联邦政府应优先考虑拥有STEM资格和语言技能的移民
作者：Jock Finlayson 和 Steven Globerman 2025年1月16日
Federal government should prioritize immigrants with STEM qualifications and language skills
Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman JANUARY 16, 2025
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/insights-to-guide-immigration-policy.pdf
过去一年，围绕加拿大移民政策的方向和细节的争议日益加剧。评论员、政界人士和学术分析人士关注的两个基本问题：1）每年接纳加拿大新移民的“适当”目标人数；2）选择这些移民（包括永久移民和临时移民）的筛选标准。筛选标准既包括移民项目的类型，例如临时工、外国学生、省提名移民或永久居民，也包括每个项目下影响申请人筛选的具体因素，例如正规教育背景、语言能力、先前工作经验、雇主担保等等。
任何对理想移民数量的评估都必须面对一个基本问题：目标的变化将如何影响加拿大现有永久居民和公民的长期生活水平？虽然移民政策可能还有其他目标，但它对现有加拿大居民福祉的影响显然是一个关键考虑因素——而我们认为这一点尚未得到足够的重视。
支持渥太华自2015年以来大幅增加移民的政策的传统论点是，人口老龄化需要越来越多的新移民——既要“取代”退休工人，又要保持国家经济增长。如果没有更高的移民水平，经济的“规模”可能会随着时间的推移而萎缩，从而使政府缺乏税收来资助各项计划，削弱经济活力，并阻碍未来整体繁荣的增长。这一观点反映在今年早些时候前财政部长兼副总理克里斯蒂亚·弗里兰（Chrystia Freeland）的讲话中。她指出：“……加拿大可能是世界上最欢迎[新移民]的国家……这是巨大的经济优势，也是我国经济增长的真正动力”（《国家邮报》工作人员，2024年）。
这一论点最明显的问题在于，它忽略了一个现实：假设移民留在加拿大，任何一批移民最终都会老到退休。因此，如果移民是政策制定者为社会福利和其他项目提供资金的主要工具，他们将不得不立法连续增加新移民的数量，以资助前几批移民的退休生活。这种做法最终将变得不可持续，因为后来的潜在移民群体会怀疑，未来支持他们退休所需的人口增长可能无法实现或不可行，从而使加拿大成为一个吸引力下降的移民目的地。
前部长弗里兰的观点中一个更微妙的问题在于，将经济规模等同于劳动力规模，隐含地假设劳动力规模的扩大会自动导致国内生产总值（GDP）的增加，进而导致税基的扩大。然而，如果移民增加导致劳动生产率下降，则情况并非如此。毕竟，GDP是总工作时长和每工时实际产出的乘积。如果后者的下降幅度大于前者的增幅，在其他条件不变的情况下，GDP将会萎缩，税基也将萎缩。文献中的证据表明，低技能和低教育程度工人的移民会损害劳动生产率——例如，鼓励雇主减缓采用节省劳动力的技术。一些经济学家认为，自2015年以来，移民推动的强劲劳动力增长导致加拿大企业“看到的投资刺激机会比以往更少”（Robson和Bafale，2024：19）。劳动生产率是资本与劳动比率的正函数。通过增加移民大幅扩大低技能工人供应的政策可能会抑制劳动生产率的增长（Sargent，2024；Doyle 等人，2023），尽管它可能有助于解决某些行业的劳动力供应短缺和生产瓶颈问题。
即使移民增加不会对总体劳动生产率产生不利影响，GDP 增长也不一定意味着移民激增前居住在该国的人们的生活水平提高。在加拿大，近期移民数量（包括永久移民和临时移民）接近创纪录的增长与房价上涨有关（Wright，2024）。如果移民增加，而住房供应没有同时相应增加，住房负担能力也没有提高，许多加拿大人可能会
Federal government should prioritize immigrants with STEM qualifications and language skills
By: Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman JANUARY 16, 2025
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/insights-to-guide-immigration-policy.pdf
The past year has seen growing controversy over the direction and details of Canada’s immigration policy. Commentators, political figures, and academic analysts have focused on two basic issues: 1) the “appropriate” annual target number of new immigrants admitted to Canada; and 2) the selection criteria for choosing these immigrants—both permanent and temporary. Selection criteria encompass both the type of immigration program, e.g., temporary workers, foreign students, provincial nominees, or permanent residents, as well as the specific attributes that influence applicant selection under each program—such as formal education, language proficiency, prior work experience, employer sponsorship, and so forth.
