Increasing immigration isn't the panacea to support our
greying population
The Vancouver Sun
Fri 29
Sep 2006
Page: A16
Section: Editorial
Byline:
Source: Vancouver
Sun

Canada's old age problem is no secret. Barring any
dramatic changes to fertility rates, immigration levels and life expectancy, the
ratio of the population 65 and older to the working age population 18 to 64 will
rise to 46 per cent by 2050 from 20 per cent today.

What these numbers mean is that more people will be drawing retirement
benefits and consuming publicly funded health care services while fewer people
will be paying taxes to fund them.

Not to worry. Governments have assured us over the years that increasing
immigration will solve this problem. Immigrants tend to be younger than the
resident population and by admitting more we can stay forever young,
demographically speaking.

In fact, former immigration minister Joe Volpe had a plan to raise
immigration to equal one per cent of Canada's population, which would suggest
320,000 immigrants a year, a 45-per-cent increase over the average of the past
decade. This would be a sea change for a country that already ranks among the
highest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in
immigration inflows and share of population born beyond its borders. Still, the
goal, while ambitious, seems achievable.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't do much good.

Some number crunching by the C.D. Howe Institute has come up with unsettling results. The
Volpe vision would slow the greying of the population only slightly; the old-age
dependency ratio would still rise to about 40 per cent by 2050.

In order to maintain the dependency ratio at 20 per cent, the C.D. Howe study determined, Canada would have to admit a
number of immigrants equal to 2.5 per cent of the population by 2010, 4.4 per
cent by 2012 and 4.7 per cent by 2020, by which time the population would be
56.6 million and 2.6 million immigrants would be arriving every year.

Successfully absorbing this rate of immigration would be impossible.

But what if Canada restricted immigration only to those 20 to 24 years old?

Of course, we'd probably have to throw out the Constitution and a whole body
of international law and conventions to do it, but let's say it could be done.
Even with this extreme age filter, immigration would have to climb to 1.2
million young people a year within a decade, compared with 20,000 today. That
exceeds by a wide margin the total number of people that age moving into all the
developed countries of the world combined, say the study's authors Yvan Guillemette and
William Robson.
Given that there are only 2.2 million Canadians in that age group, raising
immigration to these levels would make competition for jobs impossibly fierce
and drive wages dramatically lower.

Regrettably, immigration, as the study put it, is no elixir of youth. So
politicians will have to seek creative solutions to the declining number of
workers paying payroll taxes.

To that end, the study recommends policies that encourage work and savings,
which would not only help Canadians adjust to demographic changes, but provide a
better economic climate for those immigrants who decide to come here.

Edition: Final
Story Type: Editorial
Length:
507 words