Here, in Laval, it is a medium-sized area specializing in the sale of skis that has decided, after some hesitation, to hire employees with autism. There, in Sherbrooke, a manufacturing company of high performance yarns discovers and rents apartments for its Filipino workers, who are taken care of as soon as they step off the plane.
Everywhere in Quebec, as in the rest of Canada, HR directors are unleashing innovation and ingenuity to attract a workforce that has become very scarce. “We’re Hiring”: This sign is ubiquitous on the facades of buildings and businesses. Against this backdrop of worker shortages, the announcement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to bring the number of new immigrants to 500,000 annual entries in 2023, an unprecedented threshold, was welcomed by business circles.
“We are very grateful,” said Denis Darby, president of Canadian Producers and Exporters. He also satisfies the Business Council of Canada, which however asks the government to be “more audacious”: 80% of the companies that join this employers’ lobby complain of not being able to find employees. The unions are also applauding: “Historically, it is thanks to immigration that we have been able to increase our workforce, fill our union offices and build Canada’s infrastructure,” recalls Sean Strickland, executive director of the construction trades unions.
Population ageing
With a very low fertility rate (1.5 children per woman against 1.8 in France), Canada is seeing its population age rapidly. Although the employment rate of the over 65s is higher than in France, in Quebec, “for 100 people aged 55 to 64, who could withdraw from the labor market, there are 82.5 out of 20 to 29 that could replace them,” notes Joëlle Noreau, an economist at Desjardins Bank. In the province of La Belle, 60% of farmers are over 55 years old. By 2026, 1.4 million jobs need to be filled worries, in a White Paper, the Quebec Employers Council.
Immigration is today the main factor of demographic renewal. And by 2032 it will account for all population growth. Immigrants, ie citizens and permanent residents born abroad, make up 23% of Canadians, the highest percentage since the birth of Confederation in 1867. It is also the highest rate within the G7. According to Statistics Canada projections, it will rise to 34% by 2041. Already today more than 40% of Canadians are immigrants or children of immigrants. In Vancouver it is 73% and in Greater Toronto it is 79%.
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Close to the business community, the think tank Century Initiative is fighting for a Canada of 100 million inhabitants in 2100, against 39 million in 2022. Only under this condition, he defends, “will the economy be able to maintain an average annual growth rate of 2.5% in the coming decades, compared to 1.5% without a significant increase in immigration”.
On the rise, immigration will be the only driver of the country’s population growth by 2032.
Quebec reluctance
The Trudeau government has ambitious goals in this regard. “Last year we welcomed the largest number of new arrivals in a single year in our history, recalls Sean Fraser, Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (see chart). This year’s immigration will help businesses find the workers they need, has set Canada in motion on a path that underpins our long-term success and enables us to honor our commitments to vulnerable people fleeing violence, war and persecution.” Ottawa wants to focus above all on selected, so-called economic immigration (skilled workers, entrepreneurs, investors), which must amount to 60% of the total number of foreigners admitted. And too bad if it looks like a brain drain from Asia, Africa and even the UK.
“Immigration has always been seen as a panacea, for the development of the West as well as for the needs of the economy, on the left as well as among conservatives,” analyzes Sébastien Arcand, professor of management at the HEC in Montreal. The main resistance comes from the Quebec right and the separatists. The premier of the province, François Legault, is so concerned about the future of a minority French-speaking community in North America that he does not hesitate to show his reluctance.
By Jean-Michel Demetz, our correspondent in Montreal