Any evaluation of the desired number of immigrants must confront a basic question: how will a change in the target affect the long-run standard of living of existing permanent residents and citizens of Canada? While immigration policy may have other objectives, its impact on the well-being of existing Canadian residents obviously is a key consideration—one that in our view has received insufficient attention.
The conventional argument in support of Ottawa’s policy to sharply ramp up immigration since 2015 is that an aging population requires an ever-larger number of newcomers—both to “replace” retiring workers and to keep the country’s economy growing. Absent higher levels of immigration, the “size” of the economy will presumably shrink over time, thereby depriving governments of tax revenue to fund programs, sapping economic dynamism, and hindering future gains in overall prosperity. This view is reflected in remarks by former Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland earlier this year, when she observed that “…Canada is probably the country in the world that is most welcoming of [newcomers]…. That is a huge economic strength. It is a real driver of our country’s economic growth” (National Post Staff, 2024).
The most obvious problem with this argument is that it overlooks the reality that any cohort of immigrants will eventually also age into retirement, assuming they remain in Canada. It follows that if immigration is the main instrument policymakers rely on to fund social and other programs, they will be obliged to legislate serial increases in the number of newcomers in order to finance the retirements of preceding immigrant cohorts. This will become unsustainable at some point, as later cohorts of potential immigrants come to suspect that the future population growth required to support them in retirement might not materialize or be feasible, thus making Canada a less attractive immigration destination.
A more subtle problem with former Minister Freeland’s perspective is that equating the size of the economy to the size of its workforce implicitly assumes that a larger workforce automatically leads to a larger Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and, relatedly, to a larger tax base. However, this need not be true if increased immigration results in reduced labour productivity. After all, GDP is the product of total hours worked and real output per worker hour. If the latter decreases by more than the former increases, GDP will contract, as will the tax base, all other things constant. The evidence in the literature indicates that immigration of lower-skilled and less-educated workers hurts labour productivity—for example, by encouraging employers to slow the adoption of labour-saving technologies. Some economists have argued that strong immigration-fueled labour force growth since 2015 has caused Canadian businesses to “see fewer investment-spurring opportunities than they used to” (Robson and Bafale, 2024: 19). Labour productivity is a positive function of the capital-to-labour ratio. A policy to significantly expand the supply of lower-skilled workers via increased immigration is likely to dampen T INSIGHTS TO GUIDE IMMIGRATION POLICY BY JOCK FINLAYSON AND STEVEN GLOBERMAN © 2025 Fraser Institute fraserinstitute.org labour productivity growth (Sargent, 2024; Doyle et al., 2023), although it could help to address labour supply shortfalls and production bottlenecks in a few sectors.
Even if aggregate labour productivity is not adversely affected by increased immigration, it does not necessarily follow that a larger GDP equates to a higher standard of living for people resident in the country prior to the immigration surge. In Canada, recent near-record growth in the number of immigrants—permanent and temporary combined—has been linked to higher housing prices (Wright, 2024). Increased immigration, absent a contemporaneous and commensurate expansion of the housing supply and improved housing affordability, may leave many Canadians with less disposable income to spend on goods and services other than housing. It could force them to consume less “housing” than they otherwise would if housing were more affordable. This is not to argue that immigration alone drives housing prices—it is clear several other factors are also at play (Saiz, 2023).
The main inference to be drawn from the discussion so far is that growing the workforce through higher immigration does not necessarily make Canadians better off over their life cycles. This suggests the primary focus of a sensible immigration policy should be to attract newcomers who will increase the standard of living of people already resident in Canada, both over the course of their working lives and into retirement. This outcome is most likely if new immigrants contribute to higher average labour productivity across the economy. The empirical evidence is persuasive that highly educated immigrants, particularly those trained in STEMrelated subjects,1 are likely to 1) increase the productivity of existing residents, and 2) directly and indirectly contribute more to the tax base than they draw in government-funded public services and income transfers (Worswick, 2024). This pattern primarily reflects the disproportionate contribution that highly-educated immigrants make to innovation and entrepreneurship.2
Accordingly, our principal recommendation is that the Canadian government reinforce the role of the “points-based” system in selecting permanent immigrants and ensure the system assigns a high weight to prospective immigrants with STEM-related qualifications along with appropriate language skills (Finlayson and Globerman, 2023). There is also an argument for attracting more economic immigrants with skilled trades credentials. Generally, newcomers with STEM and skilled trades qualifications are most likely to raise average labour productivity and per-capita GDP over time.3
Federal and provincial policymakers should also consider why Canadian immigrants with STEM-related qualifications, while generally out-performing other immigrants in terms of employment earnings and incomes, under-perform American immigrants with similar qualifications (Statistics Canada, 2020). This finding suggests that policymakers should put a high priority on improving the business environment for entrepreneurship, innovation, and the growth of technology-intensive industries and occupations in Canada, in order to reap more benefits from skills-based economic immigration.
