Quebec's Immigration Dilemma- Part 2 Why So Many Immigrants?

As I discussed yesterday, Canada is bringing in over three times the number of immigrants that is required to maintain population stability.

How does that compare to the rest of the Western world?
Well, Canada places 2nd in recruiting the most amount of immigrants amongst western nations. Only Spain brings in more, but it's numbers are skewed because so many Europeans, (especially Britons and Germans) are retiring in the sunniest climate in the European Community. Spain remains the most favoured destination for West Europeans considering taking up permanent residency.

For every million Canadians, we accept 6,500 more immigrants than we lose through emigration (Canadians moving out of the country.)
That rate is twice that of the United States and six times larger than France's.
As can be seen in the chart above, Canada's net migration is four times as high as the average of the group.

Why do we do it?
Believe it or not, there's no clear answer! Study after study, shows that these extra immigrants don't bring added value to the country nor do they take jobs that remain unfilled.

According to Herbert Grubel, a Senior Fellow of the The Fraser Institute, the costs in services and benefits received by the 2.5 million immigrants who arrived between 1990 and 2002 is estimated to exceed the taxes they paid by $18 billion in just one year! (2002)

He also concludes, in his paper entitled "The Fiscal Burden of Recent Canadian Immigrants", that;

"In sum, the idea that immigrants are needed for meeting the needs of the labour market in Canada are not valid. Labour shortages can be eliminated by wage increases and the use of labour saving capital. Using immigrants to deal with labour shortages serves the interest of employers tends not to be in the public interest..

One of the worst defences put forward by those supporting high immigration levels is the argument that we need more immigrants to solve the aging population problem. They argue that we need younger people to help pay for a burgeoning senior citizen class.
This is nothing more than a simple Ponzi scheme. As the immigrants themselves age, we'll need an ever increasing numbers of immigrants to pay for their care.

Perhaps the biggest reason leading to the huge up tick in immigration was the passing of the flawed Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Bill C-11) in 2001, which essentially provided that anyone meeting the immigration criteria would be issued a permit. It did not allow for the government to set limits and led to a tremendous increase in successful applications. Today there remains over a million people on a waiting list to immigrate to Canada.

Efforts by the Liberal government to repair the damage were thwarted by the courts and it wasn't until 2008 that the issue was finally addressed. The Conservative government (over the howls of the immigration industry) placed amendments to the Immigration Act in another bill ( Bill C-50 -The Budget.) These amendments restored the government's power to decide on how many and which type of immigrants would be accepted in the future. The amendments, however, did not apply to the backlog and all those on the waiting list will eventually get in.

And so we remain with one of the highest rates of immigration in the world.

The headlong rush to bring in newcomers by Ottawa forces Quebec to do likewise or face losing it's demographic weight in Canada, which is already in a precipitous free fall.

Of Canada's 265,000 immigrants only about 36,000 end up living permanently in Quebec.
It means that Quebec is netting only about 13.5% of the new immigrants and so, it's 23% proportion of the population of Canada is set to decline.

The Prime Minister has indicated that he will be adding more seats to the House of Commons to reflect the demographic changes. Of the thirty odd seats being discussed, none will go to Quebec.

The mass immigration to Canada is a parade that is passing Quebec by.
In spite of bringing in record amounts of immigrants, Quebec falls further and further behind each year....

Quebec's Immigration Dilemma- Part 1 -- Babies

This week, I will focus on immigration with a series of five peices on the subject.

Here is the first part where we consider the effect of the massive immigration program undertaken by our governments.

Let's go!.....

Ever since the invention of the 'PILL' and the declining influence of the Church, birth rates have plummeted in the entire western world.

In order to maintain a stable population ZPG (zero population growth) each woman in the western world needs to produce an average of about 2.1 children over the course of her lifetime.

To varying degrees, Quebec, Canada and the entire western world, all fall below this reproductive benchmark. At the bottom end of the scale is Germany, Italy and Japan, who are facing sharp population declines.
Immigration  therefore, is the only tool available to counteract the effect of declining birth rates.

Canada has a reproduction rate of about 1.57 and Quebec has a higher rate at 1.74.

Both those numbers translate to falling populations.

For every 174 babies born in Quebec an additional 36 babies are required to make up this shortfall. We are therefore producing 20.6% too few babies.

