Once, once you miss that window,

00:47:07.600 there's no going back.

00:47:09.120 Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's, I think you're right. We're going to have to do a whole other podcast on this,

00:47:12.800 Aaron, because, you know, you could talk about the macro issues like social safety nets, and then

00:47:16.080 you could talk about the individual feelings of people. Uh, there's been some interesting, uh,

00:47:20.000 I feel like at least the conversation is being had more and I, and I see it more in podcasts, but

00:47:24.640 uh, I, I think it's going to take a lot more than just, uh, you know, the two of us talking about how

00:47:29.040 great it is, uh, to be parents and how wonderful and fulfilling it is to have little kids. I, I have, uh,

00:47:34.080 three kids and we actually have one on the way, so we're going to have four kids. Congratulations.

00:47:38.240 Thank you. Yeah. We're pretty excited and pretty overwhelmed, but anyway, Aaron, thank you so much

00:47:42.880 for joining us. I, I enjoyed and appreciate the conversation on immigration. And I think, I think

00:47:47.200 we really have our work cut out for us, uh, as a country, but I like your optimism when it comes to,

00:47:51.760 you know, this, we have to have these difficult conversations so that we can save our immigration

00:47:55.280 system so that we don't lose that consensus. And I think that's a really important takeaway message.

00:47:59.680 Yeah, this was great. Thanks so much for the wide raising chat.

00:48:02.240 Okay. All right, Aaron, take care. That's Aaron Lee Woodrick from the McDonnell Laurier Institute.

00:48:06.720 Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - March 18, 2024

How to FIX Canada’s broken immigration system

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