With nearly one million job postings across the country, Canada is more clearly turning to foreigners to fill its workforce shortage and has set record-breaking immigration targets for the next three years.
The new policy, announced Tuesday by Canadian immigration minister Sean Fraser, aims to attract a total of 1.45 million immigrants between 2023 and 2025. It came as the country hit another demographic milestone last week, when the census agency announced that more than one in five Canadians are now immigrants.
The Canadian government’s stance on immigration differs sharply from that of governments in Western countries such as Sweden and Italy, where newly elected parties seek to reduce immigration and blame immigrants for crime and disorder.
“Look guys, it’s simple to me: Canada needs more people,” Mr. Fraser said at a press conference near Toronto on Tuesday. “Canadians understand that if we are to meet the needs of the workforce, rebalance an alarming demographic trend, and continue to reunite families, we must continue to increase our population.”
Some of the trends involved, Mr. Fraser continued, are an aging population and a wave of retirements approaching. The data count released in April showed that the number of people approaching retirement in Canada is at a record level.
“If we don’t do something to fix this demographic trend, 10 or 15 years from now, the conversation we’re going to have won’t be about labor shortages,” said Mr. Fraser. “It’s going to be about whether we have the economic capacity to continue funding schools, hospitals and utilities, which I think too often takes it for granted.”
Canada has long pursued a strategy of recruiting immigrants to compensate for an aging indigenous population and low birthrate, a strategy with broad public support. The country favors immigrants who are skilled workers in areas where the country has a critical labor shortage, including healthcare, manufacturing, engineering and trade.
In a recent survey by the Environics Survey Research Institute, a nonprofit survey company, 58 percent of people contacted said they support more immigration, and when asked whether Canada is receiving too many immigrants, 69 percent of respondents disagreed.
Still, nearly half of those surveyed believe that newcomers are “not embracing Canadian values,” suggesting that public support may become more volatile.
The government aims to attract 465,000 permanent residents by 2023, 485,000 by 2024 and 500,000 by 2025, according to the Migration Levels Plan.
The number of immigrants sought for 2025 represents a 23 percent increase from Canada’s latest record of 405,000 new arrivals last year.
While travel restrictions during the pandemic have temporarily slowed immigration, Canada remains the fastest growing country in the Group of 7, according to the data census collected last spring.
New data released last week by the national census agency revealed that 23 percent of Canada’s population is immigrant; this is the highest rate since Confederation in 1867, when the first four provinces merged to form Canada. Statistics Canada estimates that if current immigration patterns continue and Canada’s birth rate drops below what is needed to maintain the current population, in about two decades, immigrants could make up 29 to 34 percent of the population.
Since the early 1990s, Canada has maintained high immigration, attracting an average of about 235,000 new arrivals per year, according to 2016 census data.