In Canada for every 157 babies born, 53 additional babies are required to keeps Canada's population stable. That's a shortfall of 33%.

Of course the government can't produce more babies, despite it's best efforts to bribe mothers with incentives like the 'Baby Bonus' program.
Instead the government makes up the shortfall by boosting  immigration.

Let's translate these percentage figures to real people.

In Canada 378,000 babies are born each year. To attain ZPG , Canada must import  92,000 immigrants, annually.

In Quebec 88,600 babies are born each year and 18,000  immigrants are required to maintain ZPG. 

What are the actual amount of immigrants accepted in 2009?
 

Canada welcomed  265,000 new immigrants last year. Of those immigrants, 45,000 went to Quebec.

WOW!
For every one immigrant  that Canada needs to maintain ZPG,  we actually welcomes 2.9 immigrants. This means that there is a surplus of 173,000 and as a result  Canada 's population is growing.

For every one immigrant that Quebec needs to maintain ZPG, we actually welcome 2.5 immigrants. This means that there is a surplus of 27,000 and so, Quebec's population is also growing.

Out of the 265,000 immigrants that Canada welcomes each year the 45,000 that come to Quebec,   represents 17% of the total. Considering that for economic and language reason, Quebec loses almost 20% of these immigrants (according to Quebec Immigration Ministry figures) who move on to the greener pastures of Ontario and BC, the net effect is somewhere around 14%.

Quebec's proportion of the Canadian population stands at about 23% and so,  even though Quebec is bringing in more than two and a half times the amount of immigrants that is needed to make up it's shortfall, it is still falling behind in Canada, which is bringing about three immigrants for every one that they actually require.

What's the bottom line.
Quebec's population is growing , but at a much slower pace than Canada's and it means that Quebec's demographic representation in Canada is falling.
Hmmmm.....

A Note About Comments

I welcome all comments whether they express support, an alternative view or outright disagreement. There is only a couple things that I will not publish and it has nothing to do with opposing views. That includes advertisements, vulgarity or swearing of any sorts, ad hominem attacks and anything racist in any matter.

For Francophones who read my column, first let me congratulate you on your language ability. You represent a far larger percentage than Anglophones who can read and write French.

Please feel free to comment in French as long as you observe the above-mentioned guidelines.

I don't usually respond to comments as I prefer to let them speak for themselves, with the readers as the final judges.

Watchmaker has No Time for Language Police

A reader, "Mitch" suggested I write about the Hudson watch dealer who has run afoul of the language police, the OQLF, because of an English only web site that he uses to sell refurbished watches around the world. He received a letter from the language watchdog agency demanding that he provide a French language web site to compliment the one that he runs in  English.

Thank you Mitch for the suggestion.

I had already viewed the story on the local CTV news channel and at the time, nearly fell out of my chair when I recognized a face from the past.

I haven't seen Darryl Lesser in over fifteen years when we played hockey together in a weekly pickup game of hockey at the Bonaventure ice rink in Montreal.
I couldn't help remarking to my wife that Darryl had aged somewhat from the strapping young man that I remembered, a comment to which she rolled her eyes in a not so silent rebuke.

Back then Darryl was just getting into the watch business. He would regale the locker room with stories of his adventures scouring  flea markets across the Townships in pursuit of discarded watches going for cheap. He proudly showed me his first genuine ROLEX watch that he picked up for a couple of bucks. I guess he has pursued things quite successfully, from the looks of things.

To small independent entrepreneurs and Anglos in particular, setting up a complementary web site in French is an expensive affair, especially when the business conducted targets an English or international clientèle. Aside from the initial cost, there's the pesky problem of translation, French being a particularly hard language to write, considering the male and female case. Translators are very expensive and the cost can run into thousands of dollars annually, a bitter pill, when there is no return.

Treating small entrepreneurs like large corporations is something the government is guilty of doing  and while it makes eminent sense for large companies to have a bilingual web site, it is isn't always reasonable to demand the same from tiny enterprises, specialized and home-based businesses.

If you think that this issue affects only small Anglo companies and entrepreneurs you'd be wrong. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a highly placed member of a non-profit group that offers roadside assistance to travellers. (Figure it out yourself.)

I suggested that with so many members consulting their web site to plan trips (especially to southern Florida), it would be a natural to offer hotel accommodations. I went on to tell him that they could save money by just creating a link to another web site that specializes in hotel bookings (and earn a royalty.)