We further recommend reducing the number of “temporary” immigrants admitted to Canada under the various international student and temporary foreign worker programs—as the federal government has now started to do, albeit after allowing these programs to run essentially “out of control” over the last few years (Keller, 2024; Worswick, 2024). Since 2021, non-permanent immigrants have greatly outnumbered new permanent immigrants; in our view, it is time to move back to the pre-2020 balance between temporary and permanent newcomers. At the same time, we believe international student selection should be re-oriented to target students who enroll in and complete programs that lead to high-paying jobs and careers, rather than programs that graduate individuals who—if they stay in Canada—typically end up in low-productivity jobs in relatively low-paying industries (Keller, 2024).
联邦政府应优先考虑拥有STEM资格和语言技能的移民
风萧萧_Frank (2025-05-27 04:24:18) 评论 (0)
联邦政府应优先考虑拥有STEM资格和语言技能的移民
作者：Jock Finlayson 和 Steven Globerman 2025年1月16日
Federal government should prioritize immigrants with STEM qualifications and language skills
Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman JANUARY 16, 2025
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/insights-to-guide-immigration-policy.pdf
过去一年，围绕加拿大移民政策的方向和细节的争议日益加剧。评论员、政界人士和学术分析人士关注的两个基本问题：1）每年接纳加拿大新移民的“适当”目标人数；2）选择这些移民（包括永久移民和临时移民）的筛选标准。筛选标准既包括移民项目的类型，例如临时工、外国学生、省提名移民或永久居民，也包括每个项目下影响申请人筛选的具体因素，例如正规教育背景、语言能力、先前工作经验、雇主担保等等。
任何对理想移民数量的评估都必须面对一个基本问题：目标的变化将如何影响加拿大现有永久居民和公民的长期生活水平？虽然移民政策可能还有其他目标，但它对现有加拿大居民福祉的影响显然是一个关键考虑因素——而我们认为这一点尚未得到足够的重视。
支持渥太华自2015年以来大幅增加移民的政策的传统论点是，人口老龄化需要越来越多的新移民——既要“取代”退休工人，又要保持国家经济增长。如果没有更高的移民水平，经济的“规模”可能会随着时间的推移而萎缩，从而使政府缺乏税收来资助各项计划，削弱经济活力，并阻碍未来整体繁荣的增长。这一观点反映在今年早些时候前财政部长兼副总理克里斯蒂亚·弗里兰（Chrystia Freeland）的讲话中。她指出：“……加拿大可能是世界上最欢迎[新移民]的国家……这是巨大的经济优势，也是我国经济增长的真正动力”（《国家邮报》工作人员，2024年）。
这一论点最明显的问题在于，它忽略了一个现实：假设移民留在加拿大，任何一批移民最终都会老到退休。因此，如果移民是政策制定者为社会福利和其他项目提供资金的主要工具，他们将不得不立法连续增加新移民的数量，以资助前几批移民的退休生活。这种做法最终将变得不可持续，因为后来的潜在移民群体会怀疑，未来支持他们退休所需的人口增长可能无法实现或不可行，从而使加拿大成为一个吸引力下降的移民目的地。
前部长弗里兰的观点中一个更微妙的问题在于，将经济规模等同于劳动力规模，隐含地假设劳动力规模的扩大会自动导致国内生产总值（GDP）的增加，进而导致税基的扩大。然而，如果移民增加导致劳动生产率下降，则情况并非如此。毕竟，GDP是总工作时长和每工时实际产出的乘积。如果后者的下降幅度大于前者的增幅，在其他条件不变的情况下，GDP将会萎缩，税基也将萎缩。文献中的证据表明，低技能和低教育程度工人的移民会损害劳动生产率——例如，鼓励雇主减缓采用节省劳动力的技术。一些经济学家认为，自2015年以来，移民推动的强劲劳动力增长导致加拿大企业“看到的投资刺激机会比以往更少”（Robson和Bafale，2024：19）。劳动生产率是资本与劳动比率的正函数。通过增加移民大幅扩大低技能工人供应的政策可能会抑制劳动生产率的增长（Sargent，2024；Doyle 等人，2023），尽管它可能有助于解决某些行业的劳动力供应短缺和生产瓶颈问题。
即使移民增加不会对总体劳动生产率产生不利影响，GDP 增长也不一定意味着移民激增前居住在该国的人们的生活水平提高。在加拿大，近期移民数量（包括永久移民和临时移民）接近创纪录的增长与房价上涨有关（Wright，2024）。如果移民增加，而住房供应没有同时相应增加，住房负担能力也没有提高，许多加拿大人可能会
Federal government should prioritize immigrants with STEM qualifications and language skills
By: Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman JANUARY 16, 2025
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/insights-to-guide-immigration-policy.pdf
The past year has seen growing controversy over the direction and details of Canada’s immigration policy. Commentators, political figures, and academic analysts have focused on two basic issues: 1) the “appropriate” annual target number of new immigrants admitted to Canada; and 2) the selection criteria for choosing these immigrants—both permanent and temporary. Selection criteria encompass both the type of immigration program, e.g., temporary workers, foreign students, provincial nominees, or permanent residents, as well as the specific attributes that influence applicant selection under each program—such as formal education, language proficiency, prior work experience, employer sponsorship, and so forth.
