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WHERE CAN CANADA PUT ALL THE NEWCOMERS?

BRIAN SANKARSINGH Brian Sankarsingh is a Trinidadian-born Canadian immigrant with a passion for advocacy and a penchant for poetry.

Contrary to popular belief, the immigrant experience in Canada is not an easy one. The federal government is signalling that through immigration, they want to boost the Canadian workforce by 500,000 members annually by 2025. This is a good indicator that the immigrant experience is going to continue to be a challenge.

The Institute for Canadian Citizenship released a report titled "Newcomers were falling out of love with Canadian citizenship," revealing a drastic decline in the number of permanent residents applying for citizenship.

Why are immigrants choosing not to obtain their citizenship? Are the challenges they're facing more difficult than before?

In this series of articles, we will try to answer these questions. It is noteworthy to mention that while not all immigrants will face all these hardships, enough of them will, and this is concerning.

Dealing with these challenges may be par for the course for newcomers, but the fact remains that there is a correlation between how quickly a newcomer can feel like they belong and when they can begin contributing to society.

Bear in mind that these are not presented in order of importance. Prioritizing will have to be done by organizations that serve immigrants, non-governmental organizations and the government itself.

Like all Canadians, immigrants also dream of owning a home, and until recently, this was an achievable dream. Through a series of unfortunate policy and political missteps, the price of housing became unreachable for many people.

The equation is simple: more housing demand plus less available housing plus the rising cost of living equals exorbitant and unsustainable house prices.

This is a challenge that all Canadians face, so adding hundreds of thousands of new immigrants to an already struggling marketplace is not going to help.

According to the Ontario government, even though new housing starts reached record levels, there were still bureaucratic inefficiencies and red tape that slowed down the pace. This had a ripple effect that put Ontario last in the country when it came to the supply of homes per capita.

The Bank of Canada has been increasing interest rates and this has become an added financial barrier for new and existing homeowners, with the inevitable rise of mortgage interest rates. More people, and in effect more demand, to an already overburdened and overpriced marketplace is a recipe for disaster.

In the next article, we will look at the challenge many immigrants face in understanding Canadian law, policy and government.

OPINION

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2023-03-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://communitynews.pressreader.com/article/281517935366818

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