David Clinton
What Drives Canada’s Immigration Policies?
News release from The Audit
Government decisions have consequences. But they also have reasons.
Dearest readers: I would love to hear what you think about this topic. So please take the very brief survey at the end of the post.
Popular opposition to indiscriminate immigration has been significant and growing in many Western countries. Few in Canada deny our need for more skilled workers, and I think most of us are happy we’re providing a sanctuary for refugees escaping verifiable violence and oppression. We’re also likely united in our support for decent, hard working economic immigrants looking for better lives. But a half million new Canadians a year is widely seen as irresponsible.
So why did Canada, along with so many other Western governments, choose to ignore their own electorates and instead double down on ever-increasing immigration rates? Whatever nasty insults we might be tempted to hurl at elected officials and the civil servants who (sometimes) do their bidding, I try to remember that many of them are smart people honestly struggling to be effective. Governing isn’t easy. So it’s worth cutting through the rhetoric and trying to understand their policies on their own terms.
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As recently as 2022, the government – as part of its Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration – claimed that:
“Immigration is critical to Canada’s economic growth, and is key to supporting economic recovery”
There you have it. It’s at least officially about the economy. To be fair, the report also argued that immigration was necessary to address labor shortages, support an aging domestic population, and keep up with our “international commitments”. But economic considerations carried a lot of weight.
Now what I’d love to know is whether the “immigration-equals-better-
One possible way to measure economic health is by watching per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates. Insofar as they represent anything real, the inflation-adjusted GDP rates themselves are interesting enough. But it’s the rates by which GDP grows or contracts that should really capture our attention.
The green line in the graph below represents Canada’s (first quarter) GDP growth rates from the past forty years. To be clear, when measured against, say, its 1984 value, the GDP itself has trended upwards fairly consistently. But looking at changes from one year to the next makes it easier to visualize more detailed historical fluctuations.
The blue bars in the chart represent each year’s immigration numbers as a percentage of the total Canadian population. That rate leapt above one percent of the population in 2021 – for the first time since the 1960’s – and hasn’t shown any signs of backing down. Put differently, Canada absorbed nearly 12 immigrants in 2023 for every 1,000 existing residents.
Seeing both trends together in a single chart allows us to spot possible relationships. In particular, it seems that higher immigration rates (like the ones in 2018-2019 and 2022-2023) haven’t consistently sparked increases in the GDP.
With the exception of those COVID-crazed 2020 numbers – which are nutty outliers and are generally impossible to reliably incorporate into any narrative – there doesn’t ever seem to have been a correlation between higher immigration rates and significant GDP growth.
So, at best, there’s no indication that the fragile economy has benefited from that past decade’s immigration surge. As well-intentioned as it might have been, the experiment hasn’t been a success by any measure.
But it has come with some heavy social costs. The next chart shows the painful disconnect between an artificially rising population and a weak housing construction market. The blue bars, as before, represent immigration rates as a percentage of total population. This time, however, they go back all the way to 1961. The red line tells us about the number of single-detached housing starts per 1,000 people.
With the exceptions of the mid-1960’s and the past few years, each of the historical immigration surges visible in the graph was either preceded or accompanied by appropriate home construction rates.
As an anomaly, the 1960’s surge was for obvious reasons far less damaging. Back then you could still purchase a nice three-bedroom house in what’s now considered midtown Toronto for no more than two years’ worth of an average salary. I know that, because that’s exactly when, where, and for how much my parents bought the house in which I spent most of my errant youth. Those elevated immigration levels didn’t lead us into economic crisis.
But what we’re witnessing right now is different. The housing supply necessary to affordably keep us all sheltered simply doesn’t exist. And, as I’ve already written, there’s no reason to imagine that that’ll change anytime over the next decade. (Can you spell “capital gains tax inclusion rate change”? I knew you could.)
Just to be complete, the disconnect doesn’t apply only to detached “built-to-own” houses. This next chart demonstrates that housing starts of all flavours – including rental units – grew appropriately in the context of historical immigration surges, but have clearly been dropping over the last couple of years.
