The Effects of Mass Immigration on Canadian Living Standards and Society, Edited by Herbert Grubel, Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 2009, 236 p., ISBN 978-0-88975-246-7.

Canada is widely perceived as a country of immigration. Indeed, Canada’s annual rate of immigration is one of the highest in the world. Since 1990, the rate has been averaging 0,75% of the population which resulted in additional 3,9 million (14,2%) immigrants, between 1990 and 2006, to the 1990 level of 27,4 millions. What impact such as an extensive policy has on the wellbeing of Canadians, their culture and identity? This volume puts together twelve papers presented by the Fraser Institute in 2008. The objective of this publication is to inform the public about the mass immigration effects on Canada’s living standards and to motivate politicians to improve public policy. The book is organized into five sections. In the first section, former diplomats present an overview of the issues and some international perspectives. They provide a succinct summary of negative demographic, economic, social and cultural issues of immigration in Canada and abroad and analyze conceptual issues related to the measuring the fiscal impact of immigrants. According to their findings recent immigrants to the US represent a significant burden for taxpayers. In France, immigrants have difficulties to find a job, suffer from low income and high unemployment rate, more so than French born people. The net financial costs of all governmental programs for recent immigrants are high. Social integration is inadequate and leading to the ghettoization of ethnic communities and rising civil unrest. Even if some of the recent immigrants have made a significant contribution to sport and society, authors are is sceptical about the overall contribution of immigrants. In the second section of the book, the economists analyze the economic impact of mass immigration on labour markets, productivity, and the living standards of Canadians. They focus on per-capita income of residents when the immigrant arrives and not on the aggregate national income normally used by politicians to justify mass immigration. Indeed, if the latter grows with the arrival of immigrants, the evolution of the former is not so obvious. The main conclusion of these authors is that mass immigration has had a negative impact on the living standards of Canadians. They impose a high fiscal burden on all Canadians, contribute to the degradation of salary and working conditions in Canada. Besides mass immigration would be responsible for an increased pollution and crowding, higher real-estate prices, and longer commutes. The third section is about demographic issues of mass immigration. The demography analysts assess whether mass immigration helps to cover the unfunded liabilities of the country’s social programs by importing young people from abroad. Actually, the ratio of benefit recipients and taxpayers is 0,2 (five taxpayers paying for benefits of one person). To maintain the ratio at this level the annual rate of immigration would be much higher than it actually is in order to reach 165,4 million population by 2050 with 7 million of immigrants only for this year. But Canada’s economy and society would be incapable of absorbing such a huge quantity of immigrants. The authors examine four immigration policy scenarios. But even the most “radical,” that implies raising dramatically number of immigrants aged 20 coming to Canada (difficult to implement), would not allow to deal with the financial problems of the social programs. The authors remind of that immigrants will age like anyone else. They will also need social benefits in retirement. It means that the problem of financing social security programs would not have been sold. The alternative solution they put forward would be to raise the average retirement age instead importing workers from outside. The social consequences of mass immigration are discussed in the fourth section …