The Century Initiative has nothing to offer Canada apart from hubris, desperation and bad ideas. As the G7 Summit concludes in Alberta, a province that is key to unlocking true Canadian prosperity and dynamism, Canada cannot afford to listen to those who helped push the country into stagnation.
Last week, Century Initiative CEO Lisa Lalande
in the Toronto Star that not only attacked the federal government’s immigration cuts but also natural resources as a tool of economic growth.
Instead, Lalande outlined a plan for growth that predictably began with returning to the Trudeau-era status quo on mass immigration.
It is time that the Century Initiative takes a seat and stops pretending that its immigrationist schemes should still have any influence over Canadian policy.
The Century Initiative got what it wanted during Justin Trudeau’s government when yearly immigration numbers skyrocketed to nearly
people per year. From 2014 to now, the Canadian population has expanded by
, which is unprecedented in the modern era.
What did Canadians get in return? They got unaffordable housing, strained services and a tight job market that is punishing the youngest members of the workforce.
These terrible policies fundamentally damaged the integrity, reputation and effectiveness of Canada’s once-sterling immigration system. Three years ago, public servants of the useful variety
the federal government that housing affordability was at risk if immigration numbers continued to rise. Trudeau’s cabinet ignored them.
The Aristotle Foundation
in March that found that the ratio between housing completions and immigration exploded from 2:1 in 2015 to 5:1 in 2023. That is not sustainable, and those who tried to say otherwise at the time were nothing more than gaslighters.
Last week, former immigration minister Marc Miller
the Trudeau government’s mass immigration policies by claiming that they were vital for GDP growth. That is a self-indictment, not a badge of honour.
Canada’s weak GDP growth over the past decade exposes the failure of this radical experiment. Yearly per-person GDP growth under Trudeau amounted to under 0.3 per cent, the
in recent history.
Was that worth the explosion in housing prices that depressed the dreams of millions of young Canadians and the ongoing robbery of their entry into the job market? Of course not.
Nobody apart from a few corporate head offices has enjoyed the scarce benefits of the immigration regime, but everyone else has felt the negative side effects, of which there are plenty. Young Canadians, especially university students and recent graduates, are currently
g to find jobs of any kind.
It’s not that there has been an exodus or disappearance of the Canadian teenagers who used to work the fryer or operate roller-coasters at the theme park. It’s that they have been replaced.
In
of Sean Strickland, the executive director of Canada’s Building Trades Union (CBTU), “Canadian workers are now being replaced by international workers at an increasing pace, on work that was previously assigned to Canadian workers.”
Deregulating Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program in 2022
of low-paid foreign employees, leaving 200,000 Canadian teens jobless last August.
Alberta’s Minister of Jobs Matt Jones
last November that slashing the annual intake of people, including temporary workers, could free up better job opportunities for the province’s youth, who suffer from an unemployment rate of 14.3 per cent.
In this current climate, Canada cannot sustain high immigration while ensuring low youth unemployment and attainable housing.
The Century Initiative has no economic or moral high ground from which it can argue against a resource-driven strategy for growth, as it did in the Toronto Star op-ed. Locating, extracting and exporting our minerals and energy should be a national goal, and it enjoys at least nominal support from both the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition.
Canadian oil and gas alone were
at $1.6 trillion in 2022, more than all other resources combined. Canada currently
60 minerals in 200 mines across the country producing almost
in value in 2023.
There are 129 potential projects related to mining that could be pursued in the next decade, and they are worth an additional $93.6 billion.
Combined, there are over
resource projects in Canadian soil that could generate an eye-popping $600 billion in private capital and $1.1 trillion added to GDP by 2035.
This is where the real, tangible economic growth will come from. Anybody trying to downplay this is neither serious nor worth listening to.
Obviously, good immigration policy is beneficial. The past decade’s migration policies have been anything but that.
If Canada is to unlock its natural resource wealth, it will need skilled, highly educated professionals from around the world. However, they will not choose Canada over the United States so long as housing in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver costs more than Dallas or Phoenix, where the salaries are higher.
The
of left-wing humanities professors from the U.S. to Canada is not evidence that an anti-Trump brain drain is on the horizon. Canada must become a more affordable place to live so international talent can be incentivized to come here.
That will not happen so long as immigration rates continue to vastly outstrip housing starts. Canada has to break the cycle of economic dependence on immigration and take the pain that comes with that.
Leaving aside high-skill immigration, something Canada once excelled in cultivating, there is no justification for continuing to flood the country with low-skill underpaid labour so that fast-food companies can hire from an underclass.
Canadians want reforms to immigration, and the data has consistently supported that for nearly two years. This is not because they are misinformed or infected with disinformation; it’s because their children cannot find employment and have to remain housed in their basement because an apartment is too expensive.
The last thing Canada needs is more lectures from immigrationist ideologues who continue to advocate for a failed policy regime that is killing the futures of young Canadians and keeping families locked out of home ownership.
It is time to move on.
National Post