Any evaluation of the desired number of immigrants must confront a basic question: how will a change in the target affect the long-run standard of living of existing permanent residents and citizens of Canada? While immigration policy may have other objectives, its impact on the well-being of existing Canadian residents obviously is a key consideration—one that in our view has received insufficient attention.
The conventional argument in support of Ottawa’s policy to sharply ramp up immigration since 2015 is that an aging population requires an ever-larger number of newcomers—both to “replace” retiring workers and to keep the country’s economy growing. Absent higher levels of immigration, the “size” of the economy will presumably shrink over time, thereby depriving governments of tax revenue to fund programs, sapping economic dynamism, and hindering future gains in overall prosperity. This view is reflected in remarks by former Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland earlier this year, when she observed that “…Canada is probably the country in the world that is most welcoming of [newcomers]…. That is a huge economic strength. It is a real driver of our country’s economic growth” (National Post Staff, 2024).
The most obvious problem with this argument is that it overlooks the reality that any cohort of immigrants will eventually also age into retirement, assuming they remain in Canada. It follows that if immigration is the main instrument policymakers rely on to fund social and other programs, they will be obliged to legislate serial increases in the number of newcomers in order to finance the retirements of preceding immigrant cohorts. This will become unsustainable at some point, as later cohorts of potential immigrants come to suspect that the future population growth required to support them in retirement might not materialize or be feasible, thus making Canada a less attractive immigration destination.
A more subtle problem with former Minister Freeland’s perspective is that equating the size of the economy to the size of its workforce implicitly assumes that a larger workforce automatically leads to a larger Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and, relatedly, to a larger tax base. However, this need not be true if increased immigration results in reduced labour productivity. After all, GDP is the product of total hours worked and real output per worker hour. If the latter decreases by more than the former increases, GDP will contract, as will the tax base, all other things constant. The evidence in the literature indicates that immigration of lower-skilled and less-educated workers hurts labour productivity—for example, by encouraging employers to slow the adoption of labour-saving technologies. Some economists have argued that strong immigration-fueled labour force growth since 2015 has caused Canadian businesses to “see fewer investment-spurring opportunities than they used to” (Robson and Bafale, 2024: 19). Labour productivity is a positive function of the capital-to-labour ratio. A policy to significantly expand the supply of lower-skilled workers via increased immigration is likely to dampen T INSIGHTS TO GUIDE IMMIGRATION POLICY BY JOCK FINLAYSON AND STEVEN GLOBERMAN © 2025 Fraser Institute fraserinstitute.org labour productivity growth (Sargent, 2024; Doyle et al., 2023), although it could help to address labour supply shortfalls and production bottlenecks in a few sectors.
