Canada's surging cost of living fuels reverse immigration
reuters.com
reuters.com
Canada's emigration rate (exiting the country) was "quite high" at rougly 0.15% of popuation for 15 years 1990-2015.
It steadily declined to 0.07% in 2020 ... and <dramatic sting!> has now climbed a bit to 0.09%.
It's a trend in a small number and trends are interesting, however ... another interesting and true headline might be:
Canadians not leaving Canda forever nearly as fast as they used to!!
I'm not even sure the cost of living is still surging. Gas is cheaper. Real estate is going sideways. At least in my personal experience it's stabilized.
More seriously. Canada had brain drain for some time. People leaving to the US e.g. I'm sure that's still happening. I think Trump being elected in the US slowed that somewhat. There's all sorts of reasons why people move from one country to another. Correlation, causation and all of that.
The Globe and Mail has an this headline: "BoC Deputy Governor Gravelle says high immigration adding to housing inflation".
EDIT: Also immigrants leaving isn't that unusual. Immigration isn't for everyone. You might have family and friends behind. It might be hard to make new connections. Get a job. It's pretty cold here too.
It has stabilized at the level the average Joe could never afford. Having a house was once relatively easy attainable goal. So we fucked it up.
Its about immigrants specifically leaving, which is arguably a good indicator of the desirability of living in the country.
Just like how I am not giving an opinion on the immigration/emigration policies, I'm merely offering (what I think is[2]) a correction to your post.
[1] Maybe his "correction" is wrong, but he is still only talking about stats and not policies.
[2] I could be wrong too, about my interpretation about GPs correction, but that still leaves this post void of opinions on immigration/emigration policies.
This is a place where the terminology breaks down, since technically even native-born Canadians who leave for another country are "immigrating" to that country.
I assume you mean something like: "This is about people who immigrated to Canada emigrating/immigrating a second time."
Emigrants leaving a country had been living there, perhaps for their whole life, and have decided to leave and go elsewhere.
Personally, just my opinion, among the 7+ countries that I have stayed in, Canada ranks the top for almost everything. It has its challenges and rough spots and problems and issues but is much more manageable compared to other countries.
No guns, universal medicare, friendly(iest) people, free school, English speaking, amazing landscape: Next to impossible to find a challenger for me.
Australia has too many drawback and none of them are weather or socioeconomic.
Australia: negative of all the above.
Quebec has 20%+ of its population with no family doctor while Ontario has 10%
Here in metro Vancouver it is recently very easy to get a doctor, but on Vancouver Island (same province) it is very hard
Australia is much better but it's a far wealthier country with far fewer people
Let me check.. GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was 62k for Australia VS 58k for Canada last year. Pretty comparable. Population is 40M vs 26M. I guess you could argue that's far fewer people, but in the range of countries those are in the same general vicinity.
Income inequality (when I was there in 2010's) for Canada was twice that of Australia.
It (was/is) extremely rare to see homeless people in Australia while in most places in Toronto downtown its impossible to NOT see homeless.
If you spend few years in both countries you can clearly see the standard of living difference between both countries. Canadian infrastructure is much more poorer and worse off (my observation, not my complaint)
In Portugal I can schedule any specialist doctor visit in a matter of days in advance all online via Calendly like interface.
I don’t need to wait for family doctor approval.
I can also go and run a lab panel at will, at many locations throughout the city. No dr referenced needed. Costs like 5-10 euros per lab without insurance.
When I went to see a dr, he actually spent time talking to me one on one for the full half hour allotted. No rushing. In Canada doctor would run in and out in minutes quickly just dishing out some prescription or a lab. I felt like I was just an item on a conveyor belt.
Maybe, but the articles main thesis, as expressed by it's title is about reverse immigration, not emigration:
> The rate of immigrants leaving Canada hit a two-decade high in 2019,
I feel the article just mixed in all the numbers they could for the maximum possible interpretations by readers. They could have focused on the thesis in the title, or they could have focused on the emigration, but by choosing to mix everything up all you get are a bunch of readers who come away from the same article with different salient points.
I remember as a kid living in a single bedroom basement apartment with my parents and sibling in Vancouver as a kid, but we used it as a backup in case we wouldn't get a GC in the US. The racism was definetly palpable there as well, and education quality was crap compared to my average elementary school in California.
(Eastern) Canadians have a stick up their ass as if their QoL is better than the US, but most of their American experience is usually a rust belt town in Upstate New York or Michigan. Meanwhile, back in BC, almost every family I knew had at least one relative living in Sacramento, Spokane, Portland, Seattle, etc doing construction, municipal jobs, or something.
> Justinas Stankus
Tbf, his research is about ethnic conflict in Myanmar, so he kind of has to be in SEA
Not sure this post is HN related though.