Since housing starts data isn’t the only tool for measuring the health of a housing market, here’s a visualization of rental apartment vacancy rates in Canada:
The combination of a sluggish construction market and an immigration-fueled population explosion has been driving up prices and making life miserable for countless families. And things appear to be headed in the wrong direction.
So sure, immigration should play an important role in Canadian life. But by this point in the game, it’s pretty clear that recent government policy choices failed to reverse economic weakness and contributed to disastrous outcomes. Perhaps it’s time to change course.
Now it’s your turn. I hope you’ll take this very brief (and anonymous) survey.
Share your thoughts. Click to take the Immigration Policy survey.
Assuming we get enough responses, I’ll share the results later.
For the full experience, please subscribe to The Audit.
David Clinton
Is Marriage the Strongest Predictor of Wealth in Canada?
Love, they say, is a many-splendored thing. But I can tell you with confidence that, in Canada at least, it also pays handsomely.
Sharp downward trends in fertility rates are pointing to a bleak future. And as we’re discovering, immigration isn’t necessarily going to save us. Working on the reasonable assumption that the high costs of raising kids were holding us back, governments have been working for decades to encourage childbirth through programs like the Canada Child Tax Benefit. Their hearts were in the right place, but the result haven’t been great.
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The child and family support programs have been significant. For example, the average total of government support transfers in inflation-adjusted dollars paid to single parents have grown from $11,600 in 1976 to $19,400 in 2022. That amounts to around 29 percent of their average total earned income. Benefits for couples with children nearly tripled from a 1976 average of $5,800 to $15,300 by 2022. Those transfers included child benefits, employment insurance benefits, and social assistance.
But it turns out that even without government programs, marriage and parenting are both financially rewarding endeavors. In 2022, According to Statistics Canada, the average individual “not in an economic family” earned just $53,400 from both market (i.e., earned) income and government support. That same year, couples earned $135,600 – an increase of around 51 percent over what they would have earned in 1976. And the average couple with children took $169,900 home. For comparison, single parents earned just $80,100.
Of course it’s possible that couples who happen to be wealthier are more likely consider themselves capable of raising children, so to some extent they’re self-selecting. And some singles feel unable to start families because of crazy housing costs. Nevertheless, it seems that marriage and, to a lesser degree, parenthood are important predictors of higher income.
Are government social support programs behind the imbalance? Not so much. The average couple in 2022 received $7,300 in benefits, but that’s significantly less than the $9,800 that the average singles (without kids) got. In fact, it’s also a lot less than the $10,400 childless couples would have received from the government in 1976.
It’s clearly earned income that’s driving the greater wealth of both couples as a whole and couples with children.
This isn’t a new development. Throughout the half century since 1976 – when you exclude government benefits – couples have out-earned singles by an average of 140 percent. And couples with children have earned an average of 12.5 percent more than couples in general.
The bottom line is that couples – both with and without children – earn significantly more than both single parents and singles living outside of a family unit. This economic reality has persisted through financial crises, evolving government policy standards, and social upheavals.
That knowledge could play a role in young peoples’ thinking as they plan their lives. But it’s also one of many reasons that we, as a society, should aggressively protect the integrity of the family as an institution. All things being equal, families lead to better outcomes.
This idea is something found in no less a source than the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 16):
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
There is something a bit strange about all this data that I can’t explain. between 1990 and 2004, the difference between total income of couples with children and total income of single parents was significantly greater than the years either before or since.
Many things happened in the early 90’s that might have triggered the growing disparity (like the introduction of the Canada Child Tax Benefit, increasing access to childcare, or a narrowing gender pay gap), but none of them suddenly stopped in 2004. And one could imagine similar social and policy changes that might have reduced the disparity after 2004 (like increased female workforce participation), but none of them really began in 2005.
That odd differential certainly looks real. But maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Any thoughts to share?
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Crime
Has Canada’s Criminal Code Lost Its Way?
