Canada has always been a rather successful country by global standards, with relatively high living standards, good human rights, lots of green space, not much civic strife, and other nice features. Canada is nice.
Now for the first time, Canada has a chance to become great:
Behind the robust health are data showing Canada transitioning to a technology juggernaut from a country defined by its dependence on fossil fuels. While the government continues to subsidize coal, gas and oil, which account for 77% of the nation’s energy needs, the correlation between the price of oil and Canadian stocks has all but disappeared since Trudeau became prime minister, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The traditional interdependence of stocks and oil prevailed during the 10 years preceding his election. . . .
The changes coincide with the growing perception of Canada as a haven, benefiting from President Donald Trump’s xenophobic restrictions on refugees and other immigrants. The nation of 37 million recorded its biggest immigration wave in more than a century last year, admitting 321,065 people, the most since 1913 . . .
Unlike Trump, Trudeau welcomes foreign talent, and his government’s Global Skills Strategy attracted about 24,000 technology workers and other skilled employees in the two years since it started, according to government figures released in June. Companies are saying that “the two-week processing has really transformed how they make business decisions,”
As a share of its population, Canada is admitting three times as many immigrants as the US. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is making it tougher for high-skilled immigrants to come here, even as illegal immigration increases. Here’s Noah Smith:
Now, the Trump administration has launched a new attack on H-1B workers. Denial rates for H-1B applications have soared.
Canada does have one anti-immigrant party, but it did not do well in yesterday’s election, to put it mildly:
The election’s biggest loser was Maxime Bernier, a populist leader who embraces his nickname “Mad Max” and has pushed against immigration and what he calls “extreme multiculturalism” and “climate change hysteria.” His People’s Party was shut out of Parliament with not a single candidate, including Mr. Bernier, winning a seat.
One sign of Canada’s success is that people pay almost no attention to its elections. Switzerland is another example. I pity those countries where national elections are highly consequential.
I see little evidence that President Trump is “Making America Great Again”, but as his immigration policies divert talented people to Canada, he is certainly helping to make that country great.
READER COMMENTS
Komori
Oct 22 2019 at 6:05pm
As someone who works in the high tech industry, I can tell you that the majority of H-1B visas historically have been blatantly fraudulent. Even a minimal application of the actual rules of the visa would have led to most of them being rejected.
The entire program needs serious reform. You should look into the restrictions on it (for instance, the way it makes it very difficult for a visa holder to change jobs) that seem designed to help turn it into a serfage system. Canada’s system is much better designed, and even the early Trump proposals, like granting the H-1Bs to the highest bidder, would be significant improvements.
Matthias Görgens
Oct 24 2019 at 7:50am
What? Trump proposed to hand out visas in an auction? Wow. That sound way too sensible!
Turning visas into a straightforward money spinner for the government would be really good, because then populists can sell them as “making foreigners pay”. That would align economic orthodoxy with vote grabbing incentives.
Thaomas
Oct 22 2019 at 6:25pm
You have to admire a country in which the big election issues were the PM being dressed as a Arab and use of a plastic drinking straw. 🙂
Seriously, I was just in Mississauga a 800,000 population Toronto suburb that looks like it has little or no NIMBY-ism about dense residential and commercial development.
nobody.really
Oct 22 2019 at 8:16pm
That’s inspired!
Lorenzo from Oz
Oct 22 2019 at 10:00pm
Canada controls its borders and imports high skill applicants in a systematic way which maintains the balance between between capital and labour.
Australia does that even better.
US botches every aspect of its migration system. Its current arrangements are basically a device to massively redistribute income from labour to capital. Both commercial and human capital. No wonder the human capital elite and commercial elite both favour it and cannot manage to create a sensible system.
The US working class is stuck with trying to work out which Party elite will betray them less. Not a situation to encourage happy folk.
John Arthur
Oct 22 2019 at 10:05pm
There is this weird trend among economists to attribute success to policies *because* they occur, not for any positive outcome. This article is a great example of this.
There is no evidence that this immigration benefits Canada on a per-captia basis, and no evidence that regression to the mean wont happen in some of these communities. In fairness Canada has a merit based immigration system and most of their immigrants are Chinese and Indian, but there is no real study on the net benefits or costs of these immigrants by the Canadian government.
BTW here is a comparison of Canada’s per capita GDP vs the US’s
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=CA-US
Trudeau’s policies have been in place for the last 4 years, if they are going to make Canada great, the gap shouldn’t be increasing. Now, considering the US does not get self-selected immigrants(especially over the last 4 years with the migrant crisis), the differing results are dramatic.
