page_title: Economic impact of immigration to Canada
section_title: Economic rationale for immigration
hierarchical_section_title: Economic impact of immigration to Canada / Overview / Economic rationale for immigration
caption_attribution_description: English: Last Spike of the CPR - Craigellachie, British Columbia, Canada. Donald Alexander Smith driving the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Also in the photo are (generally left to right) Albert Bowman Rogers (Surveyor), Michael Haney (Contractor), William Cornelius Van Horne (CPR Manager), Sir Sandford Fleming, Edward Mallandaine (teenager), Henry Cambie (engineer), John Egan (General Superintendent), Sam Steele (NorthWest Mounted Police), James Ross (engineer). The man at the rear of the photo, just right of centre, with a white cowboy hat and moustache, is reputed to be Tom Wilson, guide &amp; outfitter &amp; the first white man to see Lake Louise.
context_page_description: The economic impact of immigration is an important topic in Canada. While the immigration rate has dropped sharply from its peak early in the 20th century, Canada is still among the countries in the world that accept most immigrants per capita.
  The per capita immigration rate to Canada has been relatively constant since the 1950s, and recent years have seen a steady increase in the education and skill level of immigrants to Canada. However, over the last 25 years the economic position of newcomers to Canada relative to the native population has steadily declined. A 2007 Statistics Canada study shows that the income profile of recent immigrant families deteriorated by a significant amount from 2000 to 2004. Recent immigrants themselves are far more likely than native born Canadians to initially have low incomes, with income and employment rates increasing towards the national average with more time spent in Canada.
context_section_description: There is no agreed view on the net impact of immigration in current times. Historically, Canada's unusually high immigration rates can be traced to the nation's unique economy. Another factor, is that Canada has one of the world's largest supplies of natural resources such as oil, metals, and lumber. It also has a sparse population spread over a vast landscape. Canada has thus faced acute labour shortages and has responded by actively searching for immigrants. In the late 19th century this included bringing Chinese migrants to build the Canadian Pacific Railway and actively advertising in Europe to find farmers with the Last Best West campaign. Today similar recruitment efforts are needed to staff the oil sands projects in Alberta.
  Another factor that contributes to the immigration question is Canada's low birth rate (10.3 births per 1000 people). The theory is that new residents can assist in meeting future government obligations relating to pay-as-you-go liabilities.
  The economic dangers of population decline are not universally accepted. Organizations like the Fraser Institute question whether a declining population would reduce or increase per capita income, noting that in the short term, with a stable economy, fewer people would increase the per capita income simply because you divide the income among fewer people.  The study's authors conducted a series of studies using large amounts of census data (844,476 individuals) and conclude that immigrants who arrived from 1987–2004 paid only 57% of the taxes paid by average Canadian in 2006, with the effect that taxes from immigrants do not exceed the government expenses relating to them (a gap of $23 billion annually according to their numbers). A study by the C. D. Howe Institute suggests that immigration cannot keep Canada's population young and could possibly contribute to population ageing in the near term. Employment statistics have also brought into question whether skilled worker immigrants, with a 34% unemployment rate in 2001, are successfully meeting existing labour market needs in Canada. However, data from the 2018 Labor Force Survey has shown a 5.7% unemployment rate among landed immigrants. Many developed nations have much lower fertility rates than Canada but have not embraced immigration.
  The first detailed analysis of Canadian immigration policy came from the Economic Council of Canada; it called for immigration to be increased to eventually bring Canada's population to 100 million. While it found that the economic benefits to Canada of immigration were fairly small, noting that "a historical perspective gives little or no support to the view that immigration is needed for national prosperity," it also concluded that the benefits to the newcomers themselves were extremely large. The report concluded that "it would be hard not to recommend an increase when immigrants can gain so much and Canadians not only do not lose but actually make slight economic gains."
caption: Donald Alexander Smith, a migrant from Scotland, drives the Last Spike. Migrants to Canada at that time were British subjects (not Canadian citizens).
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