From The Audit
I am neither a lawyer nor the son of a lawyer and, thankfully, I’ve never been dragged through the justice system as a participant. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have thoughts.
My recent post on auto theft conviction rates ended with a suggestion that the size and complexity of Canada’s Criminal Code might be contributing to systemic problems with our courts – including suffocating inefficiencies. I’d like to explore that idea a bit more here.
First of all though, complexity is not the driver of most criminal behavior. You don’t need a law degree to know that you shouldn’t steal someone’s car or break his nose in a barroom brawl. And anyone with a grade three education should realize that government program fraud isn’t exactly saintly behaviour.
But overly complex laws can be responsible for some serious problems. Consider how clarity is actually a cornerstone of justice. In Canada, for instance, the Void for Vagueness Doctrine holds that a law is invalid if it’s too vague for the average person to understand. That’s because such laws fail to provide “fair notice” of what’s prohibited and clear standards for enforcement.
Similarly, if accused criminals can demonstrate that the complexity or ambiguity of the statute led them to reasonably believe their conduct was lawful, those laws might fail the necessary mens rea requirement for certain offences.
Unfortunate illustrations of this problem make appearances in some recent Liberal government legislation:
- Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) fails to provide a clear definition for “online harm”. This makes it impossible for citizens to anticipate how the new Digital Safety Commission will enforce the law.
- Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) appears to require streaming services (like YouTube) to regulate user-generated content using an undefined standard.
- Online News Act (Bill C-18) could affect how news is shared and accessed online, potentially influencing the availability and distribution of Canadian news.
Of those, at least C-63 and C-11 – in their current form – could expose individuals to significant criminal and civil penalties without providing clarifying details.
Here’s another example. Section 423 of the Criminal Code prohibits intimidation:
423(1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction who, wrongfully and without lawful authority, for the purpose of compelling another person to abstain from doing anything that he or she has a lawful right to do, or to do anything that he or she has a lawful right to abstain from doing…blocks or obstructs a highway.
And Section 430 prohibits “mischief”, whose definition includes:
interfering with the lawful use, enjoyment, or operation of property.
Just playfully attaching a sticker to someone’s car could lead to charges even if there was no intent to cause harm (by, say, damaging the car’s paint).
The problem here is that both Sections 423 and 430 are, to put it mildly, inconsistently enforced. This is something I’ve already discussed in my Limits of Legal Protest post. Participants in recent pro-Hamas protests flagrantly blocked lawful access to roads, parks, and public buildings for weeks at a time in cities across the country. That’s a clear Section 423 and 430 violation. And yet, of the many hundreds of participants, only a handful were ever arrested and, to my knowledge, none was charged with mischief or intimidation.
Now I know exactly what you’re thinking: “Come on Clinton, what about 430(7)?”
No person commits mischief within the meaning of this section by reason only that he attends at or near or approaches a dwelling-house or place for the purpose only of obtaining or communicating information.
Weren’t those protesters just there to communicate information (“from the river to the sea…”)? Well I’m actually not sure how much meaningful communication was happening at those gatherings. Dialog didn’t seem to be their primary focus. But the legal issue wasn’t where they chose to stand, it was the fact that they actively and intentionally prevented the lawful use, enjoyment, or operation of property – both private and public.
Now, in that context, is it reasonable to prosecute any acts of mischief or intimidation anywhere in Canada? Couldn’t a person reasonably argue that he was under the informed opinion that Canadian police largely ignored such offences?
As the Criminal Code grows, its internal complexity is bound to increase along with it. Comparing the PDF version of the June 15, 2011 version of the Code (1,025 pages) to the most recent version (1,349 pages) gives us a sense of the changes that are happening in both government and society as a whole. More than 226,000 words (in both French and English) were added over that time, a 31 percent increase. Revisions included updates concerning firearms and weapons, remote proceedings, indigenous rights, organized crime and terrorism, and palliative care.
All that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But when poorly-written legislation (like C-11) makes it into the books and perfectly fine legislation (like Section 430) is enforced unevenly, then we’re asking for trouble. A competent government should be able to do better than that.
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