BTW: The gap has accelerated in growth over the last two years, even Trump is having a better record than Trudeau…
P Burgos
Oct 23 2019 at 1:54am
I thought that Canada’s median household income recently surpassed that of the US for the first time? That would suggest at least that Trudeau’s and Canada’s policies aren’t disastrous.
John Arthur
Oct 23 2019 at 2:11pm
That is because we have a very poor Black and Hispanic population, two things that Canada does not have in mass numbers.
The median household income for Whites in America is $70000, and the median household income for Asians in $80000.
Its different in Canada than it is here.
But Canada is better run than the US in some respects.
Todd Kreider
Oct 23 2019 at 2:05am
Per capita growth under Trudeau starting three months after becoming PM has averaged 1.0% a year. Per capita growth under Trump starting three months after becoming President has averaged 1.9% a year.
I don’t understand the Bloomberg article where it gushes about fossil fuels, the stock market and Canadian greatness. The extraction of oil and gas accounted for 6% of Canada’s GDP in 2009 and 7% in 2019. So?
John Arthur
Oct 22 2019 at 10:13pm
Also your last point on elections doesn’t make much sense.
Don’t people pay great attention to elections in India, and the governmental process in China? Countries with large national power get a lot of interest in who they elect, go figure.
BTW, aren’t China and India much more successful than Indonesia and Nigeria, yet I would wager pundits care more about regime changes in the latter than the former…
Christohe Biocca
Oct 22 2019 at 11:18pm
Maybe outside the country, but from the inside this was probably the noisiest election in a decade or more? Probably because it was the first one held on a fixed date, instead of the 30-day notice we used to get.
The really disheartening trend in my view is the resurgence of industrial policy and a renewed preference for a command economy across the entire political spectrum. Bernier lost the conservative nomination largely because of his opposition to agricultural subsidies, then switched an anti-immigration platform instead when he jumped parties. The carbon tax adopted by the liberals, instead of causing the Green party (original proponents of it) to celebrate, made them switch their platform to things like renewable energy mandates instead. The Liberals’ being accused of “inaction” on climate made them promise all sorts of weird policies with very little of the economic literacy that characterized the carbon tax they had passed, and every party (including the conservatives) campaigned on highly distortionary green policies, either as supplement or replacement for the carbon tax.
Hopefully this proves to be a temporary blip and we’ll go back to having boring elections and sounder policy proposals, but US political trends tend to be leading indicators for our own, so I’m not holding my breath.
Scott Sumner
Oct 23 2019 at 12:49pm
Thanks for that information.
Scott Sumner
Oct 23 2019 at 12:02am
Komori, You said:
“Even a minimal application of the actual rules of the visa would have led to most of them being rejected.”
In that case we should all give thanks that the rules were not being enforced, and also encourage the Trump administration to enforce them less vigorously.
John, The article certainly did present evidence that the policies were helping Canada, citing robust growth in their tech industries. You may not agree with the evidence, but it makes no sense to say there isn’t any evidence provided.
I’ll bet if you asked Canadian citizens who migrated from elsewhere they’d tell you that the policies helped them and their families.
I agree that larger countries attract more interest, but holding size constant it’s still better to have less attention paid to the election.
Komori
Oct 23 2019 at 11:35am
That depends on how much importance you place on respect for the rule of law. Personally, I find that having lots of bad laws on the books that are selectively or not at all enforced leads to contempt for all laws, good or bad. And for the people making said laws.
I’d much rather see our representatives actually doing what they’re (ostensibly) paid for and putting together a proper, functional system.
Scott Sumner
Oct 23 2019 at 12:51pm
It’s impossible to enforce all laws (think about jaywalking, illegal immigration, and other minor offenses). Government should focus enforcement on important problems.
Komori
Oct 23 2019 at 6:15pm
Someone paging through job listings and finding only ones that have been blatantly tailored to H-1Bs might disagree with the level of importance.
I really don’t think you understand the scope of the problem. The last place I worked was using a big name recruiter, one that gets a lot of the H-1B slots historically. This was shortly after we got purchased by a different company, and we needed to hire a lot of QA people. New management wanted cheap, so they went with all H-1Bs (there was also a bit of empire building going on, as we had a number of Indian managers, and boy do they love importing their caste system).
Well, a couple months after the hiring spree, one of the new hires approached HR. He was feeling guilty, because he knew the recruiter had falsified all their resumes to get them hired. Turned out he was correct, and we had to fire the whole lot of them (thankfully, since, you know, they actually weren’t qualified and weren’t doing a decent job; not even ZMP, but Negative Marginal Production).
This is not an unusual case. Mind you, there were a number of flags on the resumes if anyone in HR could be bothered to actually do their job, things like degrees from universities that don’t actually exist.
So I will continue to disagree with you on this. It helps shift the Overton window away from high-trust to low-trust, and it does so among exactly the kind of people we want to stay high-trust.
