From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Immigrants are beginning to question the sacrifices they made to come to Canada, signalling deeper problems facing the country

Whenever I meet someone who immigrated to Canada from a warm place, I am always remarkably impressed. The choice to deliberately leave a pleasant, warm homeland to endure our cold winters says a lot. Overall, living in Canada is apparently better, and that should make us grateful. But what should concern us is how that upside is becoming less apparent all the time.

I recall almost a decade ago sharing a meal with Filipinos. One showed me a picture of the oceanside home he left behind where he could successfully catch fish every day without leaving home. Why would he ever leave a place like that? The answer was jobs.

It’s remarkable how Filipinos can do any job with a smile and, regardless of how little it might pay, send money to their family in their country of origin. I once told a young Filipino working at a McDonald’s to keep the change from my purchase because he was sending money back to his family. He smiled with a bit of surprise that a stranger like me would know that. He also gave me back my change, just to stay honest.

Older stock Canadians used to be like Filipinos, characterized by faith, family, hard work and gratitude. I’m afraid all four aspects have eroded in mainstream Canadian culture in recent decades, especially in the past 10 years.

At my gym two years ago, I met a Sikh named Jagjeet Singh and asked him how he liked Canada. He said when he arrived in 2019, the country was paradise on earth. Now, he said, it was turning into a s___hole. My memory fails on some of his exact observations. I only recall his disdain for the Trudeau government and the NDP leader whose name sounded a lot like his own.

While immigration to Canada remains robust, some newcomers are souring on Canada for very good reasons. This is worthy of our attention.

Maclean’s has featured several stories about immigrant struggles over the past two years, including Eleanor Zhang’s. The international student started her studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax in 2016. Back then, rent was $700 a month, people were friendly, and life was good.

By 2021, she felt things had turned for the worse. The city’s population had grown by 9.1 per cent in five years. Congested traffic left drivers angry. Her friends shared stories of their cars being broken into and items stolen. Zhang’s rent was $1,670 per month, and her grocery bills had skyrocketed. For the first time, she saw people living in the park.

Zhang wanted to start her own gift shop, but commercial spaces were so expensive that she saw little room for profit. She had fallen in love with Canada but also fell out of it. Her pursuit of a prosperous life took her back to Beijing.

Canada used to be a patriotic country with robust free speech, a respectable military, strong family and moral values, an abundance of private sector jobs and quality education and health care. Today, not so much.

Some Canadians are aware of this decline and want a new direction, while others remain aloof, ignorant and insulated from the country’s erosion. Our last election offered fresh proof of the deep generational, occupational and regional divides in Canada.

The problem is, we have to build a country together. It is hard for a people so divided against itself to stand.

Like the story of Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, this holiday season is a good time to reflect on our past, present and future. We’re not what we were, and we could get worse, but we can also get better. As Scrooge found out, it’s not too late to turn things around and lay hold of the best Canada possible.

Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

According to a new survey of mining investors, despite the rich mineral potential of many Canadian jurisdictions, government policies are deterring investment

Canada is renowned for its abundant minerals and network of engineering firms with mining experience. These advantages, coupled with the rising  global demand for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare-earth elements, should spur growing interest in our mining sector among investors. Yet, mining investment in Canada is on the wane.

In nominal terms, exploration investment alone fell from $4.4 billion in 2022 to $4.2 billion in 2023, with preliminary numbers for 2024 suggesting a further 2 per cent drop. And several leading exploration companies including Solaris Resources Inc., Falcon Energy Materials and Barrick Mining Corporation (the world’s second-largest mining company) have either moved their headquarters out of Canada or are considering doing so.

This downward trend extends beyond just exploration investment. In 2023 (the latest year of available data) investment in Canada’s mining sector totalled $15.2 billion, 26 per cent below the record-high $20.5 billion in 2012 (inflation-adjusted).

So, why is one of the most mineral-rich countries on Earth losing investor interest?

According to a new survey of mining investors, despite the rich mineral potential of many Canadian jurisdictions, government policies are deterring investment.

Take British Columbia, Yukon and Manitoba, for example. Although all three rank among the world’s top 10 most attractive jurisdictions for their mineral endowment, all three fall far behind in policy perception, ranking 32nd, 40th and 43rd out of 82 jurisdictions, respectively. The Northwest Territories (56th), Nunavut (59th) and Nova Scotia (76th) also rank low in terms of policy, while Saskatchewan (3rd), Newfoundland and Labrador (6th) and Alberta (9th) are the only Canadian jurisdictions that perform well.

Indeed, in multiple editions of the mining survey over many years, investors have cited policy uncertainty as a key deterrent to investment in many Canadian jurisdictions. In particular, uncertainty around disputed land claims, protected areas and environmental regulations.

Of course, Canadian jurisdictions compete with jurisdictions around the world including in the United States. And the differences in investor perception are striking. While a strong majority of survey respondents for B.C. (76 per cent), Manitoba (75 per cent) and the Yukon (69 per cent) say uncertainty around disputed land claims deters investment, the percentages are much smaller for Nevada (13 per cent) and Arizona (16 per cent). Similarly, the percentage of respondents who say uncertainty around protected areas deters investment for B.C. (76 per cent), the Yukon (76 per cent) and Manitoba (63 per cent) was much larger than for Wyoming (11 per cent) and Nevada (27 per cent).

To build new mining projects, develop technologies that improve productivity, create jobs and help spread prosperity, Canadian jurisdictions must attract investment. In 2023, mining was Canada’s second-leading export, trailing only energy, and contributed $117 billion to Canada’s total economic output. More importantly, that same year the industry provided a livelihood for 711,000 Canadians while paying wages that nearly double the average of other industries. And according to a 2021 census, the sector provided jobs to more than 17,300 First Nations people, making it one of the largest employers of Indigenous workers in the country.

Bad policies create uncertainty and deter investment. If policymakers are serious about unleashing Canada’s mining potential, they must eliminate regulatory uncertainty and establish a predictable policy framework. Otherwise, the country will keep declining in the eyes of investors.

Julio Mejía

Policy Analyst

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute