Three Immigration Focused Federal Studies That Canadians Don't Know About [part 2]

The THREE IMMIGRATION-FOCUSED FEDERAL STUDIES THAT MOST CANADIANS KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT.

STUDY #2 : THE HEALTH AND WELFARE CANADA REPORT

That report was done by about 200 researchers in Canada’s Health and Welfare Department. It focused on Canada’s aging population. In the late 1980’s, many Canadians feared that if Canada had too many older people, Canada’s economy would collapse under the demands that older people made on it. Some Canadians thought that immigration could be used to increase the number of workers, and slow down or stop the drain on the economy. So Health and Welfare projected the effect of increasing Canada’s immigration intake to as high as 600,000 per year.

Health and Welfare concluded that taking even 600,000 immigrants a year did not achieve the effect of reducing the percentage of older people. It then projected whether reducing the age of the 600,000 immigrants to as low as 15 would make a difference, but that did not work either. So, finally, it projected a situation in which Canada increased the number of women in the work force and focused on getting jobs for unemployed older men. It found that doing those two things reduced the number of dependent older and younger people that the average Canadian worker had to support. Health and Welfare’s Conclusion : This tactic was superior to any of the immigration alternatives.

In 2006, the CD Howe Institute did an update. It was a more detailed study. It projected several strategies to deal with an aging population. One involved increasing immigration to 7 million per year !!!. It reached a conclusion similar to that of Canada’s Department of Health and Welfare : Immigration was not a good way to solve problems created by Canada’s aging population. Increasing the retirement age is the best tactic.

There is a lesson in the Health and Welfare study for Trudeau. In the past month, Trudeau has stated that high immigration will solve problems caused by Canada’s aging population. Ironically, in the 2015 election, he said that his government would commit itself to evidence-based government decisions, not ideology-based ones. If he still believes in evidence-based government decisions, he should stop making such inaccurate statements. He should also convene a meeting with Canada’s Department of Immigration. On its web site, it has made a similar statement about using immigration to solve aging population problems. The statement is wrong and he should get that Department to correct that mistake and others.

Many thanks to Kevin J. Johnston of FreedomReport.ca for having us as a guest on his show. There were 7 major studies conducted on the immigration issue, which we have carefully analyzed. A summary of each are available here: http://immigrationwatchcanada.org/