The Impact of Canada’s Changing Immigration Policy: An Interview with Mikal Skuterud
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 พ.ค. 2024
- In today’s episode, John and Urmi talk to Mikal Skuterud about Canada’s changing migration policies and larger impacts on society and housing. Mikal is a Professor at the University of Waterloo who specializes in labour economics and immigration policy.
In the lively chat, we talk about how Canada’s historic levels of migrants have recently spiked and how the flows of different arrivals such as students, temporary workers and permanent workers have been changing. We compare Canada vs US approaches, how immigration links to economic productivity and take on some myths.
Today's show links:
Mikal Skuterud and Parisa Mahboubi Globe and Mail Op-ed: www.theglobeandmail.com/busin...
Mikal Skuterud on The Hub: thehub.ca/2023-11-13/canadian...
Follow Mikal Skuterud on Twitter: @mikalskuterud
Nicholas Hune-Brown in the Walrus: thewalrus.ca/the-shadowy-busi...
Contact Us
John Pasalis, President and Broker, Realosophy Realty, Toronto | Email: askjohn@movesmartly.com | Twitter: @JohnPasalis
Urmi Desai, Editor, Move Smartly | Email: editor@movesmartly.com | X-Twitter: @MoveSmartly
It's unsustainable, and no one voted for this level of immigration. Justin Trudeau has never specified how many immigrants the liberal party intended to let into the country. Over 70% of tax paying Canadians do not approve of this level of immigration, from a specific country (India) from a specific region. We need to see a complete moratorium on immigration for 2 years until a realistic plan can be implemented. We should also follow countries like the US on hard caps for how many we let in from each country.
They listen to their corporate backers who make up lies about unfilled jobs. Newcomers line the pockets of labour intensive industry executives, property investors and education administrators. Neither party will cut off that gravy train even thought it has destroyed the middle class.
Thanks John and Urmi for bringing in Mikal. It is a wonderful interview, very informative. Please convey our heartfelt thanks to Mikal for sharing his invaluable wealth of knowledge and understanding.
We'll look forward to the Part-2 of this episode.
Awesome discussion. Very informative and definitely pushed me to question some of the narratives we hear about labor shortages and immigration
Good interview. Mikal believes the temporary immigration streem excesses were unintentional. Perhaps in sheer numbers of people were unforseen, but policies like increasing working hours from 20 a week to 40 a couple of years ago for full time 'students' was clearly very intentional.
Great episode!
Great discussion, Lots of clear, honest communication
Great job, Urmi. Great home work and very intelligent questions. Also, a great guest who gave really smart answers.
Excellent show
Mikal killed it
great interview. Thanks!
Very Informative! Although eager for the second part and especially the results of the paper as I wanted to look into the survey and observed that the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) doesn't include any of the 5 countries (China, India, turkey, Brazil or Vietnam) where most of the immigrants are from.
What confused me at the end was when the professor mentioned that the economic class immigration/ high quality immigration includes people with education above high school level and includes the trades, etc. However, earlier on, he mentioned that the international students getting a 2 years college diploma are low slilled immigrants. If they are going to a college, they must have passed at least a hugh school and the skill they are getting at the college must qualify as high skill ( nurses, radiologists, or skilled trades etc.) I think the lower quality human capital was categorized with below high school education by him.
How does the government not know about this - truly dumb or ignorant or both?
All our skilled workers are going to USA!!
I think it's unwise to blame people form a specific region and specific country if they're trying to use a system legally and legitimately to come to Canada. What we see is the tipof the iceberg. It's clear that the whole idea of quantity vs quality for the gatekeepers, i.e. colleges and universities has more to do with it especially when the likes of colleges like Con-est-oga make multiple millions of dollars on the backs of these students. When traveling in the US you see clearly that they are careful and make it about 10X harder foreven the best workers to stay, but that means much better quality people stay - which is the argument the Economics professor is making. The part where I disagree is when heimplies that a foreign trained engineer isnt as good as a Canadian engineer. You only need to look at the many Billionaire foreign engineers in the US who are being rewarded for their work. Hubris isnt good.
What about bringing people with boots in the mix or promote program which will be beneficial to building our housing and infrastructure. Professor Mikal is making a good point. I agree with too many low wage workers including the ones in the gig jobs. However, he is missing the big picture as he is downplaying trade workers with 2 years diploma. We have a very big shortage of people who know how to build our infrastructure and housing. We can't build a vibrant economy without trades. What happen when when the old trade workers are retired? We need both lower end of the salary spectrum and the higher end. I am in the building management field and one thing many of my contractors complain about is that they can't find good quality trade men/women whether its HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Fire Alarm technicians, drywall installers, plasters among others. I also work with many engineers and architects and one thing i know for sure, any project, no matter how well it looks on drawing/ paper, cannot be executed without trades. Bringing only high skill workers cannot solve our problems here specially when it comes to building lives and communities.
Good interview, but the whole Canada vs USA immigration selection discussion at around 40-45min can easily be summed up as such;
The USA is a meritocracy.
Canada is a welfare state.
Immigrants choose according to how much they intend to contribute and how hard they intend to work, with Canada getting the bottom of the barrel - thousands of mid 40s McDonald's workers /Uber drivers that can barely speak English serve as living proof of this theory - we're not getting skilled or even semi skilled, we're getting welfare shoppers.
It’s ironic that this economist thinks economists are more valuable than other groups, when it was their ideas and the business/political students they trained, that got us in this mess.
Very informative. Confirms that the Liberal economic policy was poorly conceived and has contributed to lower per capita GDP, rising rents and the housing crisis.