Even if this was once true - I doubt it is (on average) any more. The recent PISA rankings put Canada above the US in every area - especially so for science and mathematics. The socio-economic status of a student also impacted the quality of education less in Canada than in the US. [0]
It's useless doing a national level comparison of PISA scores when each countries uses a different methodology to select students.
[0] - https://www.cmec.ca/251/Programme_for_International_Student_...
Hispanics and especially blacks' scores drag the US average down. Both white and Asian Americans score higher than Canada (and white+Asian is essentially Canada's racial makeup), and higher than New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, and the UK; Estonia is below US Asians but above white Americans. Norway is by far the wealthiest Nordic state but its average is only two points higher than the US national average, despite not having a demographic that is 13% of the population and scores 85 points below the white American average.
(Disclaimer: I have not reviewed this year's PISA results. However, I know of no reason why the above analysis would not still apply.)
What area were you in? Could it be that it was a rough area? My experience in the GTA is that there definitely are better/worse schools, but there's less elitism in that doctors/CEOs/lawyers will still send their kids to good public schools and private schools are not especially known for academic eliteness (in fact, the most elite academic schools in the GTA are all public, with the exception of 1)
Also, the curriculum is absolutely behind the US. What I learnt in 4th grade in BC was what I learnt in California in 2nd grade.
I actually got pushed up a grade for that reason (and got screwed over when we ended up moving back to the US).
> doctors/CEOs/lawyers will still send their kids to good public schools and private schools are not especially known for academic eliteness
Same in the US. There's a reason why the most expensive houses in the US are in the best school districts. For example, in the Bay Area, houses in San Francisco are cheaper than those in good catchment districts of Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, Alameda County, and Contra Costa County. I ended up in one of those top public HSes in the Bay and my classmates were all extremely well off (middle/upper level management at FAANGs and even a couple CEOs of top tech companies).
It's the same in Seattle (Bellvue, Redmond), Chicago (North Burbs), NYC (parts of NJ and Hudson River Valley), etc.
Markham and Fremont aren't all that different, except Fremont has more Millionaires and Billionaires, and much more pan-Asian. Back in Canada, Chinese, Indians, Pinoy, etc were definitely more segregated than in the US.
The government has managed to create an economy predominantly dependent on a real estate bubble driven by money laundering and capital flight/money parking from China.
Simultaneously suppressing wages by increasing the population by 2% per year via trivial immigration requirements and student visas for Indian nationals that lead to PR status and allows full time work with government subsidies for the employer for not hiring Caucasians.
All of this in the name of allegedly compensating for young Canadians not having children to pay into the ponzi that is the CPP etc. Somehow making children less affordable is supposed to fix this.
Downvoting this doesn’t make it any less true. Even the mainstream media in the country is starting to realize they won’t get skewered for saying so.
It's interestig how we're building a critical mass of people who are getting their calculations of future retirement income (social security or whatever), see the number they'll get when they retire, see the rent price and instantly become a member of "nothing left to lose" group... basically the most dangerous group for anyone who'll be blamed for any crisis...
Regarding canada specifically... I personally found it funny, how they called all the 'freedom truckers' nazis, and then cheered an actual nazi in the parliament... I mean... WWII is not some obscure thing that noone knows anything about, it doesn't take a lot of history knowledge to put two and two together to at last cast some questions about the side the guy was on. On the other hand, canada has some history with nazism and importing nazis after the war, but they managed to keep that pretty quiet.
The problem of what to do with a shrinking, aging population, and governments, economies, etc. which are not built for declines in growth is something no one has solved yet. And the problem needs to be addressed somehow. If people don't want to have kids, these kinds of policies will keep coming because the problem isn't going away
It’s illogical in the purest sense, and if the systems in place rely on infinite growth then the systems are not sustainable and need to be reconsidered. A society shouldn’t be shoehorned into a lower quality of life under the assumption that infinite growth is not only possible but necessary, simply because the constituents of the S&P 500 operate under that assumption.
Its now reaching Gabo-level surrealism. Vancouver is now worse than a favela in Rio.
I moved from Brazil to Vancouver. BC has problems as any other place on Earth, but claiming it is a hellhole is just dumb. It is sad that these extreme and tone-deaf points of view are being mainstreamed and normalized.
100x less stupid. Honestly there’s a bigger homeless problem in Vancouver than Buenos Aires, Rio, or even Asuncion.
That said Canada is super beautiful but Argentina has Patagonia which is better than the Rockies at a tenth of the price.
Most of North America is highly overrated currently. CDMX is really the only city I’d consider in NA.
Most Latam cities are pretty good about keeping the criminals separate from the people. This is kind of what I meant by 100x less stupid than Vancouver.
