There is no doubt that Canada has been built by immigrants. Canada’s indigenous people, who make almost 4% of the total population, are the only authentic non-immigrants. The remaining 96% of the population have descended from immigrants.
Due to the increase of the aging population and the small family size of Canada, the elderly people will outnumber the young working people, which may lead to social services crisis. With just over 38 million citizens, residents aged 55-59 years of age make up the largest number (2.7 million). We need to bridge the gap and ensure our population continues to grow.
There is a trend that deems population growth has a strong tie to the maintenance of a growing economy. If a country’s population decreases, its economic output also decreases. Fewer workers mean fewer goods and services can be produced, so economic output shrinks. Recently, Canada’s economy has been growing slowly. Immigrants do help to maintain level of economic growth, provide manpower and add to Canada’s total purchasing power. Immigrants are huge consumers that not only contribute to buying but also selling entrepreneurial products that place more emphasis on the supply and demand in our economy. Without immigrants, Canada would have to self-help and produce its goods and services with fewer workers to aid. New immigrants work hard, start new businesses, and create jobs.
Immigration experts believe that to keep our economy strong and growing we need to focus more on highly skilled people who can help build a stronger Canada. Economic immigrants work hard to run small businesses that are the backbone of our economy. Such immigrants do shift work, live in apartment buildings for decades paying rent to landlords. It is also known that immigrants work longer hours than native born as they come to Canada for a new life. Most family members of immigrant families are usually working and contributing to our economy.
Centrist Party believes that we must ensure that Canadians get the full and first opportunity in the work force and we should adjust our immigration to needs of our market needs. Therefore, it important that we reform our immigration policy by limiting the number of refugees and focusing on economic and highly skilled immigrants rather than irregular border crossers.