Even if aggregate labour productivity is not adversely affected by increased immigration, it does not necessarily follow that a larger GDP equates to a higher standard of living for people resident in the country prior to the immigration surge. In Canada, recent near-record growth in the number of immigrants—permanent and temporary combined—has been linked to higher housing prices (Wright, 2024). Increased immigration, absent a contemporaneous and commensurate expansion of the housing supply and improved housing affordability, may leave many Canadians with less disposable income to spend on goods and services other than housing. It could force them to consume less “housing” than they otherwise would if housing were more affordable. This is not to argue that immigration alone drives housing prices—it is clear several other factors are also at play (Saiz, 2023).
The main inference to be drawn from the discussion so far is that growing the workforce through higher immigration does not necessarily make Canadians better off over their life cycles. This suggests the primary focus of a sensible immigration policy should be to attract newcomers who will increase the standard of living of people already resident in Canada, both over the course of their working lives and into retirement. This outcome is most likely if new immigrants contribute to higher average labour productivity across the economy. The empirical evidence is persuasive that highly educated immigrants, particularly those trained in STEMrelated subjects,1 are likely to 1) increase the productivity of existing residents, and 2) directly and indirectly contribute more to the tax base than they draw in government-funded public services and income transfers (Worswick, 2024). This pattern primarily reflects the disproportionate contribution that highly-educated immigrants make to innovation and entrepreneurship.2
Accordingly, our principal recommendation is that the Canadian government reinforce the role of the “points-based” system in selecting permanent immigrants and ensure the system assigns a high weight to prospective immigrants with STEM-related qualifications along with appropriate language skills (Finlayson and Globerman, 2023). There is also an argument for attracting more economic immigrants with skilled trades credentials. Generally, newcomers with STEM and skilled trades qualifications are most likely to raise average labour productivity and per-capita GDP over time.3
Federal and provincial policymakers should also consider why Canadian immigrants with STEM-related qualifications, while generally out-performing other immigrants in terms of employment earnings and incomes, under-perform American immigrants with similar qualifications (Statistics Canada, 2020). This finding suggests that policymakers should put a high priority on improving the business environment for entrepreneurship, innovation, and the growth of technology-intensive industries and occupations in Canada, in order to reap more benefits from skills-based economic immigration.
We further recommend reducing the number of “temporary” immigrants admitted to Canada under the various international student and temporary foreign worker programs—as the federal government has now started to do, albeit after allowing these programs to run essentially “out of control” over the last few years (Keller, 2024; Worswick, 2024). Since 2021, non-permanent immigrants have greatly outnumbered new permanent immigrants; in our view, it is time to move back to the pre-2020 balance between temporary and permanent newcomers. At the same time, we believe international student selection should be re-oriented to target students who enroll in and complete programs that lead to high-paying jobs and careers, rather than programs that graduate individuals who—if they stay in Canada—typically end up in low-productivity jobs in relatively low-paying industries (Keller, 2024).
作者：Jock Finlayson 和 Steven Globerman 2025年1月16日
Federal government should prioritize immigrants with STEM qualifications and language skills
Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman JANUARY 16, 2025
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/insights-to-guide-immigration-policy.pdf
