Anything multicultural is good. Immigration doesn't seem to be importing the right kind of people to the country, yet we ought to continue it anyway. It was considered some great victory to open up Canada to non-white immigration in the 1960s, a victory for how openminded we could be I guess. Then a victory for multiculturalism in the 1980s to have huge immigration levels with little public debate.
Because anything multicultural is good at present, so we can't disagree.
One wonders why the CD Howe Institute wouldn't take a leadership role in making more new babies themselves. These people have nice, easy, high paying office jobs, and yet they seem to lack the means to adequately reproduce and help Canada! There are supposedly serious problems here and our best and brightest do nothing concrete. Yet they are intellectually and physically able to take direct action-that is copulate and have kids, yet nothing, but more reports. And in the best country in the world they say.
Immigration no substitute for babies, late retirement: C.D. Howe
Immigration no substitute for babies, late retirement: C.D. Howe
By Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service, July 2, 2009
Canadians need to have more babies and delay retirement to stave off a crisis in the country’s aging workforce, the C.D. Howe Institute is warning.
Photograph by: United Photos, Reuters
Canadians need to have more babies, and delay their retirement, to stave off a crisis in the country's aging workforce, warns the C.D. Howe Institute, which finds immigration is not the "elixir for youth" many think it is.
From government talking points to casual conversation, immigration is often discussed as a solution to the challenges presented by the country's aging workforce, says CEO William Robson. But when the economic and social policy research institute conducted population simulations, even vastly increased numbers of immigrants had "startlingly little effect" on the overall age structure in Canada, he says.
As it stands now, Canada's population, faced with longer life expectancies and low fertility rates, is producing fewer young people to replace the older people leaving the workforce, the report says. That, in turn, means a smaller population of working-age people to make money, pay taxes and support the pension and health-care needs of a burgeoning older population.
"I was surprised by how weak immigration is, on its own, as a tool to affect these things," Robson says. "People in Canada generally feel very positively about immigration, so it would be nice if something that we like turned out to be the answer to some of these things that otherwise can look a little threatening."
Immigrants are younger, on average, than the rest of the population, but not by much, Robson says, so exerting any real impact on the overall age structure would require unrealistically high numbers of immigrants.
The C.D. Howe report is "emphatically not" anti-immigration, Robson says but, rather, suggests other factors that could have a greater effect on the problem of the aging workforce:
- Postponing the expected retirement age from 65 to 70. This shift has already started, he says, most recently, because people whose savings have "taken a hammering" found themselves unable to retire for financial reasons.
- Raising the fertility rate. It's a thorny issue to build policy around, Robson says, but Quebec saw some birthrate increases between 1988 and 1997 with a government "allowance for newborn children" that paid families up to $8,000 for each child born.
- Boosting productivity. The factors that affect this — and why Canada lags — are "mysterious," he says, but productivity improvements are a "free lunch," in the sense that they give societies more output with the same number of workers.
"Immigration helps but, on its own, it will not do the trick," says Robson. "My concern is that a lot of people who talk about immigration as a way of dealing with these things might think that, therefore, we can let some of these other things slip.
"If nothing else changes, the rapid increase in the share of the population that's over 65 does mean a real pinch on the working-age population," Robson says. "If we consciously work on all those fronts, then chances are, we'll get old and we'll be wondering, 'What was all the fuss about?' "
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
Because anything multicultural is good at present, so we can't disagree.
One wonders why the CD Howe Institute wouldn't take a leadership role in making more new babies themselves. These people have nice, easy, high paying office jobs, and yet they seem to lack the means to adequately reproduce and help Canada! There are supposedly serious problems here and our best and brightest do nothing concrete. Yet they are intellectually and physically able to take direct action-that is copulate and have kids, yet nothing, but more reports. And in the best country in the world they say.
Immigration no substitute for babies, late retirement: C.D. Howe
Immigration no substitute for babies, late retirement: C.D. Howe
By Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service, July 2, 2009
Canadians need to have more babies and delay retirement to stave off a crisis in the country’s aging workforce, the C.D. Howe Institute is warning.
Photograph by: United Photos, Reuters
Canadians need to have more babies, and delay their retirement, to stave off a crisis in the country's aging workforce, warns the C.D. Howe Institute, which finds immigration is not the "elixir for youth" many think it is.
From government talking points to casual conversation, immigration is often discussed as a solution to the challenges presented by the country's aging workforce, says CEO William Robson. But when the economic and social policy research institute conducted population simulations, even vastly increased numbers of immigrants had "startlingly little effect" on the overall age structure in Canada, he says.
As it stands now, Canada's population, faced with longer life expectancies and low fertility rates, is producing fewer young people to replace the older people leaving the workforce, the report says. That, in turn, means a smaller population of working-age people to make money, pay taxes and support the pension and health-care needs of a burgeoning older population.
"I was surprised by how weak immigration is, on its own, as a tool to affect these things," Robson says. "People in Canada generally feel very positively about immigration, so it would be nice if something that we like turned out to be the answer to some of these things that otherwise can look a little threatening."
Immigrants are younger, on average, than the rest of the population, but not by much, Robson says, so exerting any real impact on the overall age structure would require unrealistically high numbers of immigrants.
The C.D. Howe report is "emphatically not" anti-immigration, Robson says but, rather, suggests other factors that could have a greater effect on the problem of the aging workforce:
- Postponing the expected retirement age from 65 to 70. This shift has already started, he says, most recently, because people whose savings have "taken a hammering" found themselves unable to retire for financial reasons.
- Raising the fertility rate. It's a thorny issue to build policy around, Robson says, but Quebec saw some birthrate increases between 1988 and 1997 with a government "allowance for newborn children" that paid families up to $8,000 for each child born.
- Boosting productivity. The factors that affect this — and why Canada lags — are "mysterious," he says, but productivity improvements are a "free lunch," in the sense that they give societies more output with the same number of workers.
"Immigration helps but, on its own, it will not do the trick," says Robson. "My concern is that a lot of people who talk about immigration as a way of dealing with these things might think that, therefore, we can let some of these other things slip.
"If nothing else changes, the rapid increase in the share of the population that's over 65 does mean a real pinch on the working-age population," Robson says. "If we consciously work on all those fronts, then chances are, we'll get old and we'll be wondering, 'What was all the fuss about?' "
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service