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Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

Most western countries are seeing severely declining birth rates right now. What is different about canada? Is this driven by immigration?

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There’s 1 million international students in Canadian university right now. There’s just 38Miion people in Canada.

Canada took immigration on steroids under their current government. Many think it’s not sustainable with housing, medical, education, and social services unable to absorb such large growth short term.

Just to compare, US also has 1 million international students while having x10 population.

Canada's population has grown faster than the US. US is "only" 8x Canada now.

Canada: 40.8 million (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2018005...)

US: 336 million (https://www.census.gov/popclock/)

Context: Like the US, Canada allows international students to work. Unlike the US, Canada allows those students to work off campus, up to 40 hours a week. This has caused the rise of an entire industry, in which so-called institutions of higher learning (Conestoga, Lambton, Confederation) have 99% Indian "students" that work off campus, destroying the local job and housing markets.

I think you meant to say immigrants alleviate the local labor shortage and contribute to the housing market.

50% of migrants can't find a job.

Our banks are publishing papers that for every 1% our population increases, home prices appreciate 3% above the target CPI of 2%; AFTER accounting for interest rates.

It's flat out a Ponzi Scheme. Our real wages are absolute CRAP.

Almost all of our colleges are diploma mills now. Not just the private ones.

It is sustainable, just not with the current polices.

At its current first world standards, Canada should be able to attract top talent from any developing country. It has practically infinite space & resources. They can selectively import a mix of medicine, education and construction professionals to make sure that services keep in touch with the rising population. Sadly, their polices are all over the place. While the US skims from the top of the Indian talent pool, Canada seems hell bent on importing the most mediocre of Indian talent.

This article does a good job of elaborating on the needles and massive hurdles faced by a foreign health-care professional, if they want to immigrate to Canada. You can complain about the shortcomings all you want, but the unwillingness to expand slots is a purely political decision. Similarly, despite having a massive housing shortage, housing remains firmly in the grasp of Canadian NIMBYs.

All social-welfarist countries will need to find ways to replace their aging workforces. Some will try to promote fertility (Hungary, Poland?) and others will try immigration. There isn't much else you can do. For once, the US had had a mature and well thought out legal immigration system. It pretty much selects for only those who can productively contribute to the economy, and that's after drawing ~$200k in tuition and ~5-10 years of uncompensated social security taxes.

> It has practically infinite space & resources.

Not true for most of Canada on the Shield, the vast majority of land is close to barren rock, very hard rock at that, and way too cold & remote for economically viable anything (without huge subsidies from Ottawa), any mining/farming/etc. only happens in unusual pockets, like Sudbury where a big asteroid hit relatively recently in the geological past.

Over 2 Million a year are coming in. Canada does not have infinite space. Most of the country is uninhabitable. It has a harsh climate. Most of the influx goes to two cities and their environs. Housing costs are the most expensive in the developed world.

You could make like 20 more Calgaries east of the Rockies with prefabs pumped out WW2 style. The geography there ain't that unique.

Except the last cold snap in Alberta almost took out their power grid. Canada needs infrastructure to build things out and we have not investment in what we have let alone what we need, how can we build out even just 1 more Calgary?

People live in Texas and it /actually/ took out their power grid..

I have no power service at all. Generator+solar, not that hard to figure out what to do for weak grids.

But that's not how city economics works. And most immigrants are from India and China. They, quite rightly, prefer to settle in places were their are others who share the same language and culture. That's Toronto and Vancouver. That's also were the jobs are.

Have they considered moving back to India or China if they want to move the goalposts from 'uninhabitable' to cultural immersion of their homeland/ancestoral homeland?

Entirely by immigration - Canada's fertility rate is low even by developed Western standards. Around 1.4 children per woman, compared to the US at 1.64, the UK at 1.56, and not far from Japan at 1.34

Yes, because why would anyone have a child when they can’t be sure of finding housing or childcare?

And your government forces you to compete with the third world.

I was just in Toronto. It’s basically Indian Chicago.

That sounds dope.

Wait until you see Brampton

I think the lower mainland has a much higher proportion of Indians than anywhere in Ontario.

>The Lower Mainland is a geographic and cultural region of the mainland coast of British Columbia that generally comprises the regional districts of Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.

--Wikipedia

Yep. The community is much older too - South Asians had been in the Lower Mainland since the 1880s-90s during the lumber boom.

I thought Vancouver was mostly Chinese

It's a very diverse place - you have people from basically everywhere.

OP said “mostly” not “solely”. I think this is probably accurate.

No, it isn't. There are a lot of people of Chinese ethnicity in Vancouver but it is nowhere near the dominant fraction. But there is a very nice Chinatown (great food).

The ethnic 'whites' are about 50%, ethnic Chinese is now ~25%, it was quite a bit lower when I was still living in Canada so it was definitely on the rise but the increase seems to have leveled off.

Some externally sourced data that more or less confirms this:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/canadian-cities/vancouver-...

Canada has a “points-based” immigration system - you get points for various factors (university degrees, in-demand skills, etc), and anyone who gets over the cutoff can immigrate permanently. A lot easier to navigate and understand than the US rules. Hence, on a per capita basis, its immigration rate is 2-3 times that of the US.

Australia and New Zealand are other countries with a points-based system. Australia likewise has much higher immigration than US, although currently not quite as high as Canada. New Zealand’s immigration levels have historically been higher than the US too, although the last few years have been a COVID-induced anomaly. (Again, when I say higher, I mean per capita - in absolute terms the US comes first globally, but per capita it is only about average.)

People tend to ignore or underestimate the contribution of longevity to population growth even while birth rates decline.

Would that not make the situation worse? I would think that having more older people as part of the population means less productivity and a much bigger strain on the health care system.

I don't know what qualitative framework you are using to judge "worse". I am only remarking that increasing longevity is a non-negligible contributor to population. The process involves births and deaths, so you can't look only at births. You have to look at how many people are dying at what ages.

Last I checked, in Quebec specifically, 25%+ of the population is 65 and up, and it's trending upward. Immigration rates definitely have to do with the shorter-term issues, but this has been going on for decades at this point.

Yes. Birth rate is 1.4 by woman but immigration is 470k/y.

Don't forget the visa immigrants. Students, special work permits like IT, refugees and illegals. It's 2+ Million a year.

Yes. Opening paragraph:

> Canada is going through an unprecedented growth spurt, having added well over a million people last year after a similarly historic intake in 2022.

“added 1 million people” is not super clear language as to the contributing factor

AFAICT, "adding a million people" is double counting by adding the number of people who arrive and the number of people who obtain residency.

I don't think it's double counting unless StatsCan's population estimates are way off. For example, look at the delta between Q4 2022 and Q4 2023:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=171000...

I can't find the article now so someone might want to fact check me, but I believe the figure is that 98% of Canada's population increase in 2023 was from immigration.

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