Comment by Tiktaalik
1 month ago
I think there's some particular niche immigration programs (ie. TFW) that have been broken because bad actors are aggressively defrauding the government, but I wouldn't say that Canada's system is broken beyond that.
I'm skeptical that an increase in so called "low skill" workers are even a problem considering that the country is experiencing labour shortages that have contributed to construction costs being so out of whack that building new buildings is unviable.
Now we've "solved" that problem by turning immigration down to zero but that is a kludge and not an actual long term solution to systemic problems.
It's pretty hard be critical of the need for supposed "low skill" immigration when pretty much all of our settler ancestors were penniless dirt farmers.
I agree for the most part. I said immigration is broken, but really the problems are almost exclusively to do with the TFW program and degree mills. One area the TFW program has hurt the country, is in the significant reduction in the number of jobs available to high school students. Anecdotally, I know of many high school students who have been unable to find any work for years, and a stop into any local fast food restaurant or superstore will back that up. These kids looking for part time jobs don't show up in unemployment numbers. They could help the labour shortage, but instead are silently being added to it, in favour of temporary foreign workers filling the positions.
We do need immigration long term for sure! Canada is and will always be an immigrant country. That said, I also don't think an appeal to the past (the fact that almost all of our ancestors came as penniless farmers) should enter into the conversation. To my view, this is a dispassionate conversation about politics. Concerns over hypocrisy are irrelevant.
Don't take it as an appeal to the past but rather the notion that even people with "low skills" are enormously valuable to building a country.
Fair enough!
Construction is not really a low-skill profession anymore, and needs highly qualified workforce to thrive. Buildings of 2026 are de facto complicated industrial robots.
>I'm skeptical that an increase in so called "low skill" workers are even a problem considering that the country is experiencing labour shortages that have contributed to construction costs being so out of whack that building new buildings is unviable.
I'm skeptical that those migrants helped add more to the housing pool than their own needs.
That's more related to the fact that housing policy in this country is more oriented to helping landlords stuff ever more renters into a basement suite than it is enabling people to create homes.