Thaomas
Oct 24 2019 at 8:49pm
Same principle in law enforcement as in rule-making: cost benefit analysis. We should not spend more to prevent an immigrant from crossing the border/deport an immigrant than the present value of the harm their presence causes.
John Arthur
Oct 23 2019 at 12:39am
Thanks Scott,
I guess that is a form of evidence, and a company has affirmed this.
But this evidence is lot like the fracking boom, how much of the tech boom is due to policy(Obama’s orders/ immigration) and to general economic trends( a need to not have an overreliance on commodities). I hardly doubt that White Canadians aren’t as adept at STEM as Chinese and Indians, after all, they helped create the field as it is today.
That’s true, the welfare of the immigrants matters as much as the natives. But, there is a reason that Canada is wealthy and most of Africa is not. Culture matters greately, and wontonly replacing the (successful!) native population is not a winning bet.
Anyways, if immigration is going to work, we need a “firing” mechanism like companies have. You can go up to Apple and say anything to get hired, but underperform and you will be fired. The same is true for immigration in getting in, but there is no recourse if the immigrant turns out to be bad. If pro-immigrant activists are serious about the benefits of immigration, they should give us a “firing” mechanism for underperforming immigrant groups.
P Burgos
Oct 23 2019 at 2:00am
Chinese people have a wealthy, functioning democracy in Taiwan, so why would they pose any threat to Canada’s democracy? Indian democracy isn’t so great, but even so, it still is a democracy, and since you are only letting in high caste people, cosmopolitan Indians anyway, it would seem like you aren’t implementing much of India’s pathologies.
Just for reference, a lot of Trump supporters seem to dream of having an immigration system like Canada’s.
Scott Sumner
Oct 23 2019 at 12:53pm
African immigrants to the US have done fairly well, with a few exceptions. And Canada tends to accept skilled immigrants, which is the subset of African immigrants that do well in America.
John Arthur
Oct 23 2019 at 2:26pm
Scott, you said: African immigrants to the US have done fairly well, with a few exceptions.
I highly doubt this, the most educated African immigrants do as well as the median white group- hardly something to write home about. The remainder do dramatically worse, with Ethopians and Somalians being the worst performers in the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income
Remember, regression to the mean is a real phenomeon, and will have a dramatic impact on the future performance on African immigrants.
Here is the age-adjusted incareration rates for Whites, Hispanics, and Africans in the United States
Do you really want to be this country’s future on the blue line, or the red line?
I know that we are supposed to be utilitarians, but why cant America be selfish for once and import people who actually do as good, or better than the White native born. I mean, what are we getting out of this? Asian immigration is something to be thankful for, but they will not always want to come here. And soon others will come, is this a good thing?
John Arthur
Oct 23 2019 at 2:27pm
The picture didn’t load lol.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/HispanicCrime-chart1.gif
Thaomas
Oct 24 2019 at 8:58pm
The “firing” mechanism is deportation for immigrants that produce harms (felonies) and self-deportation if they cannot find a job that pays more than they consume.
Mark Z
Oct 23 2019 at 1:17am
Are fossil fuel production and growth in the technology sector supposed to be related? I’m also not sure why declining fossil fuel production is a good economic development. In any case cursory google search suggests oil output is down because Alberta is curtailing oil production, apparently because of unexpected limited pipeline capacity or something to that effect.
Scott Sumner
Oct 23 2019 at 12:54pm
They are trying to build a new pipeline, but NIMBYs are holding the project up.
Mark Z
Oct 24 2019 at 2:13am
Didn’t know that, thanks.
Tom West
Oct 23 2019 at 8:22am
Well, anecdotally, I’m awfully happy to be working at a high-tech company founded by an East Indian where most of my colleagues are new Canadians. There are few things that make me feel prouder and luckier than when I see my colleague’s reaction when they become Canadian citizens.
Frankly, our immigration policy has created millions of new happy, productive Canadians. If we’re worried about Canadians, how could that not be classed as success?
stoneybatter
Oct 23 2019 at 8:50am
Interesting post and story. But unfortunately, the key piece of evidence is wrong.
Actually, in the ten years before Trudeau’s leadership, the correlation between Brent crude oil and the Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index was 0.42 and in the last three years it has been 0.37. In my view, that’s not a material change. (I used correlation in daily changes over the preceding 100 days,)
Scott Sumner
Oct 23 2019 at 12:55pm
Thanks for that information.
DB
Oct 24 2019 at 12:15pm
Scott: in this vein, you may be interested in Maximum Canada, a book from journalist Doug Saunders exploring the rationale for ramping Canada’s population up to 100m as a critical nation-building project.
http://www.dougsaunders.net/about/maximum-canada/
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