Brazil and Colombia are the exceptions, though the populace generally supports the idea of law and order so it at least has a hope.
Healthcare in Paraguay is much better for day to day stuff than Canada and if you need more go to Argentina / Brazil / Europe.
She came to check Canada out and definitely does not want to live there. Lots of people go to school in US / Europe and come back.
Paraguay is for people who want to work anyone who doesn’t usually goes to Argentina / Brazil or Spain to be on welfare.
Edit: I posted too much so here’s my reply.
She doesn’t like socialism, lack of rights, insane taxes, that women think she is oppressed because she has opinions that differ from theirs. Godlessness, and the hate for men / successful people.
She does love the common law system tho, she says she could get a lot more people found not guilty if she could use common law.
Reply: yeah, definitely right wing, she makes me blush sometimes.
Paraguay is 105th in HDI and 104th in GDP per capita. 43% of Paraguayan families live in inadequate housing. Homicide rate is 3x Canada.
What makes you consider the livability of Paraguay as so much better is likely because you are in the very top echelon of a socioeconomically poor country, as evidenced by the fact you still have a house in Canada.
Edit: Ok, looking at your edit it just seems that she has hardcore right-wing beliefs and doesn't want to live in a left-wing country.
I also checked the stats on Rio and to say that homelessness or poverty is better in Rio compared to Vancouver is almost so insulting and out of touch I can't fathom how one can come to such a conclusion.
I don't live in Vancouver, I've never been there, but to claim that a first world city that consistently ranks among the highest quality of life in the world is somehow experiencing homelessness or poverty on the level of a city that is absolutely riddled with crime, poverty, and homelessness just seems to invalidate anything you have to say on this topic.
That said I'm glad you found a place you like in Paraguay and I agree that there are plenty of beautiful places in South America that make for a wonderful home.
My friend / boxing coach lives in the favelas in Rio, he has a home. There’s no one sleeping on the streets / tent cities like in Vancouver.
Even in Chacarita in Asuncion everyone has a home with a TV, a phone, and AC.
Argentina has the same inequality rate as the US.
Live here before you run stats, I thought the same thing about Paraguay too.
I would read into quality of life measures, it has little to do with happiness. Paraguay is tied with Mexico, and Panama for #1 spot on the global emotions report.
Not surprised about there being fewer tent cities in Rio. From the news articles I've read, it looks like the police are very active in raiding them and dismantling them, using tear gas and riot based tactics.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-police-evict-h...
I was in Dubai and they have basically no homelessness, but you don't want to know how they accomplish it.
I heard Vancouver got tired of it as well and am happy they are trying to solve their homeless problem.
lol wut? The life of the 1% is great in every country.
> CDMX is really the only city I’d consider in NA
CDMX ain't bad (and kudos for you actually recognizing it's North American), but QoL for the average person there is def worse than a similar city across the border. Schools, infra, pollution, and law-and-order for the lower half is absolutely worse in CDMX than cities in US+CAN, hence why most working and lower middle class people in MX tend to be the ones moving North.
People in PY sometimes go to work in the US for a gig, come back, buy a car.
Largely people don’t want to live there, for the same reason they don’t want to live in Nicaragua.
It’s just feminists and socialists who want to leave. They usually choose Argentina or Brazil.
In the first six months of 2023 some 42,000 individuals departed Canada, adding to 93,818 people who left in 2022 and 85,927 exits in 2021, official data show.
These are true stories but not the true stories of all of the ~84,000 people leaving Canada this year.
The framing of this article (the immigrants are leaving!!) appears to rest on the gut feelings of the author and a handful of exit interviews that may very well not reflect the whole.
It's also littered with weasel phrasing: "While the numbers are small now", and points out that most immigrants are staying ( 263,000 in past 12 months ) .. which has contracted the available housing hard, which has led to some immigrants not being able to find affordable housing.
There's nothing that states or suggests the bulk of the 82K exits this years were once immigrants .. so "reverse immigration" to describe them all is suspect.
There's no data that backs the notion that "turn arounds" (people that come to Canada for a number of years, then leave) have increased dramatically, just the stories that some of the departures are turn abouts (and there'll always be some).
From what I've seen, more housing is available now than was available 12 months ago. Amazing what happens when prices are going down and investors aren't all vying for property.
Reuters come on. You're better then this, you aren't usually like the rest of these pretend journalists.
* Increased immigration led to housing shortages, making new homes unaffordable for local population. Prohibitive construction codes, regulations that make DIY house construction next to impossible for common people.
* Low quality education, push for gender and other social studies in lieu of STEM
* Drug use normalization
* Poor law enforcement which raises safety concerns.