Alas it was not to be, he explained. The hotel web site in the United States doesn't offer a French interface and as such they could not link up legally, since they'd be making money. They had already rejected the idea based on legal advice. Argghhh!!

Darryl the watchmaker has threatened to move if the harassment continues. He needn't bother.

He can just change his company's head office to another jurisdiction. It's a simple matter to incorporate a company federally and to use a post office box or a Mailbox store in Ontario as an official address. Mail can be forwarded right to your home in Quebec. You can file an Ontario tax return and you can do all your work in front of your keyboard in Quebec quite easily, completely legally. (After all, don't you sometimes talk to a service tech in India on behalf of a Canadian or American company?)
The same can be done in Plattsburgh and a US address is also a viable choice.

The OQLB is powerless in the face of modern technology and in the virtual world of the Internet, rules like mandatory French web sites are laughable and impossible to enforce when people use little creativity.

Montreal Gazette's Separtist Hypocrite

The Montreal Gazette, in it's ultra-liberal zeal to honour all points of view, employs the talents of separatist Josée Legault, who writes a thoroughly uninspiring and vapid weekly column. Perhaps on orders, or because writing about sovereignty with decidedly pro attitude would likely bring on the wrath of the paper's exclusively Anglo readership, she avoids the subject assiduously and prattles on about the most boring of subjects- Quebec politics, without mention of sovereignty. And so reading her stuff is about as interesting and stimulating as getting your teeth cleaned, once a week.

By the way I wonder if the Journal de Montreal or Le Devoir would ever consider giving Howard Galganov or Will "Pit Bull" Johnson a column in their own paper?

I gave up reading her column faithfully after laughing at the thoroughly ridiculous and infantile piece she wrote last year, concerning the controversy over the Order of Canada award  to the good doctor abortionist Henry Morgentaler.

With two out of three Canadians agreeing with Dr. Henry Morgentaler's appointment to the Order of Canada, it's getting awfully difficult to condemn his nomination on the basis that he's one of Canada's most divisive public figures. Link

 According to Ms. Legault awarding a controversial and divisive figure the prestigious Order of Canada is fine, as long as the majority of Canadians agree with the selection. On the surface, it's an eminently defensible position, but if the nomination offends up to one third of Canadians, should it really go forward?

I'd like to ask Ms Legault to substitute Dr. Morgentaler's name in her piece, with that of Don Cherry and see if she'd reach the same conclusion.

Mr. Cherry is a champion of Canadian hockey and tireless promoter of the Canadian brand. He's more popular in English Canada than anyone I can imagine. I once sat beside him (by happenstance) on a airplane trip to Moncton and was amazed at the recognition factor, with the stewardess forced to control passengers who approached him seeking a handshake or  an autograph (ostensibly for their children.) The mob scene was repeated in the baggage claim area, and even the airport personnel swarmed him. His record of charitable work is extensive, so why has he been blackballed from receiving an Order of Canada?

Ms. Legault can tell you.
It's because of a few injudicious remarks made about Francophones and Quebeckers in particular. As much as he is loved in Canada, he's generally reviled in Quebec.

But no matter, according to Ms. Legault, he should receive his medal, because, well, a verge large majority of Canadians are in favour of it, notwithstanding Quebec's universally negative view of him. I'd bet the farm that overall, his nomination would be supported by a higher number of Canadians than those who supported Dr. Morgantaler.

Of course I'd like to put the question to her and no doubt, she'd find some sort of twisted argument to reject Mr. Cherry's nomination. Clever debaters, these nationalists.

It's a Quebec tradition to make twisted and semi-logical arguments to argue the impossible, reminding me of the old story where a young man, after killing his parents, pleads before a judge for mercy on the basis that he has been orphaned.

At any rate let's go on;
While her Gazette article is thoroughly devoid of separatist, nationalistic and anti-English politics, not so her articles in the French media, where she doesn't need to hold back.

In an article she recently wrote, reprinted on the militant French language site Mouvement Montréal français, Ms. Legault parrots French language militants' current mantra that holds that Montreal is going English.
She invites readers to submit pictures of signage that contravenes the language law so she can create an exposé.

I wonder if the Gazette is interested in publishing the results?