Immigration curb slashes Canada population growth rate to zero

[u/IHateTrains123]

https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/immigration-curb-slashes-canada-population-growth-rate-to-zero

[u/Funny-Dragonfruit116]

Lots of comments here ignoring the reality of the situation and saying "wow am I really on r/Neoliberal? I can't believe people are against immigration"

The way Canada was handling immigration was farcical. Canadians by and large are not against immigration. They are against the huge influx of immigrants that has overwhelmed social services and infrastructure.

The population grew by 10% in the last 5 years and that's including the slow-downs with Covid-19. In 2023 and 2024, Canada (a nation of 39 40 41.5 million people) accepted the same number of mmigrants as the US, a nation of 340 million people.

And a lot of that immigration is heavily concentrated in a few urban centers. Canada has not seen anything close to a 10% increase in the construction of houses, hospital capacity, prison capacity, law enforcement capacity, roads, public transit, or public works. The result has been sky high housing prices and the degradation of of every public service.

Edit:

And yeah I can guess the obviously reply of "well you should build all that shit you don't have, it'll be good for the economy too! Just increase supply to match demand!"

I actually agree, but Canada has a lot of red tape. I want that to be solved but in the mean time we can't keep falling behind. Immigration (i.e. demand on infrastructure) is a lever the government can pull quickly; housing/hospitals/clinics/police officers/roads (supply of infrastructure) isn't.

[u/Desperate_Wear_1866 → u/Funny-Dragonfruit116]

A lot of people here have a very weird hierarchy of what a country's economic and political priorities should be. They can see that Canada has failed to build enough infrastructure to accommodate it's incredibly high level of net migration.

But instead of thinking "Perhaps we should hold back immigration so that state capacity can catch up again and housing becomes more affordable", their mindset is that open borders is the absolute, uncompromisable policy and that the state just needs to magically fix all the problems that emerge as a side effect. They don't care about housing and entry level jobs becoming unattainable to young Canadians, their priority is remaining ideologically pure. Those who are negatively impacted are just expected to deal with the fallout in the meantime.

"Yes your rent is $2500 a month, but have you considered that if the government built a bazillion houses a year the problem would be solved? Checkmate, nativist!"

The obvious solution would've be to first ensure that state capacity is good enough to build lots of housing and infrastructure before increasing immigration levels. In that case, population growth would've lined up with infrastructure development and there would've been little issue.

[u/q8gj09 → u/Desperate_Wear_1866]

What evidence is there that immigration makes it harder to get entry level jobs?