Canada needs newcomers long term

There's a sound drifting into Canada from south of the border, and the rising crescendo will become deafening if we don't address its source.

- ARMINE YALNIZ YAN

It's the sound of shutting down.

Against the backdrop of rising unemployment and high costs, public tolerance for newcomers is waning. We need more newcomers to prevent a declining standard of living, but we're being goaded into questioning that relationship and worse.

The federal government has responded by belatedly restricting entries of some newcomers who enter Canada on temporary permits.

First it tripled its intake of international students between 2015 and 2023, then it scaled back by 35 per cent in January, followed by reducing the number of hours they can work.

Next week, the ballooning intake of low-paid temporary foreign workers it has engineered since 2021 will be tightened. The changes to the small but politically fraught temporary foreign worker program will almost exactly mirror Jason Kenney's choices a decade ago.

Expansion. Contraction. Policy always lags reality. Although it's not uncommon for decision-makers to oversteer and course-correct, a bigger factor is at play that we dismiss at our peril: population aging.

Between 2019 and 2023, almost a million Canadians aged into the 65-years-and-older category, the average retirement age. By 2030, the youngest boomers will have turned 65.

Over the next 15 years, another 7.5 million will be added to the ranks of seniors. The 139,000 kids who are today not yet 15 years old will enter labour markets, but will be followed by a shrinking youth cohort because the birth rate has been falling for the past 40 years, rapidly since 2019 due to the pandemic and soaring housing costs.

More Canadians are exiting the labour market than entering it. We need newcomers. Not for the short term. For the long haul.