https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/population-100-million-comes-price-are-canadians-willing-pay-it
A population of 100 million comes with a price; Are Canadians willing to pay it?
Appeared in the National Post
A recent series of articles in the Globe & Mail suggested Canada
should double its annual intake of immigrants to 500,000 with the goal
of raising the country's population to 75 million in 50 years and 100
million by the end of the century. The justification for this policy is
almost entirely ideological. The larger population is needed to give
more weight to the authors’ efforts to convince the world to follow
Canada's model of a truly social-democratic, multicultural and
eco-friendly society yet there is no discussion of the high economic
costs the policy would bring.
Doug Saunders, the Globe's correspondent in England, listed the benefits
of raising Canada's population to 100 million, saying it would end the
greatest price of under-population, (which) is loneliness: We are often
unable to talk intelligently to each other, not to mention the world,
because we just don't have enough people to support the institutions of
dialogue and culture whether they're universities, magazines, movie
industries, think tanks or publishing houses. ... It would put an end to
the low population density that plagues large sections of Toronto and
Calgary.A recent series of articles in the Globe & Mail suggested
Canada should double its annual intake of immigrants to 500,000 with the
goal of raising the country's population to 75 million in 50 years and
100 million by the end of the century. The justification for this policy
is almost entirely ideological.
We do not have enough people, given our dispersed geography, to form the
cultural, educational and political institutions, the consumer markets,
the technological, administrative and political talent pool, the
infrastructure-building tax base, the creative and artistic mass
necessary to have a leading role in the world.
But these so-called benefits invite important questions. According to
the Globe, the 100-million target has supposedly been suggested in the
past and it's a nice, round number. But why not use 300 million or 500
million as targets? They are also nice, round numbers, which would
catapult Canada even more decisively into a leading role in the world.
The argument about loneliness is simply strange as Canada's
universities, think tanks and cultural institutions are well connected
to their counter-parts within the country and in the rest of the world
through the use of the Internet and low-cost travel.
Importantly, the Globe is either wrong or mute on the economic issues on
increased immigration. The suggestion that a larger population would
lower the cost of serving a larger set of consumers ignores the fact
that economies of scale are less important than in the past because they
can be achieved in today's world of free trade and low transportation
by serving global consumer markets. The claim that doubling immigration
levels would increase total national income fails to take into account
that it would also lower living standards as measured by average after
tax incomes and that it would make the income distribution less equal
and retard the growth of income per capita.
The average immigrant who arrived since 1985 imposes an annual fiscal
burden on taxpayers of $6,000, a total of $25 billion annually when all
recent immigrants are taken into account. This is the result of these
immigrants having low average incomes and paying correspondingly low
taxes while they are entitled to all the benefits offered by Canada's
welfare state. There is no chance to find double the current number of
immigrants with better or even the same economic prospects as recent
immigrants. Therefore, the Globe's proposal would substantially increase
the fiscal burden on Canadian taxpayers.
Doubling immigration levels would put downward pressure on wages,
increase unemployment and the incidence of poverty. It would raise the
return to capital and reduce income equality. Most important, the low
wages would slow the growth in labour productivity by discouraging
investment in labour saving capital and technology. The wealth from
natural resources would have to be shared among a larger number of
people.
Doubling immigration levels would not solve the labour and skills
shortage and might even worsen it, as more immigrants would require
housing, schools, hospitals, and many other infrastructure facilities.
With current levels of immigration, 250 new housing units must be built
every week to accommodate new immigrants in Greater Vancouver alone. The
demand for professionals will also increase. For example, 4,500
additional physicians are needed for every million new immigrants. Nor
would the doubling of immigrants solve the problem of unfunded
liabilities of Canada's social programs simply because they quickly
become beneficiaries of these programs.
Canadians need a rational and full discussion whether the costs and
risks stemming from much higher immigration levels and population are
worth the ideological benefits claimed by its advocates.
Author:
Herbert Grubel
Professor Emeritus of Economics, Simon Fraser University
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