过去一年，围绕加拿大移民政策的方向和细节的争议日益加剧。评论员、政界人士和学术分析人士关注的两个基本问题：1）每年接纳加拿大新移民的“适当”目标人数；2）选择这些移民（包括永久移民和临时移民）的筛选标准。筛选标准既包括移民项目的类型，例如临时工、外国学生、省提名移民或永久居民，也包括每个项目下影响申请人筛选的具体因素，例如正规教育背景、语言能力、先前工作经验、雇主担保等等。
任何对理想移民数量的评估都必须面对一个基本问题：目标的变化将如何影响加拿大现有永久居民和公民的长期生活水平？虽然移民政策可能还有其他目标，但它对现有加拿大居民福祉的影响显然是一个关键考虑因素——而我们认为这一点尚未得到足够的重视。
支持渥太华自2015年以来大幅增加移民的政策的传统论点是，人口老龄化需要越来越多的新移民——既要“取代”退休工人，又要保持国家经济增长。如果没有更高的移民水平，经济的“规模”可能会随着时间的推移而萎缩，从而使政府缺乏税收来资助各项计划，削弱经济活力，并阻碍未来整体繁荣的增长。这一观点反映在今年早些时候前财政部长兼副总理克里斯蒂亚·弗里兰（Chrystia Freeland）的讲话中。她指出：“……加拿大可能是世界上最欢迎[新移民]的国家……这是巨大的经济优势，也是我国经济增长的真正动力”（《国家邮报》工作人员，2024年）。
这一论点最明显的问题在于，它忽略了一个现实：假设移民留在加拿大，任何一批移民最终都会老到退休。因此，如果移民是政策制定者为社会福利和其他项目提供资金的主要工具，他们将不得不立法连续增加新移民的数量，以资助前几批移民的退休生活。这种做法最终将变得不可持续，因为后来的潜在移民群体会怀疑，未来支持他们退休所需的人口增长可能无法实现或不可行，从而使加拿大成为一个吸引力下降的移民目的地。
前部长弗里兰的观点中一个更微妙的问题在于，将经济规模等同于劳动力规模，隐含地假设劳动力规模的扩大会自动导致国内生产总值（GDP）的增加，进而导致税基的扩大。然而，如果移民增加导致劳动生产率下降，则情况并非如此。毕竟，GDP是总工作时长和每工时实际产出的乘积。如果后者的下降幅度大于前者的增幅，在其他条件不变的情况下，GDP将会萎缩，税基也将萎缩。文献中的证据表明，低技能和低教育程度工人的移民会损害劳动生产率——例如，鼓励雇主减缓采用节省劳动力的技术。一些经济学家认为，自2015年以来，移民推动的强劲劳动力增长导致加拿大企业“看到的投资刺激机会比以往更少”（Robson和Bafale，2024：19）。劳动生产率是资本与劳动比率的正函数。通过增加移民大幅扩大低技能工人供应的政策可能会抑制劳动生产率的增长（Sargent，2024；Doyle 等人，2023），尽管它可能有助于解决某些行业的劳动力供应短缺和生产瓶颈问题。
即使移民增加不会对总体劳动生产率产生不利影响，GDP 增长也不一定意味着移民激增前居住在该国的人们的生活水平提高。在加拿大，近期移民数量（包括永久移民和临时移民）接近创纪录的增长与房价上涨有关（Wright，2024）。如果移民增加，而住房供应没有同时相应增加，住房负担能力也没有提高，许多加拿大人可能会
Federal government should prioritize immigrants with STEM qualifications and language skills
By: Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman JANUARY 16, 2025
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/insights-to-guide-immigration-policy.pdf
The past year has seen growing controversy over the direction and details of Canada’s immigration policy. Commentators, political figures, and academic analysts have focused on two basic issues: 1) the “appropriate” annual target number of new immigrants admitted to Canada; and 2) the selection criteria for choosing these immigrants—both permanent and temporary. Selection criteria encompass both the type of immigration program, e.g., temporary workers, foreign students, provincial nominees, or permanent residents, as well as the specific attributes that influence applicant selection under each program—such as formal education, language proficiency, prior work experience, employer sponsorship, and so forth.
Any evaluation of the desired number of immigrants must confront a basic question: how will a change in the target affect the long-run standard of living of existing permanent residents and citizens of Canada? While immigration policy may have other objectives, its impact on the well-being of existing Canadian residents obviously is a key consideration—one that in our view has received insufficient attention.
The conventional argument in support of Ottawa’s policy to sharply ramp up immigration since 2015 is that an aging population requires an ever-larger number of newcomers—both to “replace” retiring workers and to keep the country’s economy growing. Absent higher levels of immigration, the “size” of the economy will presumably shrink over time, thereby depriving governments of tax revenue to fund programs, sapping economic dynamism, and hindering future gains in overall prosperity. This view is reflected in remarks by former Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland earlier this year, when she observed that “…Canada is probably the country in the world that is most welcoming of [newcomers]…. That is a huge economic strength. It is a real driver of our country’s economic growth” (National Post Staff, 2024).
The most obvious problem with this argument is that it overlooks the reality that any cohort of immigrants will eventually also age into retirement, assuming they remain in Canada. It follows that if immigration is the main instrument policymakers rely on to fund social and other programs, they will be obliged to legislate serial increases in the number of newcomers in order to finance the retirements of preceding immigrant cohorts. This will become unsustainable at some point, as later cohorts of potential immigrants come to suspect that the future population growth required to support them in retirement might not materialize or be feasible, thus making Canada a less attractive immigration destination.
A more subtle problem with former Minister Freeland’s perspective is that equating the size of the economy to the size of its workforce implicitly assumes that a larger workforce automatically leads to a larger Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and, relatedly, to a larger tax base. However, this need not be true if increased immigration results in reduced labour productivity. After all, GDP is the product of total hours worked and real output per worker hour. If the latter decreases by more than the former increases, GDP will contract, as will the tax base, all other things constant. The evidence in the literature indicates that immigration of lower-skilled and less-educated workers hurts labour productivity—for example, by encouraging employers to slow the adoption of labour-saving technologies. Some economists have argued that strong immigration-fueled labour force growth since 2015 has caused Canadian businesses to “see fewer investment-spurring opportunities than they used to” (Robson and Bafale, 2024: 19). Labour productivity is a positive function of the capital-to-labour ratio. A policy to significantly expand the supply of lower-skilled workers via increased immigration is likely to dampen T INSIGHTS TO GUIDE IMMIGRATION POLICY BY JOCK FINLAYSON AND STEVEN GLOBERMAN © 2025 Fraser Institute fraserinstitute.org labour productivity growth (Sargent, 2024; Doyle et al., 2023), although it could help to address labour supply shortfalls and production bottlenecks in a few sectors.
Even if aggregate labour productivity is not adversely affected by increased immigration, it does not necessarily follow that a larger GDP equates to a higher standard of living for people resident in the country prior to the immigration surge. In Canada, recent near-record growth in the number of immigrants—permanent and temporary combined—has been linked to higher housing prices (Wright, 2024). Increased immigration, absent a contemporaneous and commensurate expansion of the housing supply and improved housing affordability, may leave many Canadians with less disposable income to spend on goods and services other than housing. It could force them to consume less “housing” than they otherwise would if housing were more affordable. This is not to argue that immigration alone drives housing prices—it is clear several other factors are also at play (Saiz, 2023).
The main inference to be drawn from the discussion so far is that growing the workforce through higher immigration does not necessarily make Canadians better off over their life cycles. This suggests the primary focus of a sensible immigration policy should be to attract newcomers who will increase the standard of living of people already resident in Canada, both over the course of their working lives and into retirement. This outcome is most likely if new immigrants contribute to higher average labour productivity across the economy. The empirical evidence is persuasive that highly educated immigrants, particularly those trained in STEMrelated subjects,1 are likely to 1) increase the productivity of existing residents, and 2) directly and indirectly contribute more to the tax base than they draw in government-funded public services and income transfers (Worswick, 2024). This pattern primarily reflects the disproportionate contribution that highly-educated immigrants make to innovation and entrepreneurship.2
Accordingly, our principal recommendation is that the Canadian government reinforce the role of the “points-based” system in selecting permanent immigrants and ensure the system assigns a high weight to prospective immigrants with STEM-related qualifications along with appropriate language skills (Finlayson and Globerman, 2023). There is also an argument for attracting more economic immigrants with skilled trades credentials. Generally, newcomers with STEM and skilled trades qualifications are most likely to raise average labour productivity and per-capita GDP over time.3
Federal and provincial policymakers should also consider why Canadian immigrants with STEM-related qualifications, while generally out-performing other immigrants in terms of employment earnings and incomes, under-perform American immigrants with similar qualifications (Statistics Canada, 2020). This finding suggests that policymakers should put a high priority on improving the business environment for entrepreneurship, innovation, and the growth of technology-intensive industries and occupations in Canada, in order to reap more benefits from skills-based economic immigration.
We further recommend reducing the number of “temporary” immigrants admitted to Canada under the various international student and temporary foreign worker programs—as the federal government has now started to do, albeit after allowing these programs to run essentially “out of control” over the last few years (Keller, 2024; Worswick, 2024). Since 2021, non-permanent immigrants have greatly outnumbered new permanent immigrants; in our view, it is time to move back to the pre-2020 balance between temporary and permanent newcomers. At the same time, we believe international student selection should be re-oriented to target students who enroll in and complete programs that lead to high-paying jobs and careers, rather than programs that graduate individuals who—if they stay in Canada—typically end up in low-productivity jobs in relatively low-paying industries (Keller, 2024).